I’ve been watching repo shorts on Youtube where the driver goes in fast while lowering his tow gear. Its a T where the back arms open up once it’s in position to lift one axel.
Just look at this to see.
So my question is, how would this not break a AWD or 4WD vehicle?
Or would it and this is only done on cars with one drive axel?
I believe the answer is, sometimes they do break the cars and that’s just considered an acceptable cost of retrieving the vehicle. Tow operators can put dollies under the other wheels once they’re in a safe place to do so, but I’ve seen tow truck drivers take off dragging a car with locked wheels. This is almost certainly going to destroy the tires and possibly more but oh well.
I saw a post once from a Tesla owner who discovered puncture marks in the bottom of their battery pack. What he could think of was that someone tried to tow their car, starting with lifting it with a forklift (thus puncturing the bottom pan) then realized they had made a mistake and left the car there. Presumably this was to put it on a flatbed truck. All the more reason to have sentry mode running. As far as he could tell, it happened so far back that any sentry event had been overwritten.
While this did tens of thousands of damage (new battery pack required) I presume lifting any car with a forklift is a dangerous and damaging event.
I did see an incident once where the driver had illegally parked too close to the curb, the tow truck operator could not get the dolly wheels on. It took him a while, but fortunately this was a large pickup truck with a steel frame, not some unibody vehicle. He lifted the front as high as he could, the stuck a log a bit over a foot and a half high under the frame in the middle. As he lowered the front, the rear lifted higer than the curb, and he could get the dolly wheels on with one resting on the sidewalk. Lift again to remove the log, and away he went.
The most interesting I saw was in downtown London (UK), about 1991. It was pretty cramped streets, they had a flatbed with crane arm. The had put straps under the vehicle near the wheel wells, and lifted it straight up and onto the bed.
My AWD RAV4 there’s no power actually going to the rear wheels / they’re not connected to the rest of the car unless the engine is running and you push the switch on the dashboard or the traction control / ABS module command it if it detects the wheels are spinning when the car is moving, in which case a solenoid in the viscous coupler engages.
The truck in the video is a rear wheel drive, looks like a Chevy Blazer. so they picked it up from the rear. AWD vehicles are not actually AWD all of the time. They are towable but they may be towed from the front or the back depending on the need. If a car is dragging and skidding one set of wheels they may put it on a flatbed type towing vehicle.
The repo guys are trying to recover an asset belonging to the bank or dealership. The vehicle will probably be sold at auction anyway. It ias not being recoverd to but back on the car lot for resale.
There wa a recent thread about why someone would put a GPS tracker on a car. These trackers are cheap and simple. If you have a new car that you owe money on, chances are that you have a GPS tracker on your car somewhere, that is how repo men find them.
That T shaped arm is often called a “Dynamic” after the company that invented them.
I once talked to a couple who were running a repo wrecker when I bagged their groceries for them. They said they had drug flat spots in a few tires due to parking brakes and such, but they generally didn’t go far before putting dollies on those wheels. So, they did minimal damage. I imagine if they did much more than that, they wouldn’t be re-hired often.
Often in small small auctions where the dealer can pick it up for a song, thus making sure you owe even more.
Never buy a car from a “buy here pay here, we will finance anyone place”. Even if you pay in full.
I assume under most state (and provincial) laws, a repossessed item must be sold at fair value (usually an auction) so as to satisfy the debt, much as mortgaged properties are. thus, any profit after the amount owed goes to the owner, and the bank/dealer can chase the owner -depending on state law - if the sale is for less than the debt. AFAIK most chattel purchases are not “you missed a payment, it’s all ours now…”
I think it was a warning with one of my cars (Audi?) to not tow it too far, simply because there would be no circulation of the transmission fluid (or gear oil?) and any great distance risked excessive wear of the 4WD gearing. AFAIK this included towing flat (i.e; tow cable) as well as at an angle, so it wasn’t just the angle of the oil pan, it was the engine power.
It’s still the same in tight spaces. There are spreaders so that the lifting straps don’t cause damage.
When space is available, the far more common method is to winch the car onto a tilting flatbed. If keys are not available they slide the locked wheels for the short distance.
When heavy trucks are towed, the half shaft on one side is removed so that the transmission is not driven, causing extensive damage to the gearbox.
Yes, at an auction, which is so poorly advertised only a few dealers are there, who often have an agreement about bidding. However, those places are known scams-