

| Subject: | Re: Towing and Rock Damage |
| From: | Roy Nicholl |
| Date: | Tue, 20 Feb 2018 13:14:39 -0400 |
I’ve hauled vehicles covered with a high-quality, securely fastened car cover and have not had issues with wear points (one of them a bubble car - Corbin Sparrow). Why not simply rent an enclosed trailer or a low-body truck roll the isetta right inside? If I were closer, you could borrow the LT. > On 20-Feb-2018, at 12:49, Michael A. Radtke <wa7zpu@5BY9.NET> wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > Thanks for all of your comments and advice. > > The towed car is a restored BMW Isetta. I modified a Harbor Freight > 4x8 trailer to load and hold the car securely with rails and chocks for > the wheels, as well as tie downs. The car sits backwards on the > trailer and the load is balanced for the proper tongue weight. I made > the 400 mile trip last year with the un-restored car and had no apparent > damage. But, you folks have confirmed my worry. > > I agree that there could be various types of debris from other sources > of it besides the tow vehicle. However, I am not too concerned about > that and can afford to be "self insured" against less likely damage. > My focus is the debris that the Vanagon might toss at the trailer which > follows pretty closely. > > I am not comfortable with a car cover or anything touching the towed > car. Seven hours of friction from undetected flapping cloth can do a > lot of damage. > > I am also uncomfortable with building a shielding structure. First, I > am out of time. I leave on Friday. Second, unless carefully > designed, the shield could fatigue and fly apart, doing far more damage > than a few rocks. I don't think that I am up to a safe design. > > I don't know about what a "big rock guard" is, but I have seen various > cloth shields used by RV drivers to shield their dolly towed vehicles. > Any of these would require considerable modification to fit on a > Vanagon and scratch building one would likely have the same limitations > as the hard shield described in the previous paragraph. > > Another shield used by RV drivers is the broom-like thing that > stretches across the rear of the RV. It might be difficult to fit such > a thing to a Vanagon though. > > The "broom" looks attractive to me, but also brings to mind just adding > mud guards to the Vanagon. Is that worth considering? Perhaps just > buying and and trimming a couple of truck trailer mud guards and then > mounting them to the hitch or bumper? > > What do you think? > > Thanks, > Mike
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