Towing vehicle with a rope

[hugh]

Land Rover Defenders still have.

[hugh]

Crossing the road is also potentially dangerous.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Andy Champ brought next idea :

Towing bike with bike was allowed then (not sure about now) but towing bike with car has never been allowed.

[dennis]

There is a minimum speed limit on motorways.. there is a maximum of 4.5 m of rope allowed.. you can't reach the minimum speed limit without being done for dangerous driving with only 4.5 m of spacing.

You need about 1 second of reaction time before you can start braking, this would equate to less than 15 (22 ft/sec) mph with the 4.5 m spacing. Then there is the problem of actually slowing down.

As i see it towing with a rope is just too slow to go any distance.

[dennis]

I think you are allowed to tow off a motorway but not onto one even with a rigid bar. those specially designed towing devices that steer the car or jack up the front wheels are OK AFAIK.

[dennis]

*He* should have made allowances for that, it is *his* fault for going too fast.

[Tim Watts]

As the front wheels have a castor angle, you get a degree of self steering anyway with an A-frame for twoing at least at reasonable (upto 20-30mph) speeds.

The problem comes with trying to attach an A frame to anything other than a landie or similar :)

[Matty F]

I used to have a large V8 that ran on CNG and petrol. The CNG was extremely cheap but would run the car for about 120km. Then the engine would stop and the steering and brakes needed more effort to use. But not a problem. I would run out of CNG several times a week so I got used to it.

[Dave Liquorice]

applies

So do Discoverys up to series II. Not sure where the nasty electronic thing on a DIII or IV operates. What ever I bet there is a damn computer between the switch and the works so putting the hand brake on as any form as an emergancy brake probably won't be allowed. Of course a clever software designer would allow it under some circumstances.

[The Other Mike]

...or a telegraph pole

[Bob Eager]

Sigh. Yes, dennis.

[Bob Eager]

Oh yes. Takes me back to my Series I Land Rover...!

[Bob Eager]

What is it?

[The Natural Philosopher]

-1 mph

[Jules Richardson]

I almost bought a car (I think it was a Peugeot) in NZ which had been converted back from CNG to petrol* - I gather CNG was quite popular as a fuel there once, but had been gradually going out of fashion for some reason?

• which implies there were some differences between the setups - unless the "conversion" involved simply removing all the bits to do with the CNG side...

As I mentioned elsewhere, I've got no power brakes - or power steering - on the truck; I just got used to it needing major effort to stop, or to steer at low speeds. I tend to find that most power steering feels a bit on the light side (particularly in cars) anyway.

cheers

Jules

[Andy Dingley]

My KERR (and my hi-lift) is kept with a padlock between the ends to stop you using it. There are only a few people I'd trust to use it, and several of them are ex REME.

For similar reasons I don't tow on a nylon rope. My recovery rope is nylon, but for towing I switch to polyester.

[Jules Richardson]

It's quite common on vehicles over here for there to be no handbrake; instead they have a ratcheting foot-pedal to operate the parking brake mechanism, with a handle (typically on the dash just above the pedal) that then has to be pulled to disengage again. My elderly Ford has one, so the design's been around for over 40 years.

I'm not sure how unique to the US that setup is, or - more importantly - what the logic is for it vs. a normal handbrake between the front seats*, but I've never risked trying to operate it whilst moving. I suspect it'd all get ugly pretty easily :-)

• except that the Ford has a bench seat, so there's no "between"; perhaps it's just left over from days when such seats in vehicles were common, but handbrakes became common on vehicles elsewhere in the world?

cheers

Jules

[Jules Richardson]

and what point of reference is it relative to? :-)

[Matty F]

To run on CNG it was just necessary to blow the gas into the carburettor just after the air filter. And of course to have a bloody great tank in the boot. My 6 litre V8 on CNG was as cheap to run as my wife's Mazda 323. The CNG came straight out of the ground here in NZ until it ran out, by burning it to generate electric power.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Once had a male pedestrian climb between car and caravan on a city centre, just as I was about to pull away at the lights. So climbing over a tow rope would not surprise me at all.