Does anyone have any first hand accounts of transmissions being damaged by dolly towing with rear wheels on the ground? My 98 owners manual says stay under 19mph and less than 19 miles tow distance. How serious of a warning is this? And if damage is done, what kind of damage is it? Damage that can be repaired without dropping the transmission?
Dolly Towing, what damage can result
- Thread starter Salonika
- Start date
Usually it depend if the vehicle has a 'true' neutral and if there is a pump in the xfer case.
The alway-safe way is to disconnect the rear driveshaft. You can just remove the rear portion of the rear driveshaft and securely wire the back of the shaft out of the way. I've towed a lot of vehicles this way. Just takes a few minutes to do. On some 4x4 vehicles, like Jeeps, there is an oil pump inside the rear portion of the xfer case which surrounds the rear output shaft, and a pickup tube that protrudes to the bottom of the case, so, hence, when you put it in N, and move the vehicle the rear driveshaft spins the pump gear and can still lubricate parts, but I'm not sure about Mitsus.... That's why most modern xfer cases specify a thinner transmission fluid, and not a good idea to use a gear lube. Does anybody know how the mistubishi xfer cases are set up internally?
The alway-safe way is to disconnect the rear driveshaft. You can just remove the rear portion of the rear driveshaft and securely wire the back of the shaft out of the way. I've towed a lot of vehicles this way. Just takes a few minutes to do. On some 4x4 vehicles, like Jeeps, there is an oil pump inside the rear portion of the xfer case which surrounds the rear output shaft, and a pickup tube that protrudes to the bottom of the case, so, hence, when you put it in N, and move the vehicle the rear driveshaft spins the pump gear and can still lubricate parts, but I'm not sure about Mitsus.... That's why most modern xfer cases specify a thinner transmission fluid, and not a good idea to use a gear lube. Does anybody know how the mistubishi xfer cases are set up internally?
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jeep-N-montero
Expedition Leader
Takes all of 15-20 minutes to simply remove the rear drive shaft and eliminates any transmission issues, it really is that easy.
PhulesAU
Explorer
Winner!!!
The transfer cases aren't what have pumps, the automatic transmissions are. The NL Montero is technically capable of flat towing, but the cars with automatic transmissions don't have the neutral detent on the transfer case for some reason.