DIY tow strap solution

[aldente295]

Over the past 6 or 8 months I’ve been preparing my car for the track. I looked around at various towhook/towstrap solutions that others have used, but none jumped out at me as being ideal. Most of the hooks available attach to the bottom of the car, which would concern me if I ended up in deep gravel – potentially difficult for the towtruck driver to find. Also, because my car’s a daily driver, I wanted something that was discreet. So, discreet, functional, and cheap.

This is the solution I ended up going with – I saw a similar setup on this forum, but I haven’t seen a step-by-step guide anywhere, so hopefully this will be useful to someone down the track.

This is what I did for the front:



And the step by step instructions on how I got there...

So, first I removed the rubber trim on the metal bumper itself – this is held in place by two screws (at the turn signal indicators) and a number of clips running behind the rubber. I took out the screws, and then pried the rubber off. From the looks of the plastic behind, the PO had this trim off at an earlier time, and it required replacement clips to put back on – but more about that when we start putting it back together.






Once the trim is off, you can see the four bolts that hold the bumper onto the impact shocks. But before you take these off, you need to separate the bumper from the body of the car. There’ s two ways of doing this – you can either unscrew the rubber ‘bellows’, or you can detach the lower plastic trim from between the fender and the valence. I ended up removing the bellows on the left side, and the trim on the right, because the bellows were blocked by the oil cooler on the right. First the left –



This was really easy – two nuts (8mm) at the back of the bellows, and two at the front. I’d advise taking the whole thing off if you can – I tried not to, and it ended up being more of a pain that way.
The right side was more tricky, because I’ve got an oil cooler in the way. I had to remove the trim instead. It was hard to get a picture of what I was doing here, but hopefully you get the idea; in this picture I’ve already removed the four screws holding the piece of trim in place. The mesh you can see on the left side is covering my oil cooler.



(This picture’s a bit out of sequence, but shows the space where the piece of trim that you need to remove usually is:



Once you have both sides freed up, the next step is to remove the four nuts holding the bumper to the shocks. I also found it helped to give the bumper a good pounding with a rubber mallet, to free it up from the shocks.



If everything’s gone to plan, you should be able to pull the bumper away from the shocks. I put a small floor jack under the bumper to hold it up while I did this. You shouldn’t need to unplug any wires for the turnsignals, foglights etc – there’s enough slack.

This is a good place to yank -



Once I started to pull the bumper away, I could see my target – the bracket holding the shock absorber in place.





to be continued...

[aldente295]

I had an old seatbelt, and punched two holes in a length of it, making sure that they were big enough to fit the bolt from the bracket:






…Then slipped the belt between the bracket and the body, and retorqued.



There’s some sort of a wiring harness clippy thing just to the side of the shock – I bent this out, which lets me rest the strap around it when it’s pushed back out of sight inside the bumper space.



Now, it was just a matter of reassembling the bumper back on to the shocks, and reconnecting the bellows/trim. The jack really came in handy here – the bumper is quite heavy!



Finally, snap the rubber strip back onto the bumper. You can see that some of the plugs stayed in the bumper when I pulled mine out. I had to pry these off of the bumper, and in a couple of cases separate the female and male parts of the plug on the workbench, and then replace the female into the bumper and the male onto the rubber strip. Remarkably, none were beyond repair and the trim snapped right back on. It might be worthwhile ordering a few spares if you’re the nervous type.




And we’re done with the front! The strap can be pushed back inside the rubber smile, completely out of sight. To access it, I just have to lift the rubber lip up and reach my fingers in (it can be a bit tight, but very doable) and pull the strap out. I've since added a small 'tow' triangle just in front of the rubber as well (I'll try and grab a photo of that).

The beauty of this is that it's 100% invisible when not in use, at a very accessible height for the tow truck, and free!

Next post - my solution for the back...

[aldente295]

For the back, I got a bit lucky. I have the (I thought Euro-only) hole in the bumper where the factory tow hook can attach to. I don’t have the tow hook, but I do have some more seatbelt strap! So for the back, I again made a loop of strapping, but this time put a nut and bolt through it, and sandwiched it with washers into the hole where the end of the tow hook is supposed to go. Originally I thought I could do this without removing the rear bumper at all, by snaking my hand up past the exhaust. Several hours and alot of swearing later, I admitted defeat and partially pulled the bumper off, using the same technique as the front. (No pictures, as I was in angry man mode by then )

Once I had the strap secured to the body, I simply pushed it through the hole in the bumper, and attached the plug to the strap with a ziptie. Pictures are worth a thousand words here - here's a picture looking down at the plugged hole, just to the left of the big US-style bumperette.



Out comes the strap...





Again, I added a little 'Tow' sticker to the top of the bumper, and aside from that it's invisible during day-to-day use.

I'm not sure if I'm more enamored with the front or the back straps. I think they're both pretty clever

(BTW If you don’t have this factory hole, I’m pretty sure you can feed the strap between the rear light and the bumper – I’ve seen a picture of a racecar with a setup like this somewhere on this forum which gave me the idea for the strap in the first place.)


Hope this is helpful to anyone struggling with race tow points...

Al

[wildcat077]

Al,

That sure is a great idea as i have been figuring myself how to integrate some sort of tow device on my car,of course with the hopes of never needing to use it ... lol

This is definitely on my "must do" list before my next DE event and if my memory serves me well i have some red strapping somewhere in the garage !

Thank you for posting this for all of us !

Cheers!
Phil

[wwest]

The one time my '78 Targa required towing (fuel pump fuse holder not clamping) I simply held one end of the tow strap laying over the top of the windshield.

[wildcat077]

Al,

I installed a front tow strap on my car yesterday but i was able to do it without removing the bumper ... You can just remove the foglight and housing and it gives you good access to remove one of the bumper shock bolts,a 30 minute job !
I used the lower mounting bolt in this case ...

Thank you for the idea

Cheers !
Phil