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And the convenience when racing is only half the equation. Part of the trip we just took was parking the rig in an RV park south of Rapid City for 5 days, and enjoying our NC around the Black Hills. Then on to visit family in WI for another week. It's like a motel room you can take anywhere.
Iron Mountain Road, between Keystone and Mount Rushmore is my favorite drive. I could run that road all day and not get tired.
Any advice with towing with a Uhaul car hauler? If I remember it has straps built in? Do I need more? Any insight is appreciated.
The biggest problem I have with uhaul car trailers is that the front of the trailer is not friendly to lowered cars. So, to make your life easier, you should plan to raise your ride height just for loading, or plan for some sort of wood shimming setup to get the nose of the car over the front edge of the trailer.
This problem is greatly exacerbated if you have an air dam or front lip.
I did some Buffalo slalom on that road (16A, right?) on my bike this trip...
That's the one. I was riding with the wife several years ago and she popped over a hill to a huge buffalo cow in the road. She wasn't going that fast, but it was still a heart stopper.
The biggest problem I have with uhaul car trailers is that the front of the trailer is not friendly to lowered cars. So, to make your life easier, you should plan to raise your ride height just for loading, or plan for some sort of wood shimming setup to get the nose of the car over the front edge of the trailer.
This problem is greatly exacerbated if you have an air dam or front lip.
This is excellent (and important) advice. Probably less work to just remove the front bumper though depending on how your front ducting is done.
Uses the same connector and mounting as the 7" monitor that came with the eRapta kit. Same remote even works.
Looks to be a big improvement, but takes up some real estate... I think I forgot to mention I had the monitor mounted in place of the rear view mirror using this:
The 9" monitor is large but doesn't obstruct forward vision, unless you need to look through the center top of the windshield... Could be an issue for smaller vehicles, though you probably wouldn't need a camera system then...
This is excellent (and important) advice. Probably less work to just remove the front bumper though depending on how your front ducting is done.
I've towed my Miata on a uhaul trailer and solved the aforementioned loading inconvenience by backing my tow pig up on some ramps. I'm also not a huge fan of the wheel strapping mechanism because it doesn't allow you to adjust the tongue weight - a miata on the Uhaul puts a LOT of weight on the tongue, because the Miata is so short.
Originally Posted by nick470
I do all my towing with a 2004.5 Ram 2500. Chrysler built vehicles suck, buuuut the 5.9 is an awesome motor.
Speaking of tongue weight, that looks like you might not have enough... :S Any sway issues with it?
Speaking of tongue weight, that looks like you might not have enough... :S Any sway issues with it?
Maybe it could use a little more. Got a little wobbly around 80mph, but there's really no need to be driving that fast with that much in tow - felt great otherwise. I don't think it was that far off, the front end of the trailer is heavier and the front car is fully in front of the trailer axles, with the second car close to them. I'll be using this trailer to go to Miatas @ MRLS again this year, might do a little testing beforehand to figure out the best way to load it.
Forgot to post earlier, a few weekends ago I pulled the miata down to Road Atlanta for a NASA-SE event and here are my findings.
Like mentioned previously, the U-Haul trailer is stupid tongue heavy if you use their supplied wheel straps. The next time I will use my own straps and position the car further back. The truck had no issues pulling and I got a rather nice 15.5 mpgs while towing ~70mph. Overall it wasn't terribly expensive either, ~$160 for the weekend with coverage on it. I think I'll continue to do this for a while until I decide where to store a trailer of my own.
The last time i towed with a Uhaul trailer with a Miata was picking up a car in Minneapolis and bringing it back to Indianapolis.
Tow vehicle was a 2003 Montero w/ OME HD suspension. I thought it towed ridiculously well. Granted, the tongue weight probably helped things a little. The rear springs are a little much, unloaded.
The basic concept of that is pretty much perfect as far as I'm concerned, though I'm not convinced 70's caddy is the best starting point. But I will give it some Doc Brown sort of "Why not do it with some style?" points. Do this on something like a Ford Transit connect and then we're talking.
Yeah, for a long time I've thought a rollback car hauler on a regular pickup chassis would be ideal, but that caddy is even better because the bed is so low, because front wheel drive.
I'm part of a Powerstroke owners group for Arizona on Facebook and I swear I see a post like every three days about someone new getting their 7.3l or 6.0l truck stolen. Maybe only 20% of them get recovered and they are usually trashed. I'm guessing the rest are driven straight to Mexico.
Maybe Ravelco or something? I'm starting to get paranoid. People are posting videos of thieves just walking up to the truck, they are inside within 5 seconds and driving away within 20 seconds.
Construction equipment is generally keyed alike, ie, Caterpillar key operates most Caterpillars, Deere loader key operates most Deere loaders and dozers and graders, Deere ag key operates most green Deere machines, Hitachi key operates Deere excavators (because Hitachi makes them for Deere), etc. To prevent theft one of my customers puts an inline keyed valve on the fuel line. Another pulls out the shutdown solenoid fuse. Disconnecting the shutdown harness is easy to do on some machines due to location. Machines are really easy to steal and don't have tags, titles, or registrations.
I'm part of a Powerstroke owners group for Arizona on Facebook and I swear I see a post like every three days about someone new getting their 7.3l or 6.0l truck stolen. Maybe only 20% of them get recovered and they are usually trashed. I'm guessing the rest are driven straight to Mexico.
I'd guess proximity to Mexico is a big factor... truck can be over the border before it's even missed. The other thing is the popularity of the 7.3 Fords... big secondary market for parts, so they're probably being stripped and parted out.
IMHO, most anti-theft devices only work on 'honest' theives. A guy who's making a living at it will probably have a workaround...