Towing backwards... any hints? Options

[TonyAKAVW]

I'm planning on towing a roller home tonight on a dolly that has no tranny or engine. Because of this, the axles will flop around and cause problems. My plan is to tow it backwards on the dolly. I'm not sure if the steering wheel lock works, but if it does not, does anyone have any suggestions on how to achieve a steering wheel lock? I was thinking of fixing the steering wheel itself by means of a lever, but I'm wondering if there's an easier way that I could do at the rack, etc. Or would it be easier to remove the axles and tow it
forwards? I've never done it so I don't know whats involved with that.

Thanks

Tony

[TonyAKAVW]

Well, last night was one of those nights where I questioned my sanity and hoped to never see another 914 in my life.

Let me recount the story:

I drove down with my wife to Carlsbad where my generous aunt let me borrow her F-150. She even went to Uhaul yesterday to pick up a tow dolly for me! So on the way down from Redondo Beach, there is a terrible multi-car accident with injuries on 405 which reduced it down to 1 lane. So this made us 30 minutes later than our already late departure time. We make it to Carlsbad at 8:30 and switch vehicles. I'm now driving the F-150 with dolly in tow... slowly. 9:15, we arrive in Escondido (this should answer Acox's question (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) and the owner has left the car in the back for me. The alley is big enough to fit a truck into, but not big enough to move the car and dolly around much. And those dollys are incredibly heavy. So here I am pushing a very heavy dolly around in near darkness (there's a single flood light from the garage essentially aimed at me) and my wife is sitting in the truck, trying to stay warm. The blinkers are on, because its a dark alley.. This becomes important later on...

So armed with a stock 914 jack (the kind that fits in the jack posts) I try to lift the car off its blocks and intall wheels. This took nearly 2 hours as the car was wobbling and sliding all over the place. I managed to figure out some way to get it high enough to install the wheels one at a time and then had the task of pushing it up a slight incline towards the alley and the dolly. My wife helped me with this, but by the time we got about 1/2 way up the dolly, we just couldn't push any more.

At this point I go to the truck to move it around to hook up the dolly and of course with the blinkers on for now what is nearly 3 hours (its almost midnight by this point) the battery has died and won't start the truck. At nearly the same instant, the familiar red and blue lights appear from behind us. At this point I'm thinking ohh shit. Here I am with a borrowed truck, a rented trailer, in the middle of the night taking a rolling chassis from someone's backyard whom I've never met in person. So he asks me what I'm doing, I explain and he figures he needs to wake whoever is in the house and ask him to verify whats going on. Feeling embarassed and dejected, we start going towards the front of the house and he gets another idea. He asks me who the truck is registered to and check the registration and it checks out fine. Then he tells us we don't look like crooks and that if we were trying to steal a car it would probably not be 'that one.' So he lets us go. He kindly asks us if we need a phone to call AAA.

So, call goes in to AAA and in a few minutes a truck is there to jumpstart our truck. At this point, I wonder ho it could get any worse. And of course mother nature lends a hand and starts to rain. The rain was brief, but it was just the icing on the cake that we needed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/mad.gif)

So now its almost 1 am and I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Realizing that I have to go to work tomorrow, we decide that we are done. We can't get the car up the ramp, so there's nothing we can do. (not to mention that the car would later have to be turned around and reattached to the dolly, because it needs to be towed the other way and the alley was too small).

We got home 2 hours later and I got to bed at about 4 am. In all a really aggrivating evening. My wheels are still down there holding the car up, and I'm contemplating when to go pick it up. If I pick it up today/this evening I can make use of the dolly. Otherwise its another $81 wasted and then I'll have to go back with a $90 rental flat bed trailer which I would MUCH rather do.

The roller is pretty nice. It's got some rust but poking around I didn't manage to find anything too bad.

-Tony