Why not take your tow dolly and tow the van a couple hundred feet to a nice
solid surface?
You won't hurt the trans doing that.

Then you can remove the axles in relative safety and won't have to spend
money and increase towing weight with a car hauler.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Mark A Kippert
Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 7:52 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Removing the axle shafts (was: Towing a Vanagon)

I'm talking about renting a full dual-axle trailer from U-Haul, not a
tow dolly. My tow dolly would work fine except for the fact that the
'87 GL I'm going to tow has an automatic tranny, so I have to get the
rear wheels off the ground OR pull the drive axles. A job I've decided
I don't want to do two hours from home in a cold field, that would be
less than safe.

My biggest concern was the combined weight. U-Haul states their
trailer weighs 2000lbs (my dolly is less than a quarter of that) and
the Vanagon is 4000lbs. About 6000lbs total. The max tow weight on my
Expedition (with 4.6L V8) is 5900lbs. However from the response of
others, the van's around 3400lbs so I should be safely under my limit.

-Mark K

On Jan 3, 2009, at 12:48 PM, craig cowan wrote:

> If you were confident in the ability for your master dolly to tow
> the bus
> with the ford expedition, why not the Uhaul rig? It has built in
> brakes as
> well which are nice.