Towing a Subaru Loyale with the back wheels on the road

pretty sure your OK. But please also post this at the Forums at

. I've seen this asled before over there. Actually, some of the manuals can be towed all 4 on the ground in AWD. There may be distance/speed limits though.

Carl

snipped-for-privacy@shaw.ca wrote:

I've towed several Subarus and have always just removed part of the driveshaft. Not difficult and now there is no chance of transmission problems.

Hi,

As already recommended, you might ask on the other board, or your Subie dealer, but I've been led to believe as long as the switchable 4wd system is in 2wd AND it's a manual trans IN NEUTRAL, you can flat tow to your heart's content. If it were an automatic, whole different story.

Just think about it: the rear wheels are in "towed" mode most of the time anyway, unless you spend a lot of time in 4wd, so there's nothing to be damaged back there. The front wheels will turn the internals of the transaxle enough to keep the gear oil splashing around, so no worries there. The only thing I'd be hesitant to do is disconnect the rear driveshaft. Unless yours is different from mine (a '90), if you do that, you want to make sure you can tie it up some way so you don't have to take it out. Mine only comes out in one piece (though it's a two piece shaft) and the tail shaft (splined shaft at front of driveshaft that slides into the x-fer case) is integral to the sealing of the rear of the x-fer case. Pull it out and you can have gear oil everywhere but where it's supposed to be. (Don't ask how I learned that!)

Good luck!

Rick

As Rick suggests, as long as it _is_ a selectable FWD/4WD manual box (NOT AWD, NOT Automatic), the drive to the tail is disengaged _behind_ the gear train when the selector is in FWD. IE, it's free-wheeling, just as if it was being driven normally in FWD. As such, towing with the rear wheels down (on a tow-dolly) shouldn't give you any problems at all, at least not over the short haul.

However, I have heard of folks having trouble with transmissions (this on a towed Suzuki Samurai IIRC) where the lack of spinning input/output shafts (hence no oil being thrown into the upper reaches of the transmission case) caused oil starvation at the output bearings.

If you plan on cross-country towing, do check to be sure the fluid level in the tranny is topped off, and you might want to start the Loyale and let it idle in neutral for a minute or two whenever you stop for a break. If you tow with all four wheels down ("flat-towing"), this probably won't be an issue (if indeed it even is), as the output shaft (the bottom shaft, at least on the older Subaru trannys) will spin whenever the vehicle is in motion.

How's that for saying yes and no at the same time? ;-)

Oh, and you probably don't want to mess with the drive shafts; pulling the main shaft will make a huge mess unless you drain the transmission fluid before hand, pulling the rear half shafts is possible (I think; the newer cars have them retained via an internal snap-ring; same issue as the main shaft when removed. The DL/GL/Loyale rear shafts bolt in IIRC), but install/removal would be a fairly major ordeal to go thru every time you wanted to use the car. Guess you could just pull them and leave them off for the duration of your trip (FWD car at that point, but you probably won't miss the 4WD feature playing tourist anyway) . . . guess that would probably be the _best_ solution if you have to tow for long distances on a tow-dolly.

Hope this is helpful.

ByeBye! S.

Steve Jernigan KG0MB Laboratory Manager Microelectronics Research University of Colorado (719) 262-3101