Okay so tomorrow morning I head upstate for school, I've got a 200 mile highway drive and I'm towing my MINI on a U-haul tow dolly



My question:

Where's the best place to attach safety chains??

Any help I can get by tomorrow morning would be AMAZING!

Thanks!

 

Your owners manual says towing like that is a no no.

 

Where? Mine says nothing like this.

"Tow vehicles with automatic transmission
only with a tow truck or with the front
wheels lifted; otherwise, the transmission can be
damaged."

 

I fail to see how that would be a no-no. Its a front wheel drive car, and the front wheels there remain stationary.

Unless someone else can clue me in as to how that would be bad?

 

Yup, I'm confused too. I honestly haven't looked underneath the car yet to see where I can attach the safety chains, but I was just hoping for some insight so I know what I'm looking for in the morning.

 

bump for the morning crowd

 

If nothing else, use the tow hook in the front bumper and attach a chain to that. The tow hook is in the boot with the tools.

 

That's what I would do. You're not going to damage the transmission with the front wheels on a tow dollie.

 

You shouldn't have any issues towing in this fashion. I'd carefully attach safety chains to the front suspension components or other nearby frame components. I don't thing using the tow hook will provide enough in the way of attachment points. Just don't crank down on the chains so much that you bend something. Should be easy peasy! Good luck at school.

 

Yup, that's what I did, I looked underneath and found pieces of a frame to loosely attach the chains to. I think the tow hook would give too much vertical force if the chains became necessary. And I'm off, hopefully there's not too many people trying to escape Long Island. Thanks!


And thanks for the pointers everyone, off I go

 

Drive the MINI, tow the uhaul?

 

Yikes be careful with that crummy uHaul dolly. I moved once with a uHaul truck and the same dolly... towing coincidentally a dark green metallic Ford Focus ZX3. I wish I had picked the slightly more expensive trailer that put all 4 wheels off the ground.

FYI you cannot back-up with that dolly attached... I very nearly got stuck in a parking lot 2 blocks from my new apartment.

 

Nice Xterra!!!

 

you never said where you were going!

 

Hope you made it fine. I always use their 4 wheel dolly because its much more secure and comfortable to tow around. I'm sure you didn't have any problems but usually anything that takes longer than an hour I'd make sure to get the 4 wheel. Must be nice to have your car at school

 

Hahah, someone else mentioned this to me too, that would DEFINITELY get some looks

Ouch, yea, everything went pretty smooth towing but I probably wouldn't use it again.. explained later

Thanks!

I'm at RPI, when I bought my MINI I only saw maybe one or two more on campus, this year there's like 8 or 9, wonder if anyone is on here.

I will definitely use it next time, I made it mostly fine. When I pulled away from my house the alarm started going off, it thought it was being stolen hah. But I just left it unarmed for the majority of the trip. My only issue came with when I took the car off the trailer and drove it to its parking spot. I got a warning that said ABS Malfunction and now I have a check engine that's pulling P1776 and P1777, which I think from looking around are related to the ABS speed sensor So I'll have to bring that by the dealership to get it checked out.

 

If you have a reset tool, just reset the lights, I get those all the time when on the dyno with the automatic tranny in the MINI. They should reset and stay off just fine.

No issues, just confused.

Don

 

Actually, I just went to get some food for the apt and the lights turned off on their own, didn't even need the scangauge to clear it