rev up your engines, today I'm gonna show you how not to destroy your car when
you're towing it, yeah all of us some point in time you gotta have a car
towed, maybe it was in a wreck, maybe it broke down, or maybe you're just moving
from one place to another and you can't drive it, so you're having it towed, now
over the years I've seen customers cars being destroyed by being towed the wrong
way, the first thing you got to understand is that if your car is an
automatic transmission you can't tow it with the drive wheels rolling on the
ground because that can ruin the automatic transmission, I had a customer
once they were the craziest of all, they had a Subaru that was broken down in
Austin that's like 170 miles from here, it was all-wheel drive and they pulled it
with a tow rope the whole way on a highway, not
only did it destroy the automatic transmission, but it also blew the head
gasket, now the transmission got destroyed because when you drive a car
the engine spins the transmission inside the transmission there's an oil pump
that pumps the fluid lubricates and makes the transmission shift, if the
engine isn't running and you're towing an automatic transmission the fluid
isn't being pumped through it can destroy the automatic transmission, and
in the case of the Subaru was even more nefarious because the transmission
cooler went to the radiator since the transmission was overheat and
that fluid got real hot, so it went through the bottom of the radiator where
the transmission cooler was, and made the radiator overheat, it got so hot that it
ended up blowing the head gasket on the engine, and that's a two-for-one that you
never want to have, it's not a good two-for-one, it's a bad two-for-one, so if
you have a front-wheel drive car like this Toyota Celica it's an
automatic you have the front wheels picked up and it rolls on the back
wheels that don't do anything except spin, and if you have a rear-wheel drive
car the opposite, you have to have the rear wheels up in the air and the front
wheels on the ground, and if you have an all-wheel drive vehicle, don't tow it at all
with wheels on the ground, if you're getting that towed use one of those
flat bed tows, you know the big tow truck comes it's got the flatbed
then it tilts and comes back then they use the little winch inside
and they pull your vehicle on top there hydraulics pick the bed up and they
drive down the road with your all-wheel drive vehicle safe on top of this truck,
now I personally advise that with any car these days, because it's safer when
it's up in the air when they're towing you what if there's a wreck, what if the
guy is driving too fast and then kind of fishtails, you're much better having a car towed with
one of those flat beds, like I say if it's
all-wheel drive you really have to if you don't want to destroy it, any car is
gonna be safer on top of one of those but of course the question arise, who are
you gonna use to tow you're vehicle well find out beforehand, phones are
great for that you can do a lot of research, ask your friends, but it's a good
idea to have a tow truck number on your phone because then you know they have
insurance, if there's any problems and you won't have to worry, because if you
take potluck hey years ago I had a customer with a
Jaguar, he was towing it over here cuz he said it wasn't steering quite right,
so he tows it over he got dropped it off one of those lifts, and he had put the
hooks on each end of the tie rods, so before he takes off I drive it around the
block to see what's going on I could barely turn the wheel at all, so
I told my customer hey you gotta get over here something's really messed up,
he got in the car and said no it wasn't like this, and we looked and we saw that the
guy had bent the tie rods and this was a Jaguar where you couldn't buy the tie
rod you had to buy the whole rack, it ended up costing thousands of dollars, but at
least the company that he used although their driver was an idiot they did have
insurance and the insurance paid for the whole thing, now cars have set ups for
towing where you can put the hooks on and the cases this old Celica hey they
were well designed, check this out, you go under the front
it's a tow hook here, then we go to the other side there's another tow hook here
to put the toes on, we go to the back as we can see there's
a tow hook on the left and there's a tow hook on the right, these things were well
designed for towing, but all cars aren't that way anymore, take my wife's Lexus
this is all plastic, never hook up a tow hook to the plastic you'll rip the whole
front bumper off, this doesn't have any tow hooks underneath instead it's got
this little cover here, the little cover just pops off
then you go in the trunk and inside it's a tow hook, make sure you've got this tow
hook, cuz it just screws in here, you want to make sure it's super tight, it's got a
serious thread on it they don't want this thing coming off, look at that, that is one
long thread, this is what you used to tow it with, you don't want to rip off the
front bumper, so if you have a car like this Lexus hey it's 18 years old a lot of
stuff can happen in 18 years, make sure you have one of these if you don't get
it ahead of time if you ever need it towed, now if you're gonna use one car to pull
another one out of a ditch or mud or something, these little
ones with hooks on the end are perfectly fine for that, but kind of a misnomer it says tow
rope this tow rope we read the fine print, for
recovery purposes only and follow that you can certainly put the hook on the
hooks and pull something out, they're made for pulling out, but do not use one
of these for towing them all over the place, one it's illegal in most areas
check your local laws, but it's just plain dangerous, and here's something I
saw years ago, I was driving on the highway with my wife one night and there's this
big traffic jam, so I Drive my way around the traffic jam and what do I see, there's
a car with one of these ropes and behind it,
it had a harley-davidson motorcycle they had wrap the rope around the front forks
of the motorcycle, which is dangerous enough, and some fool was riding on a
Harley going 50 miles an hour down the highway, now of course that's total
insanity but even doing it with a car it's dangerous as can be, you don't have
much control if you're gonna tow another vehicle, you get one of those tow hitches
and have it set up correctly, the u haul is another company, rent those drive
up ones, where two of the wheels are driven up on it and the other two wheels
are on the ground, just make sure that if it's front-wheel drive that the front
wheels are placed on a dolly, and if it's rear-wheel drive that the rear wheels
you'd back it up into the thing, although you gotta know how to drive something
with one of those, it's not that easy cornering and back
up is near impossible for most people with one of those things, your having a
vehicle towed and you have towing insurance, check your towing insurance
first, some of them are total ripoffs, some of
them will pay only a fraction of what the tows gonna cost, I find one of the
better ones is AAA, they tell you exactly what they're gonna tow how many
free tows you get a year, and then how much it costs per extra mile like if you get
the first five miles free then it's a dollar a mile that's a fair deal you
know, look at the details first just don't buy it and then find out well
they're gonna pay $40 of a $200 tow that's not gonna help you out, and if you
do have a misfortune of being in a wreck that's why I tell you find a good towing
company first, ask your friends and a little research, have the number on your phone
because if you get in a wreck the tow truck vultures are riding around waiting
for that, if they get your wreck they're gonna want to tow it to their body place
or their storage lot and start charging a storage fee, and if they've got a body
shop that they work with, they'll often get a kickback from that
if you don't know a good body shop and you get in a wreck do this, just have the
vehicle towed to your house, by law at least in the United States, the insurance
company's got to pay for tow, they'll pay to tow it to your house and
then when it's time to get it fixed they paid to tow it to the place that you
get it fixed, you don't want it willy-nilly stuck at some random body shop that you
know nothing about just giving kickbacks to the tow truck drivers, so now you know
how not to get your car destroyed when you're towing it, a little bit of
knowledge you can go a long way to save both you and your car a lot of grief, so
if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell