Towing a Bus

[TinnedFish]

Can a bus be flat towed? What kind of rig is needed?

There are quite a few busses that have become permenant homes around here, but most of them have had the engine/tank removed. If a person wanted to move one, and the axles still spin - what's the best way? (And yeah, the roads are pretty darn empty at 3 in the morning! <grin>)

Tractor? Big truck and a tow bar? Rocket engine? Wheel Dolly?

I figure there have to be some good stories out there....

TinnedFish

[dadeo]

in 1999 I bought my bus outside Portland, and stayed in Bend, OR for about a month. Then I started for California, and in Klamath falls the clutch disintigrated. The tow truck driver towed it with a regular single axle tow truck they might use to tow a car! He warned me he was gonna drive slow as the front of his truck will be riding a little light! anyway, it worked, and he didnt even disconnect the driveline (probubly because the clutch was gone). I think you should disconnect it if you tow yours.

[Mark R. Obtinario]

Towing something big can be done if it is done carefully. I stress the carefully part because if it should get away from you...

In any case, the biggest challenge to towing a dead bus is keeping enough air in the brake system to release the spring brakes and to keep them released.

I was going to need to tow a dead bus and came up with a cheap tow bar. I was going to use a length of chain, a ratchet chain binder, and an appropriate length of heavy pipe or steel. Loop the chain from the rear tow hooks of one bus to the front tow hooks of the bus to be towed. Ratchet the chain tight against the steel/pipe and lo and behold you have a tow bar. It wasn't going to be very elegant and probably wouldn't ever pass any real scrutiny by any officer of the law but I figured it would tow the few miles I had to go.

I was then going to plumb an air line from the air drain on the front bus to the air drain on the rear bus and then wait for the air to build up.

While waiting for the air to build up I was going to pull the driveline of the towed bus. You really do not want to tow a bus with the driveline intact more than just a few miles (like ten miles or less) if you have a stickeshift. You reallt don't want to tow an automatic more than just a few feet with the driveline intact.

If the bus has been sitting any real length of time beware of the tires. You don't want to go very far or very fast with old tires.

Good luck.

Mark O.