Towing a mb willys jeep

[Robin Craig]

Frankly I feel what we are legally allowed to get away with on this side of the pond for various vehicle related activities is darn right dangerous.

The Europeans have mandated brakes for the towed vehicles for a while now.

All I can say about having a vehicle on an A bar and the thing not following is that it is classic tail wagging the dog syndrome.

It gets even worse when you take the engine out and the front end looses its weight which is what we did with our Land Rover 90 to shunt it around while the engine and gearbox are out for rebuild. Thankfully i'm using a Dodge 3500 dually as the prime mover and it has the grunt to be in control.

What has always got me worried would be in an emergency braking situation that the un-braked towed vehicle could either push the rear of the prime mover up or could itself over run the A bars and get it's front off the ground. Standing at the side of the combination of the two vehicles and looking at the angle of the A bar to the prime mover gives you an idea of which way it would go.

I have experienced this when A bars are used with dead tracked vehicles. If you want a graphic example of a unbraked towed vehicle, there used to be a clip of one FV434 towing a FV432 moving on a German road at a fair clip, the traffic lights changed and the towed vehicle pushed the prime upwards and it followed underneath to the point that the A bar couplings snapped and the rear of the prime slapeed back down on top of the front of the towed vehicle.

Sadly it has been removed from you tube recently.

If you were lucky enough to see it or have the vision to imagine the scenario then you might see why I'm in support of the Euro brake legislation.

R