Re: Towing Alfas

[Scott Fisher <sfisher71@domain.elided>]

--- Zamani Zambri <zzambrimail@domain.elided> wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Is it possible to tow my Milano track car with
> another car?

Four interesting images come to mind...

1.  A matched pair, both in the same burgundy color:
Shelby GT-500 coupe with trailer hitch, towing a 289
Shelby Cobra, seen at the autocross at Riverside
Raceway (where???) in 1987.

2.  A friend's story of towing his Morgan +4 race car
with his 427 Shelby Cobra in the late 1960s.

3.  A photo from the Web of someone arriving at an
Audi track day with an ur-Quattro on the trailer and
an ur-S4 towing it.

4.  My neighbor in the Sunnyvale area who use to tow
his sprint kart with a Suzuki Swift GTi.

So it's at least possible to tow an interesting track
vehicle with a car.

However, having recently had the most pleasant
experience I've ever had when towing anything, I would
recommend getting something specifically engineered
for towing.  When we retrieved my Berlina in late
March, Jeff Zurschmiede (current owner of my old GT
Junior) and I drove down in his tow rig, which is a
late-model Ford turbodiesel pickup truck, built
specifically to do this.  It was the first time I've
had occasion to tow anything since my bare-bones E
Production days, when my tow car was a clapped-out
$600 Pontiac Bonneville station wagon that we weren't
sure was going to make it up the hill at Laguna Seca
with the car on the trailer.  And I used to joke that
nothing that happened on track was half as terrifying
as simply trying to get there in the wretched old
station wagon and the falling-apart trailer.

Pretty much the only reason we could tell we were
towing anything with Jeff's rig was that it sucked
down diesel at an appalling rate -- down to about 12
mpg when we were heading into the 50-mph winds on the
way home.  But first-rate air conditioning, a good
selection of CDs, and regular stops in good company
made the trip a pleasure.  (Don't miss the braised
lamb shanks at Casa Ramos in Yreka, California --
simply wonderful.)

A lot of what makes a tow vehicle pleasurable as a tow
vehicle is its overall weight; that seems to be a big
part of what makes the front end stay in front of the
back end, so to speak.  Not the only factor,
certainly, but an important one.

There is an art to towing, however, and a whole slew
of technological aids that make the task a lot safer. 
The easiest to understand: trailer brakes.  The ones
on Jeff's rig are electrically operated, and wired
into the brake lights.  In addition, there's a slider
bar that you can use to apply JUST the trailer brakes
-- like letting out a sea anchor in a boat, it applies
drag to the rear and stabilizes the whole rig (useful
for coming down twisty mountain roads, for example). 
And the load-distributing hitch that allowed Jeff to
tweak the amount of weight on each axle of his truck
by adjusting links in a chain was just this side of
magic.

My recommendation: having towed with an abysmal
combination and a great combination, I'd think long
and hard if I found myself in the position of having
to tow something regularly, because a big-ol' truck is
every bit as much the right vehicle for pulling an
Alfa to the track as an Alfa is once you get there. 
At that point it's all about resources -- can you
justify spending what it costs to put together a
killer tow rig like this (Jeff competes in two
different racing series, plus he has a boat, and he
owns a 5-acre farm, so the truck gets a LOT of use),
or would you grumble and grimace thinking how you wish
you could have spent that money on sticky tires and
new springs for the race car?

Towing Henrik's GTV6 down to the Bay Area and my
Berlina back home has had me questioning what's more
important -- looking cool in the paddock or not
feeling like I'm having my head pulled off with piano
wire when I'm trying to get a car and a trailer to its
appointed destination.

--Scott Fisher
  Tualatin, Oregon
.
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