Buying car with towbar..

Well, the clutch, as you've mentioned. The rear suspension, too, if it's been used to tow heavy stuff.

I suppose, transmission and engine wear, but if it's been looked after and well serviced it shouldn't be showing any signs of wear. If it's not been looked after, it won't really matter if it's been used for towing or not.

Chances are that there will be no obvious signs of wear that can be directly associated with towing. One or two passengers in the back of a car will put as much load on the rear suspension as the towbar noseweight of an average caravan.

How can you check the wear of a clutch without removing it? Th answer is you can't. All you can check for is any sign of slip, and whether it has a nice progressive action. Even if all that checks out, the clutch could still be nearing it's replacement time. It's a chance you take with any s/h manual car unless there are bills to show otherwise.

I quite prefer cars with towbars, especially automatics. I was quite pleased to see the 5 series BMW I baught in january this year had one fitted. If my car didn't have one I might have to fit it myself, which can be quite expensive, even if you do it yourself. I don't use it a lot, but it's very useful. Even used it once to pull the forklift at work back on the road when one wheel went off the road into soft ground. Come to think of it, if you want a towbar, it's another advantage if you also have a RWD car. Mike.

This has always been a goodun ..

Ok, .. theory .. could it be possible that those that are happy to tow something behind their cars are not (generally) the sort of folk who would drive poorly (as far as the mechanics were concerened). Ok, they might stick a caravan on there once a year for a couple of weeks or take some stuff down the dump etc but it would probably be towed 'carefully' and probably excert less transmission shocks than some punk wheel spinning his / her way through the gearbox?

The biggest example of this 'attitude' re towing is most active amongst the bikers. My wife and I both have trailers for behind our motorbikes and find towing much less restrictive / safer than trying to bundle all the stuff on the bikes? On the other hand some bikers just book into a hotel and wouldn't even dream of fitting luggage. Horses for courses n that?

I was in my mates garage the other day when such a young lad came in saying his car (small Pug of course) 'felt funny'. Halfway through the conversation he admitted he had hit the kerb but had 'fixed it' by relacing the damaged and punctured wheel with the spare!

One new wishbone later ..... ;-(

All my vehicles get a towbar and most (except the bikes of course ) have towed the small goods trailer, 1/2 tonne goods trailer, 14' sailing dinghy or folding caravan (not trailer tent). If it feels like the engine is having to work hard (and it's ok to do so) I just pull to the left and ease off a bit .. ?

Just my 3 hapenth .. ;-)

T i m

I think the attitude of not taking a car because it has a towbar is outdated. I have used all my cars over the last 20 years to tow vans and not had any difficulty selling (or in the case of leased ones - passing) them on.

Mike G ( snipped-for-privacy@tiscali.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Since the *maximum* allowable noseweight for most cars is about 75kg or so, they'd have to be two very light passengers.

Overhang and leverage. Mike.

I'd never actually thought of it that way!

There's a bloke near us that is a caravanner and he's very particular about how he drives and servicing the car. He's got an 'F' reg Sierra and it is in *perfect* nick.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I can find nothing wrong with the vehicle (Apart from a minor scrape to the paintwork) so I have decided to buy it.

sPoNiX

I (stupidly) bought a Scirocco with a tow bar once. Nothing wrong with that per se (I have since used this configuration v successfully for trip with a trailer to the local tip) but this car had been abused. The clutch was okay, but the chassis legs at the rear were stressed, allowing the paint to crack and severe rust to take place in tell-tale, regular lines. The rear arches were stress cracked around their edges, and the sill were stress cracked at the center line of the car - both sides in the same spot.

Obvious signs of trailer-abuse, and I didn't even look for it (though in my defence the car had a bodykit covering all this shit).