Archive for March, 2010

Today’s tip is from the forum at FTRV.com

LindaH says:

If you have a toad that is towable 4-down, either “as is,” or with an after-market add-on (such as a lube pump or a transmission disconnect), towing 4-down is much preferrable over towing with a dolly.

One of the disadvantages of towing with a dolly is what to do with the dolly when you’re at an RV park.  It may not be a problem if you stay someplace for a long time, but if you move every few days, it could quickly become a PITA to take the car on and off the dolly and then to find a place to store the dolly if the site isn’t big enough for your RV, your toad, and the dolly.

Another thing to consider is what happens if you get yourself into a position where you have to unhook the toad in order to back up a long way (and sooner or later, you’ll get into this position).  With a toad 4-down, it’s a simple matter of unhooking the toad, having one person drive the RV and one person drive the toad.  However, with a tow dolly, you have to drop the dolly along side the road, leave it there and come back for it later.  That could REALLY be a PITA!

JungleJom says:

It is true that many people have problems storing their tow dollies in SOME RV parks. Using a tow dolly is usually a much more inexpensive way of towing than outfitting a towed vehicle for four down towing. The problem mentioned by the other post is really not that big of a problem, even if you do get in a situation where you need to unhook and drive the towed vehicle, just have a trailer hitch on your towed vehicle and hook the tow dolly to it if that happens. Tow dollies are very easy to move around by hand and can be turned around easily.

The advantages of the tow dolly is that you do not need to outfit your towed vehicle with any special equipment to tow it, you can trade in your towed vehicle without having all that expense a second time, and the front end of your towed vehicle as well as the windshield are higher off the road and don’t catch quite as much road debris coming off the MH tires.

Pretty much a matter of how much money you want to spend to outfit your towed vehicle and how long you plan to keep it. I used tow dollies for many years and never had a problem. I don’t see any more work to hooking up a tow dolly than a vehicle being towed 4 down, and most being towed 4 down also need a braking system on them, and a good quality tow dolly comes with brakes that just need to be plugged in. As I watch some trying to hook up their braking systems, I sometimes have to wonder WHY would they go to all that trouble every time they hook up.

What do you think? add your comments.

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Coachmen Yahoo group member Carol offers these storage tips:

I’m not a neat freak at home but having a few things out of place in the smaller confines of an RV bothers me. I found a short trash can with a lid at the dollar store. Plastic grocery bags fit perfect and the thing sits under my
kitchen sink. It fit under the sink in our last RV as well. It’s short enough that if I needed that space under the sink it could sit out under the fridge and the door would clear the top of it.

I keep a laundry basket in the shower for dirty clothes. It’s no trouble to set it out to use the shower. We have used a laundry bag hung on a hook that fits over the shower door but I’d rather have it out of sight in the shower.

You could probably fit a laundry basket in the bottom of a bedroom closet.

I’ve solved the problem with books! I got an eReader. Mine is a Kindle and I’ve loaded up with books and can even upload books on the road.

For papers and things like that just get a manila envelope and stand it up in one of your overhead cabinets.

I like using baskets and plastic containers in cabinets for small things that might normally go in a drawer. I also found a nice basket (oblong box) to set beside the door, behind a chair to keep flash light, dog leashes and things like
that handy and out of sight. Have fun, as time goes on everything will find a place.

And from the same Yahoo group, Marj Vincent offer more tips:

We have two mirror sliding doors in our clothes closet. My closet goes floor to ceiling. The closet is about 4 1/2 feet long. There is a lot of wasted space in the closet once the clothes are hung up.  One thing we did to have more storage in my clothes closet was to build a low shelf. The shelf is the same dimensions as the floor and is about 12″ off the floor. I put all our shoes under the shelf and because my clothes only hang down about half way to the floor, I can put two stackable plastic white drawers on each side of the closet on the shelf.  I needed a place to put my laundry basket, so I took out one plastic drawer and placed the laundry basket on top of the other one. It fits in there perfectly under the hanging shirts.

I have to admit the shoes are a little difficult to reach without getting down on the floor, but most of the time the shoes I wear every day I don’t put in the closet. So the few times I want different shoes is no big deal considering the extra amount of space I have now for storage. Those white plastic drawers are very big and hold a lot of stuff.

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