Does anyone know how much you can tow with a 64 bug. Was wondering if a 12 foot aluminium tinnie, with a 25 horse outboard would be too heavy. I might have to lift the car up a bit as its been lowered, but I will see how it goes up to the murray river.
Click the Beetle
make sure your towbar is the type that attaches around the chassis"horns"
Thanks Mark, if they are a bit stronger I might try put a couple of motorbikes. inside the boat as well, but thats if they will fit.
Click the Beetle
In most states the law is that the towing vehicle must be heavier than the towed trailer and its load.
I have towed the WA VW Club trailer behind a buggy and it was really scary as the loaded trailer was probably heavier than the buggy.
Make sure that the tow bar is very strongly attached to the torsion bar horns and that you have a proper one piece 50mm tow ball.
Good luck and happy fishing on the Murray.
the tow bar looks something like this, although this one has seen better days...
the bit with the bolt through it near the tow ball mount attaches to a bar that should bo between the rear bumper mounts.
[ Edited on 17-1-2006 by pete wood ]
Bugs of earlier vintage (1960) have been known to have pulled a small 4 berth carravan from Sydney to Brisbane and quite some distance back with the same tow bar as above. That was around 1968 and the weak point was where the bumper mounts are on the rear quarters. The pipes which extend to the gearbox mounting forks add some strength but it must be remembered that the total towball load is taken on 4 M8 bolts, which we hope is at least grade 8 material. The engine in above mentioned was a 1500 (high comp 1500S pistons) twin carb.
Don't forget that Type 3 vehicles had exactly the same method of mounting the towbar with those M8 bolts, same power engine and pulled those small vans and boats without any problems. Just make sure the back end IS rust free with strong mounts and stick to the load limits as given in above post.
[ Edited on 18/1/2006 by 1500S ]
That is a good type of tow bar but there is a stronger one where the clamps at the front, bolt to the torsion bar tube. The long pipes take all of the towing load and the bar across the rear bumper is there to hold the tow ball up only as the rear bumper mounts are not very strong.
The four bolts which hold the Beetle bumper bar on and hence the vertical load on the towball, take some of the pulling load as well. Sometimes we do put more towball weight on than we should! The pulling load is distributed between the four bolts AND the pipes running forward to either the forks or tortion tubes and this depends on the strength of the cross bar on the bumper bar. If the pipes going to the forks are clamped tightly and are short enough to pull against the gearbox cradle, there is no difference. If there is a problem in this area, the towed load is too much.
Later Type 3 bars didn't have the pipes going forward and were only held by the four bumper mount bolts and served quite well. The only difference to the Beetle bar was that the Type 3 used a pipe behind bumper of around 1 1/2" NB and the Beetle used flat bar.
Still make very sure the bumper mounts are not in any way rusted.
