Fitting a tow bar, is it the kind of thing you normally do yourself, or as my garage says, do you need "specialist" equipment and knowledge?
The parts for tow bars are easy to order and come with instructions, but how much of a 'self-assembly' job is this really going to be?
cheers!
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Maybe you should ask yourself how much extra does it costs to have it fitted? I suspect it's not a drastic amount, and compared to getting on your back and drilling holes, and sorting electrics, it may be good value.
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I believe your new tow bar should have type approval and if your car has bulb-failure monitoring or multiplex wiring you should entrust the job to a specialist.
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Depends very much on the car. A lot of modern cars need no drilling and are easy. In my experience, Witter will willingly send you a copy of the instructions so you can judge whether you want to DIY. If you tell us the car, someone may be able to give you specific advice. "Specialist equipment and knowledge" is unlikely to be needed but, obviously, you do need to be competent to do a good job. www.towsure.co.uk have a technical help phoneline and I'm sure they would be able to give you good advice.
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An older Primera tool me about an hour as it bolted straight into pre-threaded holes, 98 Vectra and type approved towbar guts of 2 days on and off (avoiding showers of rain, I had to take out the majority of the rear trim. It sepends alot on your confidence in your ability and owning an 18 mil drill bit! What car is it going on?
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going on a 1995 VW Passat Estate, i have seen cars with tow bars fitted, but did not getr a chance to take a good look. The car is the more modern styled version do perhaps a tow bar is a simple bolt-on job!
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martin wrote:
>
> going on a 1995 VW Passat Estate, i have seen cars with tow
> bars fitted, but did not getr a chance to take a good look.
> The car is the more modern styled version do perhaps a tow
> bar is a simple bolt-on job!
Humm, never worked on one, but the MkII Golfs bolted straight onto the bumper mounting points, hopefully that is a sign that VAG do design in mounting points. A good scrappers yard is execelent for finding out information like this, also you never know what you will find while wandering about the yard. I really hope EU directives don't mean the end of scrappers yards, it's allready hard enough to find one that will let you have a look round yourself as opposed to counter service.
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For example, old model Saab 900 is no problem because of the pre-threaded holes and a moulded bracket welded into the floor pan to receive one of the attachment plates--about an hour's work. All that was necessary was to cut a piece about 1cm by 5cm out of the rubber bumper on for clearance. The advantage of doing it yourself with a quality pattern towbar is that it is much cheaper than an OEM towbar but if you are unhappy about upsetting the electrics, get someone to do it.
David
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I fitted a Towsure towbar to a Rover 213 about 5 years ago. Job took about a day and most of that was wiring the auxilary supplies and relays.
All in all the job wasn't too bad but the first time you drill through the boot of your car is rather scary. Instructions were incomplete at best so it was nec. to work it out as I went along.
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Andrew Smith wrote:
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> I fitted a Towsure towbar to a Rover 213 about 5 years ago.
..............
> Instructions were incomplete at best so it was nec. to work
> it out as I went along.
The towbar I put on the Vectra was a towsure, Instructions were average, but made alot more sense having completed the job. No instructions on what trim to remove or where trim and bumper clips / screws were located. Towbar itself was a good fit.
Can't remember who made the one for the Primera, but it was so easy you hardly needed instuctions, you held it up against the car and put bolts through the holes.
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I fitted a Towsure bar(from Discount towing) to my 2000 escort estate-had to drill one hole-took about an hour-another hour for electrics-if your car has bulb failure lights it will take a little longer-you need a couple of relays.If you get hold of a catalogue from Towsure or Discount towing(they appear to be identical except for the front cover and prices) it gives all the details of what you need to order and my bar is type-approved.Both the firms have websites.
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Martin
Can be easy, can be awful - depends on the car. Fitting the bracket is usually the easy bit, but not always. Sometimes bits of the rear bumper/skirt need to be removed, then replaced.
I think the hardest part is probably the electrics. It's not rocket science, but it is fiddly. I've had a few bars professionally installed and the ususal charge has been about £150 to £200 (ordinary rep mobile cars, nothing fancy).
If you're going to wire it yourself, or even if it's done by a specialist fitter, one thing to watch out for is that front and rear "side lights" are often wired and fused diagonally. If you common the trailer wiring harness to one side of the vehicle (the lazy way out) you will overload the fuse on that section.
HTH
Ian
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Isn't it about time that manufacturers recognised that a substantial proportion of cars will be fitted with tow bars at some time in their life?
For a few pounds on the price you could have everything except the towball in place, including sockets to plug the electrics into.
I am sure that there is a safety issue here with poorly fitted towbars and electrics, to say nothing of the effects on the carefully designed crumple zones in the case of a shunt. One can envisage rear seat passengers having part of the towbar pushed through them.
It would be far better for all that to be taken on-board at the manufacturing stage.
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Don't know about other vehicles but I'm sure it has been taken on board by many manufacturers as well as SAAB. My old 900 had a special bracket welded into the underside of the floor pan inside which you fit a bracing piece of steel when the tow bar is fitted. It contained tapped holes for fitting the towbar and there were tapped holes into the boot for the rest of the fitting. I recall seeing similar pre-prepared holes on an old 1975 95 I fitted with a second hand factory towbar back in the 80s. I am sure that, for the 900 at least, thought was given to the effect of the towbar on the structure in the event of an accident. I am not so sure that bottom of the range small or medium cars, especially from the Far East, are equally equipped or designed for towbar use. In fact, some manufacturers may still not offer an OEM towbar which probably tells us something. Some Hondas from the 90s fall into this category.
David
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For the towbar your car always promised itself, buy a Brink bar - they are invariably (?) the ones supplied as OE by the dealers, just with a different part number but about half the price. Easy fitting to most German stuff - I would assume Passat wil require no drilling.
Also - buy the car manufacturer's accessory wiring loom from the dealer - this is where you should spend the money! This will plug directly into the existing harness, with maybe an extra earth to make to a bolt. Sure beats 'Scotchloks' and unless you can stand the thought of a hideous racket every time you indicate, don't even think about using the 'relay in the boot bleeper' type of wiring/warning. Look carefully at your dash and use either a switch blank, carefuly drilled to accept a small steady LED as a telltale or better still use an existing spare warning light already in the dash - even if it's not specificaly for the towbar.
I used the Xantia's alarm disabling switch's LED, which now flashes with my trailer indicators.
In terms of skill, its about on a par with changing brake pads to fit the bar and like connecting hi-fi separates to do the wiring using the proper kit. Or trying to re-wire your own brain if using cheap cr+p components.
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