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I towed a car for someone once and the car had hooks welded to the frame that you could just quickly hook on to and go (instead of rapping around the axle or k-frame). I have been wanting to weld hooks of some kind to do the same to mine but someone has told me that it can bend the frame downwards from the bounce of the car going down the road. What do you think?



Bending the frame and/or doing sheet metal damage is a possibility, depending on where the attach points are.

I have a very good friend that bought a 90 Mustang LX coupe on the internet and had it shipped. It had 2 soft-ball sized dents in the quarters, one on each side, when it arrived and the shipping company tried to fake the paperwork to make them look like pre-existing damage. Hice huh? Good thing he had copies of the original shipping paperwork and could prove they altered the delivery copy.

My friend figured it was loading/unloading damage, but when I started looking at the car, I noticed they were at the exact same point each side, at the corner of where the roof pillar meets the quarter panel. I got to looking and concluded they had tied the car down using a hole at the rear bumper on the frame, and tied it down too tightly. The stress caused a KINK in the quarter at the stress point where the roof met the quarter.

Anyway, he took it to a body shop for a repair estimate for the claim against the shipper's insurance, and the body ship confirmed it was damage from impropper tie down.

On a leaf-spring car, the stress points might be different, but on that Mustang (factory 4-link?) tied at the rear of the frame, it caused problems. Just be careful and think about the way the stresses will be applied if you're going to tie down with the frame rails.


Chicks in the mirror
are fatter than they appear