Looking for a "Towing 101" explanation

[kirkrik]

Hello All!

My wife and I put down money today for a vintage '61 Flying Cloud. We believe we have a year or so before it's road ready, so we're trying to get all our ducks in a row before then.

It seems to me that somewhere on the Airforums, someone posted a good explanation to help select a towing vehicle - with the whole math problem included.

I'm not yet ready to get into preferred brands and models - I just want to get the math figured out.

If anyone has a quick link to the subject, on the airforums or off, I'd sure appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

[Airrogant]

Hey! Welcome to the Forums!

This is the best tool that I have been able to find to work through the math aspects of towing:

Pop-the-top - Dedicated to Popup Camping and Hunting

In the left-hand pane, in the middle of the page, you'll see a hyperlink to "Towing Capacities" When you select it you will be prompted to open an Excel worksheet. If you don't have a spreadsheet program I highly recommend Apache's OpenOffice - it is free!

https://www.openoffice.org/download/

You'll find that manufacturers don't typically report all of the information that you'll need to fill in the sheet. The most difficult data to find usually is the base weight of the tow vehicle. I found that I typically had to find an electronic copy of the manual online. Inside the manual, the empty, dry-weight of the base model should be available. Unfortunately you will most likely have to estimate the weight of any options added above and beyond the most basic configuration.

[kirkrik]

Very nice. Thank you very much.