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Should I tow a 3000 lb vehicle with my small sedan?

K

KrillBee

Golden Member
My friend has a 3000 lb vehicle which needs to be towed. My vehicle is a front wheel drive 6 cylinder sedan that weighs about 3000 lbs. According to the manual my car isn't supposed to tow more than 1000 lbs of weight. I do not have a hitch installed.

He only wants to tow the vehicle for a block and he wants to use rope webbing to accomplish this. Is this a good or a bad idea?
 
You should be able to tow it. A trailer actually sits on the hitch, you are just hooking up a rope and towing, not as much actual weight sitting on your car. I have a simialar car like yours and towed my dads wagon about 5 miles, no problem.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong here...
 
Heck no! Go buy the biggest damned pickup truck money can buy because this is Amerika, the land of the gas guzzler and freedom! I'd go with the Ford F-350 dually with the turbodiesel engine...it's what God would want you to do.
 
JulesMaximus said:
Heck no! Go buy the biggest damned pickup truck money can buy because this is Amerika, the land of the gas guzzler and freedom! I'd go with the Ford F-350 dually with the turbodiesel engine...it's what God would want you to do.
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i pulled an empty car trailer 200 miles today just for you jules!
 
The car will pull it just fine, problem is stopping the vehicle being towed. If the vehicle being towed isn't running, there won't be any brake boost. It can be done, it just shouldn't be done.
 
TakeNoPrisoners said:
That car isn't made to tow 3000lbs.
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Not many cars are.

That said, my first real job was delivering rental cars to customers. We did that by towing a 5th generation 2 door Dodge Colt behind the rental vehicle like a brand new Plymouth Reliant or even a Ford Tempo. Of course, the car being towed only weighed 2500lbs, maybe 2600 with the tools and tow bar attached.

I can assure you that a 1987 Plymouth Reliant wasn't made to tow 2600lbs, yet this was the business model for a national rental car company I worked for right out of high school.

I did this in upstate NY rain or shine through winter and summer, even in the snow for thousands of miles. Stopping was always fun...especially emergency stops because you had the weight of two cars but the brakes of one with half the weight hanging off the rear bumper of the car you were driving. No ABS brakes, no airbags...oddly enough I never had an accident while towing.

I'm sure you could tow a 3000lb vehicle 1 block.
 
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KrillBee said:
My friend has a 3000 lb vehicle which needs to be towed. My vehicle is a front wheel drive 6 cylinder sedan that weighs about 3000 lbs. According to the manual my car isn't supposed to tow more than 1000 lbs of weight. I do not have a hitch installed.

He only wants to tow the vehicle for a block and he wants to use rope webbing to accomplish this. Is this a good or a bad idea?
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Just rent something, it's gonna be cheaper than hours on the frame rack after you tweak the rear half of the unibody...
 
A garden tractor will pull it a block unless your going up a steep hill,i don't think your car is going to have a problem
 
I'm surprised at all the naysayers. I'd pull it no problem. Just go slow and have a second operator in the towed vehicle to hit the brakes- the lead car supplies forward motion when it is time to go, the second car supplies brakes when it is time to stop. You can use the lead car's brakes too, but never more than the tow vehicle- if the lead vehicle brakes at all more than the towed vehicle, the rope will go slack and you'll have the towed car careening into you.

That said- it's just a block. Why not push it?
 
You have nowhere to attach a rope to. If you had a hitch, yeah you could go really slow and not damage your car, as long as it's flat ground.

Rent a truck from Home Depot or Uhaul or whatever, and get a real tow strap.
 
Throckmorton said:
You have nowhere to attach a rope to. If you had a hitch, yeah you could go really slow and not damage your car, as long as it's flat ground.

Rent a truck from Home Depot or Uhaul or whatever, and get a real tow strap.
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No tow loops or hooks on the back of his car? There are on mine...well, not on the Subaru anymore, but that's only because I had to remove it to install the trailer hitch.
 
A block? Of course. Accelerate slowly, drive slowly. Make sure the drivers in both cars are not idiots. A block is nothing.
 
hdfxst said:
A garden tractor will pull it a block unless your going up a steep hill,i don't think your car is going to have a problem
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i towed my friends 84 chevy truck with my yamaha xs1100 motorcycle once. it was only a mile, and we kept it to 10ish mph the whole way.

why is this even a question? grab a couple friends and push the damn thing a block.ive pushed my own vehicles more than a block by myself to get them out of traffics way before.
 
Towing with a rope/chain is always a bad idea if not illegal, but the transmission is the part of your car that you'd be over-stressing the most.

Imo, it's not worth jeopardizing the health of your car for a friend that simply wants to save a few bucks.
 
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