C3 as a tow car??
Discussion
What a sight!
Not one, but TWO C3s towing moderate sized trailers on the M3 southbound, Winchester this evening. I have seen pictures of vettes towing, but never in the flesh.
It was quite good approaching them, seeing the trailers, and then seeing something low and chunky ahead of each one. Nice one lads!
Not one, but TWO C3s towing moderate sized trailers on the M3 southbound, Winchester this evening. I have seen pictures of vettes towing, but never in the flesh.
It was quite good approaching them, seeing the trailers, and then seeing something low and chunky ahead of each one. Nice one lads!
It normally stays on the car but it was custom made and is a modular design with just one bolt to remove the tow bar itself.
There's a cross member permanently attached to the subframe. in the middle of this cross-member is welded a piece of box-section steel about 6 inches long that goes towards the rear of the vehicle.
The car is a UK car so it has a towing eye in the middle of the rear impact bar behind the bottom of the rear bumper.
The tow bar (with the tow ball attached) is also box-section steel, but of a size that slides into the aforementioned box-section piece, welded to the cross-member.
I just take the tow-bar (which is just over a couple of feet long) and slide it into the box-section on the cross member under the car. On the top of the tow-bar is a steel 'toungue' with a hole in it and a captive nut welded to it. This lines up with the towing eye at the back of the car. I line up the towing eye with the whole in teh tongue/captive nut and put a bold into the towing eye from the top side, screwing it through the towing eye and into the captive nut. This secures the towbar to the car.
Electrics-wise, I have wired the normal multi-relay type of unit into the can-bus lights and fed the output to a trailer socket (the normal type of socket with the sprung cap on it) mounted at the rear of the offside rear wheel-well. It's attached to the wheel-arch liner. The tow-bar has it's electrics attached to it, socket pointing rearwards for the lighting board to plug into, and at the fron end, about 3 feet of cable with a normal single electrics trailer plug. This plugs into the socket in the rear offside wheel arch liner. I normally only use a single cable-tie to keep the cable nicely out of the way of anything that might cause it any harm, but after that I'm good to go.
One bolt, one plug and it's on or off.
I have a Magna-flow exhaust that has sufficient room between the two pairs of pipes to accommodate the towbar.
There's a cross member permanently attached to the subframe. in the middle of this cross-member is welded a piece of box-section steel about 6 inches long that goes towards the rear of the vehicle.
The car is a UK car so it has a towing eye in the middle of the rear impact bar behind the bottom of the rear bumper.
The tow bar (with the tow ball attached) is also box-section steel, but of a size that slides into the aforementioned box-section piece, welded to the cross-member.
I just take the tow-bar (which is just over a couple of feet long) and slide it into the box-section on the cross member under the car. On the top of the tow-bar is a steel 'toungue' with a hole in it and a captive nut welded to it. This lines up with the towing eye at the back of the car. I line up the towing eye with the whole in teh tongue/captive nut and put a bold into the towing eye from the top side, screwing it through the towing eye and into the captive nut. This secures the towbar to the car.
Electrics-wise, I have wired the normal multi-relay type of unit into the can-bus lights and fed the output to a trailer socket (the normal type of socket with the sprung cap on it) mounted at the rear of the offside rear wheel-well. It's attached to the wheel-arch liner. The tow-bar has it's electrics attached to it, socket pointing rearwards for the lighting board to plug into, and at the fron end, about 3 feet of cable with a normal single electrics trailer plug. This plugs into the socket in the rear offside wheel arch liner. I normally only use a single cable-tie to keep the cable nicely out of the way of anything that might cause it any harm, but after that I'm good to go.
One bolt, one plug and it's on or off.
I have a Magna-flow exhaust that has sufficient room between the two pairs of pipes to accommodate the towbar.
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