Tow Bar Fitting

[c33]

Morning folks, I'm looking at fitting a tow bar to my '93 car, looking at the LexLs site http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/body/trailerhitch.html it show the tow hitch being bolted just to the aluminium subframe between the bumper skin and the main shell is that all it is? I only ask because when I fitted a towbar to my old BMW e30 it replaced the whole bumper substructure.

Regards

Iain

[John N]

Morning folks, I'm looking at fitting a tow bar to my '93 car, looking at the LexLs site http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/body/trailerhitch.html it show the tow hitch being bolted just to the aluminium subframe between the bumper skin and the main shell is that all it is? I only ask because when I fitted a towbar to my old BMW e30 it replaced the whole bumper substructure.

Regards

Iain

Ian

The 'hitch' fitting you are looking at is one for use in the USA, and they are not as strong as the British or European 'tow bars'.

Your car was made before the requirement for it to have a 'type approved' tow bar. Look back through the posts on this forum, there are many regarding sourcing tow bars for LS400s in the UK.

The advice from the Caravan Club is: -

Passenger cars first registered in the UK before 1 August 1998

These vehicles do not fall within the scope of Type Approval. There is no legal requirement

to choose a towbar of a particular standard, but Club advice is to select one which has been

designed and tested to either of the following standards:

British Standard BS 150 1103:2007 (supercedes the now withdrawn BS AU

113c standard)

European Directive 94/20/EC

The former will be found more commonly for such vehicles. The latter is similar, but uses a

significantly higher test load, making towbars which comply with it appreciably stronger.

Beware of manufacturers making statements such as ‘designed to BS 150 1103’. Only a

statement that the design has been tested to and has passed the standard has much credibility.

There are no specific restrictions to the fitting of accessories to towbars in this category,

although it would be prudent to ensure that any accessories used do not interfere with the

towbar’s ability to do its job.

John N

LS430

[c33]

Thanks, just done a search and "No results found for 'tow'." Think the search function is throwing a wobbler cos it cant even find this thread!

I'll try again later

ETA: It appears tow is too short a search string...currently trawling through towbar threads :)

Regards

Iain