Everyone says that the “baby teeth” are just tie down points for the '5 and you can’t use them to tow the car… Why?
If its because the area there bolted to isn’t strong enough, Then how come you can get towing hitches to bolt into the same holes?
This has been puzzling me for a while.
When I shipped my '5 out to Australia I had a chat with the shippers about using the teeth as tie downs. They didn’t want to, and insisted on using ratchet straps around the wheels. The car didn’t move a mil in it’s container. The book says dont use them for two reasons, I think,
1 It may be possible to mis align the front of the car if pulled on two hooks [compression thing].
2 Because the front is very low compared to the height of most towing vehicel some damage may occur to the body work around the rad opening.
If you look at the proper racing tow hooks they stick out much further than the baby teeth.
HTH----
So … if not the tie-down rings, what is the accepted front-end towing point for an MX-5? (I guess it might say in the owners’ handbook, but it’s at home and I’m not so I can’t pop out and look! [;)])
As far as I can tell, and I have looked in loads of places, there is no recommendation Mazda WRT towing. In my previous posts I was simply stating the facts, lots of guys will tell you of very successful tows with the tie down hooks. I have heard of some damage to the fibreglass, buy never any to the chassis/suspension. These days, and certainly out here in Australia, most recovery is done by a recovery truck, these pick up from beneath the front wheels, so no problems. I do seem to remember that there is an issue with towing auto gearbox cars, something about transmision wind up. Can’t remember any more than that.
I’m no expert but I seem to remember reading that most auto-boxes have an internal pump to keep cogs and bearings lubricated, This is driven from the input shaft, But when an automatic car’s towed some of the gearbox internals will be spinning but not necessarily the part that the pumps driven from, This means that the bearings and cogs could run dry.
I seem to remember that there’s a 30 miles and 30 MPH limit that your meant to adhere to when dragging an auto because of this problem, If you need to go further or faster then your meant to remove the propshaft first.
Auto cars are supposed to be recovered with the driving wheels lifted off the ground.
Apparently it is not a good idea to back drive the auto box from the wheels, at least not at any speed or for any distance.
Quite right, never tow an auto without the driving wheels o
ff the ground.
The “Baby Teeth” Question was covered here. http://www.mx5oc.co.uk/forum/forums/p/2376/11222.aspx#11222
I decided I don’t need to know how to tow my '5…
Thats just defeatist talk. My '5 will never need towing because it will never break down. I will be using the power of Zen philosophy to ensure this :)
Thanks for that ever-so-useful post …