RE: Towing Alfas

["Glenn Wasserman" <glennwa@domain.elided>]

I believe it was Fred D. who has mentioned in the past that he used to tow a Giulietta or some other 50's/60's car with his 3.0 Milano. Fred??

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Scott Fisher [mailto:sfisher71@domain.elided] 
	Sent: Mon 5/6/2002 1:53 PM 
	To: Zamani Zambri; alfa@domain.elided 
	Cc: 
	Subject: Re: Towing Alfas
	
	

	--- 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
	.
	Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness
	http://health.yahoo.com
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