How about you pay a responsible high school or college kid to drive the second car one-way?

If you do go with a dolly, consider towing it backwards with rear wheels on dolly and the steering wheel unlocked but ratchet-strapped to seat or other secure point to keep it, and front wheels, straight.

Test all this on a short trip first.

 

How about you pay a responsible high school or college kid to drive the second car one-way?

If you do go with a dolly, consider towing it backwards with rear wheels on dolly and the steering wheel unlocked but ratchet-strapped to seat or other secure point to keep it, and front wheels, straight.

Test all this on a short trip first.

Great advice, thank you.

Yeah, maybe I can bribe someone here to drive with me. Did not think of that

 

Is the fear of towing it with the rear wheels on the ground that it may accidentally get popped into gear over a bump? I had a friend who towed his manual transmission Ford Ranger behind his RV once and after a few minutes threw a piston out the side of the engine block because it had either been left in gear by mistake or slipped into gear. As long as it stays in neutral I don't see any issue as there aren't any pumps in side the transmission that won't be running. I guess you could also put a board between the seat and clutch pedal to ensure it is depressed the whole time as well.

 

I was told a long time ago that when towing any vehicle you need to get the drive wheels off the ground OR disconnect the drive shaft from the trans, regardless of transmission type. Idk how accurate that is but I also haven’t had to tow a vehicle further than a mile or so.
Op why not drive the car down and then rent a car for the return trip. Cost might be a little more but with less hassle potentially.

 

You know I hadn’t really focused on Manual vs. Automatic in my earlier response.

I have never towed a car on a dolly.

Since this car is a manual, you could probably safely tow it on a dolly with rear wheels on ground and car in neutral. I think the driveshaft and differential will spin.

But I might still look into putting rear wheels on dolly.

 

I'm confused. "On a flatbed or all of the wheels on a trailer," is functionally the same thing. You drive a flatbed, you pull a trailer, but from the perspective of the car, and the stuff that breaks, these are identical. And, they are true. Put the car on a trailer or a flatbed, NOT a dolly.

 

If you want to scare people, reverse the car onto a dolly, lock the steering, run the seatbelt thru the steering wheel and lock it as well. The dolly and the flatbed from uhaul are both 55mph limited anyway. You'll have to tell uhaul its some kind of fwd car or they won't rent it.

I did 100 miles like this and 40miles another time and had no issues. (uhaul loaned out my reserved trailer. :/)

The other alternative is to just tow over capacity with the full trailer. A single journey over capacity isn't going to be harmful, especially if you drive 55 and defensively. Do yourself a favor and do a 1 way rental as well. This would be the least sketchy method.

Since you've not towed before, try to plan ahead as you drive to avoid reversing as much as possible. Thats really the only hard part.

 

If you want to scare people, reverse the car onto a dolly, lock the steering, run the seatbelt thru the steering wheel and lock it as well. The dolly and the flatbed from uhaul are both 55mph limited anyway. You'll have to tell uhaul its some kind of fwd car or they won't rent it.

I did 100 miles like this and 40miles another time and had no issues. (uhaul loaned out my reserved trailer. :/)

The other alternative is to just tow over capacity with the full trailer. A single journey over capacity isn't going to be harmful, especially if you drive 55 and defensively. Do yourself a favor and do a 1 way rental as well. This would be the least sketchy method.

Since you've not towed before, try to plan ahead as you drive to avoid reversing as much as possible. Thats really the only hard part.

Yeah, from what I am reading it would probable exceed the maximum towing capacity of the car by 500 plus pounds, that is if I got the trailer. And, for some reason, U-haul site states that it can't town a vehicle that does not have a hard top.

I wanted to drive the car there and that's it. But probably looking to add another 200 to 350 to the budget if I have to rent something.

 

I would tow over the limit with the Palisade before I put it on a dolly, personally. The Palisade still needs to stop all that weight whether the coupe (edit: vert) is on a dolly or a trailer, and a tandem axle trailer with surge brakes will perform that task waaaay better than the dolly with only one axle and, I’m assuming, a similar braking system . I’ve used the uhaul trailers a few times and they are really nice car trailers.
I would
1. Drive the car to Raleigh and rent a car for return trip, maybe even a uhaul pickup ($20 + mileage)
2. Rent a uhaul car trailer and tow with the Palisade, tell them you’re transporting a ‘93 Civic.
3. Pay a responsible kid to follow you in another car (of yours I’d assume)

Good luck!

 

 

really great feedback! Thank you!

 

Like others have said. You wouldn't want to dolly it with the rear wheels on pavement. Even in neutral you'll wear out the transmission since oil isn't circulating.

A trailer isn't that hard to drive with. If you don't have a truck you can rent one. It usually costs me between 300-400 bucks plus gas to get both a truck from Budget and a trailer from uhaul to haul cars around when I need to.

Good luck.

 

I would rent a pick up truck/box truck and trailer before I pulled the car with your current vehicle. Your current vehicle is probably under powered and more importantly, under braked for the job. Yes, the trailer has brakes, but I wouldn’t want to depend on them to slow the trailer and the car down.

That said, what are you giving done that you can’t get done closer to home?

 

Thanks for all the feedback! Didn't even think about the braking capabilities of my wife's car. It's good that I put this here before I tried because you guys gave me a bunch of valuable feeddback.

I wanted to take the car to these guys in NC because I have heard great things and they have several years of experience. And they are BMW specialists, only working on BMWs. I thought they would for sure find the problem with my convertible top.

They had fair prices compared to most shops I checked.

But, after 1 year trying, I lucked out this weekend. Fucking crazy. Found a brand new bosch convertible motor on sale and changed that. The top is working perfectly now. Crazy. That's the last thing I was going to change before taking it to the shop so I could tell them that was done as well. Really did not thing that would fix it. $30 fix