Tow Bars -- The Rest of The Story

I towed "Rhonda" up to SLO with my GMC 2500 pickup. I never noticed it was back there. I think it's rated for 10,000 # but that's more of a "toung-in-cheek rating. I have pulled a boat that weighed in at 9640 # and that was nerve racking.

The weird part of pulling the Speedster is that I can't see any of the car in any of my mirrors or thru the back window. This was so nerve wracking that I made up a pole with a green tennis ball on the end and fastened it to one of my roll bar mounts. It sticks up high enough that now, at least, I can tell if it's still back there. I also wired into all the Speedsters lights by connecting into them at the front light wiring harness. this way the tail and frt. parking lights are on at night. Both the front and rear signal lights blink when I turn and, of course, the brake lights work as well. I have a bright LED Bar mounted in the rear intake grill that lights up as well. Another nice safety feature is that my truck tail/brake/signal lights can be seen from behind the Speedster as well. Things get really lit up back there when needed. The towing light plug on the Speedster is wrapped around the horns inside the left frt. wheel well. When I need to connect it I just fish them out thru the horn grill up there and jumper to the pickup's plug. I used an EMPI tow bar but had to modify it by making it more narrow, a higher "kick-up" to get it's angle parallel to the ground and my truck hitch, make it longer, and add some reinforcements just to be safer.  What I don't really like is installing it and removing it. I went and bought one of those tiny aluminum floor jacks from Harbor Freight which works nice and makes it easy  to get the front end off the ground to comfortably install the tow bar. I can store the jack in my pickup with out getting a hernia!   I guess that's my two cents !    Tow bars can be difficult to adapt to our little cars!!   Now I worry about stone chips ?  Will it ever end ?.....Bruce

I realize that most of you have enough power to pull your speedster, but what about braking.....especially emergency braking.

When we sold our house and moved I looked into towing our Chevy Tracker with our F250 Diesel pickup.   Turns out the Tracker was too heavy to tow, even with my really big, heavy duty pickup.  The problem was the Tracker, which admittedly at 3000 pounds is almost double the weight of an average speedster, was too heavy. 

To tow it safely I would have needed to either put it on a trailer with brakes, or add a remote brake controller to the Tracker's braking system.

Ford recommended extra brakes or trailer brakes on anything heavier than 1500 pounds.

Like you say, Speedsters (and TDrs) are closer to 1500 than 3000 lbs. I left more following distance. But, again, that wasn't hard to do pulling with a 2.4l. 

Have not checked the Mazda manual, but the Subaru says anything over 1,000 lbs should have it own brakes.  The hitch on Subaru is Class III rated at 5,000 lb.  On the Mazda, the hitch is rated at Class I 2,000 lbs.  In my brief trial run in the Mazda, the car towed fine (it is a V6) and if one is circumspect with allowing a lot of distance to brake from speed, I think would be fine.  Be lieve the "instructons" from Subaru to be VERY conservative.  Have always found the brakes on the Mazda to be VERY good.  And my Beetle tow bar did need to be narrowed to fit properly.  Millwright did this no sweat.  WildBill: Looks like that bus tow bar would have worked just neat.  Again, w/ my set up, I do not believe ANY tow bar would fit on the lower torsion tube without mods to the sway bar.

I'm suddenly reminded of a panic stop I made near Philly in my F150, pulling Pearl on her trailer on I-95.  70mph to zero in about 150 yards with me pulling on the steering wheel to push harder on the brake.  

After we stopped and I didn't hit anything (it was close, believe me), I looked in the back seat area to see my two Jack Russells plastered up against the front seatbacks, and giving me this look like:

"YOU DUMB ASS!"