Dan
I'm hardly "one of the lucky few." When I broached this subject last
summer, the only people who advised against leaving it in were those
who'd never tried it. I received over a dozen replies to my question
and of those who'd towed 'em with the driveshaft connected only one had
had a bad experience. In his case his midget race car "popped into gear"
while towing. I asked him what he thought caused it and never got a
reply. I used to see guys tow their racers with tool boxes, racing
tires and etc in the car. I suspect something that he had in the car
fell against the shifter, forcing it into gear. OTOH, he may have left
it in gear to start with.
When I was in the Navy air arm, we used APUs that were essentially a
jeep like vehicle with a xfer case that drove an AC and a DC generator.
To use the generators you put the Xmission in neutral and engaged the
xfer case, engaged the clutch and revved up the engine with a hand
throttle. There were a couple of accidents around the fleet where the
xmission was said to have "jumped into gear." No one was ever able to
make that happen though, and believe me, the investigators tried!
Personally, I've tried to put my transmission in gear with the engine
revved up and the clutch engaged. It takes more force than I'll apply
to the shift lever to overcome the resistance of the balk rings in the
xmission. Try it sometime. It's the same thing as having the car
running down the road with the engine off. Then too, the shift fork are
full of spring-loaded interlock which hold the forks in the position
selected.
The odds are astronomically high against that sort of thing ever
happening. Transmissions commonly pop OUT of gear due to worn parts. In
jalopy racing on short dirt tracks, we ran road gears in the
differentials and raced with the trannies in 2nd gear. We used to loop
a screen door spring around the shift lever to keep it from coming out
of gear. If it happened while you were around then you were one of the
astronomically few who've seen it. In 45 years around motor vehicles,
I've never seen one jump into gear. Shucks, I have a 4-spd '88 Yugo
that I've flat-towed between 5 and 10 thousand miles. It doesn't even
have a driveshaft to remove.
I believe that this advice to remove the driveshaft while towing is
one of those "everybody knows" things that just isn't true. Otherwise
the factory manual would tell you to do it.
Happy towing,
CR
Dan Dwelley wrote:
>
> Charley,
>
> You may be one of the lucky few. Most of the time, you'll risk frying the
> transmission or....the car will pop into gear and you WILL KNOW IT. It may
> tear the rear end out.
>
> Just my .02. I've been a passenger in a tow truck and the car in tow popped
> from neutral into gear at 40 MPH. It was one helluva jerk on the tow truck
> and it tore up the differential gears.
>
> Dan Dwelley
> 77 Midget
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-mgs@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-mgs@autox.team.net]On
> Behalf Of ccrobins
> Sent: Saturday, December 12, 1998 11:44 AM
> To: Mike Lishego
> Cc: Bud Krueger; Skye Poier; MG Nuts
> Subject: Re: Towbar for MGB
>
> What gets me about this whole "disconnect the driveshaft" exercise is
> that it's entirely unnecessary, despite what some doomsayers profess.
>
> Charley Robinson
> '69 B -towed from TX to VT and back with the driveshaft connected.
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