Maybe a stupid question for a manly man, but it just occurred to me:
I drive a Subaru Outback, which has full time four wheel drive. It has a manual transmission, and when I park it, I usually leave it in gear, with the parking brake on.
What happens if I get towed? How can the wheels turn freely?
Towing with two wheels on the ground= damage. It needs to be on a flatbed, or at least with a dolly under the other two wheels. The couple of times I’ve had to get a Subaru towed, the driver already knew that.
Would that be true even if I left it in neutral, without the parking brake on?
That’s what the owner’s manual says. Personally, I wouldn’t risk it. I presume the center differential gets abused, even if it’s in neutral.
Thanks. So if I did get towed and they wrecked it, would I have any legal recourse, since professional towers should know this?
Don’t need answer fast, but I’m curious.
Towers are starting to use vertical lift trucks. Even the flatbeds need to have the car towed up on the bed with a winch.
It’s my understanding that you don’t want to be towed with your drive wheels rolling. On a 4WD or AWD, that means a dolly under the low end.
I do know that a 2WD can be towed with the non-drive wheels rolling. You’d want to make sure it was in neutral and the park brake off though.
Perhaps one of the pro car guys will be here shortly.
Absolutely, according to one of those day time judge shows. I’m sure someone will be along with a better citation soon.
Seriously, they consult a book or something. They don’t want to be on the hook if they screw up the tranny on an all-wheel drive supercar. The Bieber would be pissed. 
They should definitely know when it comes to Subarus…you can almost count 100% on them being AWD, the new BRZ aside.
Just FYI, with a Subaru you typically CAN tow it on all four wheels in an emergency if it’s a manual transmission or for some distance (50 miles or so) with an automatic. You just don’t want to tow it for a very long distance with two wheels off the ground because that will fry the center differential pretty quickly.
If you’re getting involuntarily towed, these days they’ll normally know to put it on a flatbed, but even a few miles on two wheels probably won’t cause any lasting damage. Especially since if you leave it in gear, they won’t be able to tow it on two wheels.
Some of the above advice goes against what I’ve always been told, but I’m not a mechanic, and am happy to be proven wrong.
What I’d been told was:
As I heard it once upon a time - the angle it’s towed on could mean the rear differential isn’t distributing oil properly. In that case, a few dozen miles of highway towing will seriously overheat and damage the differential. Of course, in neutral. So the big question is - how far is safe? As a tow truck operator, how much do you want to gamble thousands of dollars on the answer? Up the ramp onto the flatbed should be fine… but if it’s an automatic in park, what does that do to the entire transmission system just to roll it a few feet?
It won’t roll at all in Park. You’ll break the pawl that engages (in the diff?) a bit like the one that the “parking brake” on a baby’s pram uses on the wheels. They select neutral.
The diff angle thing is interesting though. Not heard that one, but does make some sense.
I recall reading that towing a modern car in neutral the amateur way (rope from car to car) will also do damage because the transmission needs the engine running to properly lubricate? Beyond a few miles, especially at highway speeds, you’re basically doing metal on metal with insufficient lubrication which will damage the gears.
Towing should not affect a typical rear differential. It is 75% filled with gear lube, changing the angle will not un-submerge the ring & pinion gears.
Towing a manual transmission in neutral won’t harm it, but towing an automatic transmission in neutral can cause damage. Automatic transmissions rely on hydraulic fluid pressure for lubrication & cooling. If the engine is not running, they do not develop pressure.
The only AWD vehicle with an automatic tranny that I know of, that was specifically designed to be towed with all four on the ground, was the Saturn. I towed a Vue from Alaska and was on the road for five months without a problem. The only stipulation was that when you stopped, the engine should be run.
You mean trucks with crane/booms to lift the vehicle directly up off the street and onto the flatbed? Haven’t seen anything like that at all around these part (NY Tri-State area), towing seems to be done with either rollback flatbeds (the norm) or wheel-lift trucks (the fork under the powered axle, a dolly for the other axle). Googling around to find images of lift tow trucks (which seem rare), it looks like vertical lift trucks come with their own issues.
What you’ve been told there was mostly the conventional wisdom up until the mid-2000’s or so. Around then, the car makers started dropping the restrictions on towing automatics with the drive wheels on the ground. That includes some where the towing recommendation changed from one model year to another without any apparent mechanical changes, so I suspect that they mostly came to the same conclusion as your tow truck driver and decided it really wasn’t that bad for the car after all. Or perhaps using GM-style logic they decided the warranty claims on prematurely failed transmissions would cost them less than the sales they weren’t getting from RVers wanting tow-behind cars.
Towing an AWD vehicle with all four wheels on the ground usually isn’t an issue (or any more of an issue that any car with an automatic), it’s towing it with one axle in the air and the other one on the ground that causes problems with full time AWD systems like Subaru’s. FWIW, a lot of so-called AWD systems are really part-time systems that only couple the axles when the computer says to, so those are generally okay to tow with two wheels on the ground as well.
Only in Russia:
