"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
10/01/2020 at 12:34 • Filed to: None
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"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
10/01/2020 at 12:34 • Filed to: None | 1
| 8 |
Hello Oppo! Last month was the 5 year anniversary of that time we did Top Gear, buying cheap cars and driving them on an epic road trip. As luck (or not) would have it, all three of us still have our road trip cars and as such we we’d planned to do a anniversary road trip with them.
Which didn’t go to plan.
For starters, there is this whole global pandemic thing which makes travel, especially leisure travel, fraught. Additionally, I sort of lightly blew the Alfa’s head gasket back in May and haven’t gotten around to fixing that. Also Taylor’s D21 has a multitude of minor problems which make the prospect of driving it far unpleasant. (The Cabriolet, shockingly, the the most roadworthy of the three.)
Anyway! Recently we thought maybe a good anniversary “trip” would be to have Taylor get the D21 up here (he lives in Austin) so we could wrench on it at my place.
Herein lies the problem
Taylor’s 2015 Nissan XTerra has a towing capacity of 5000lbs, but the hitch is, allegedly, only rated for 3500lbs. The Truck has a curb weight of 2,900lbs. As such we’re thinking his best bet is to use a rented tow dolly to get the Truck to Oklahoma, a distance of about 450 miles.
But we’re not sure how that would work.
The truck is RWD and manual. From what we’ve read, it might be fine to tow the truck in neutral with the rear wheels on the pavement. We’ve also read this could be a problem if you go fast (highway speeds so... yes) or a “long distance.”
Another suggestion option is to tow the truck “backwards” with the steering wheels down. A lot of places suggest this is the proper way, but then googling how to actually do that returns a lot of people tell you that you, your family, and a basket of kittens will be killed if you attempt it. Or, rather, locking the steering in a reliable way sounds like a pain and maybe a little fraught.
The third option is to remove the rear propshaft. While I have no doubt Taylor is capable of doing this, having done it recently on the Land Rover (and failed to put it back on properly, apparently) I’m not going to say this would be a “fun” option.
The last option is to lightly ignore the hitch rating and go with a full trailer. This isn’t a great option as the trailer itself weights almost as much as the truck (2,200 lbs) and would bring the combined towing weight to about 5,100 pounds. That is 1,600 over the trailer rating and 100 over the vehicles tow rating. The latter I’m not worried about, but the former is... worrying.
tl;dr
What would Oppo do?
Tow the truck in neutral
Tow the truck backwards (bonus points for explaining the best way to do this)
Remove the rear driveshaft
Do the full flatbed tow
What say you Oppo?
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/01/2020 at 12:37 |
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Oh what fresh hell is this?!
Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/01/2020 at 12:40 |
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Tow in neutral, it’s just like rolling down a long hill in neutral. That’s why a lot of RV’s tow manual cars, just put it in neutral and send it.
atfsgeoff
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/01/2020 at 12:41 |
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You can do #3 and use a tow bar to eliminate the extra weight of a dolly.
GLiddy
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/01/2020 at 13:16 |
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Remove the rear drive shaft and pull it on a tow dolly. I have no idea how hard it is on your pickup , but when I was young and dumb I tried to tow a Chevy II with a powerglide transmission and thought putting it in neutral would be fine. Maybe I could have gotten away with it, but after 20 or 30 miles I decided that this was not worth the risk and pulled the driveshaft on the side of the interstate. It really wasn’t that hard.
MM54
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/01/2020 at 13:16 |
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It should take about 4 minutes to pull the driveshaft and is the safest option, so that.
Zaphod's Heart of Gold
> Highlander-Datsuns are Forever
10/01/2020 at 13:42 |
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A lot of the tow Jeeps because you can pop the transfer case into neutral in either a manual or auto and completely disconnect the transmisison from the wheels.
Longtime Lurker
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
10/02/2020 at 14:37 |
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Buy a stronger hitch.
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> Longtime Lurker
10/02/2020 at 14:57 |
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Yeah hoping that is on Taylor’s TODO list