Quote:
Originally Posted by mkassab
Thanks for the feedback.
On your #1 comment, 4 down vs dolly.... can you provide some of thoughts on the pros of 4 down and cons of the dolly?
thx Mark
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1) So much easier to hook up and disattach. Takes us less than 5 minutes and that includes testing lights etc. Our toad has a manual transmission. Hook it up, put it in neutral and that's it
2) Don't have to disattach and store the dolly when you arrive somewhere
3) When it's raining, hooking up a dolly is a real PIA + it's really messy crawling all around attaching the straps
4) More tires to worry about and dolly tires don't last that long
5) With a dolly, the weight on the hitch goes against your GVWR/GCWR. Towing 4 down doesn't put any weight on the hitch. Your just dragging the toad behind you
6) When we arrive somewhere, while my wife is checking in I disattach the toad. With a dolly, you can do that, but now you have to still worry about pulling the dolly to your site and then disattach that and store it somewhere there and then back in.
Just one example of the hassle let's think this through in a real day application.
So your sitting in a camp ground and it's move day. You pull the coach out of the site and hopefully you have an area right there where you can pull off to the side to hook up. Ok....now you have to walk back and get the dolly and pull it up to the coach and hook it up. This is especially fun when it's been raining and there's mud everywhere. Now you walk back again and get the car. You pull the car up on the dolly. (I've actually seen two people over shoot the dolly and ran over the front of it. That was fun to watch him get out of that mess. But I digressed. Now that the car is on the dolly, you have to put on the straps etc. Do your light test and now your ready to go. When you arrive at your next location, yep, rinse and repeat. This gets old really fast and even more so as you get older.
If you and I started at the same time hooking up, I'd already be 20-30+ miles down the road before you are ready to go.
Going FT is supposed to be fun. Starting off your day 1st thing in the morning on move day...this is not the way I want to start off my day.
A few months ago I watched a guy from Canada who thought he had the answer. He towed his car on a trailer. I won't go into all the theatrics of what he went thru but he literally spent 45 minutes getting his car off the trailer, dealing with the trailer and then finally backing into his site. WOW. Then he starts setting up his rig, water, sewer etc.
With our 4 down approach, the car is taken care and our coach is all set up in 30 minutes. IMO...using a dolly just has to many drawbacks and is a big hassle.
The reason MOST people choose a dolly is they either don't want to get rid of their daily driver and get a different car that can be towed 4 down OR they don't want to flip out cash for a tow bar, base plate and other equipment to tow 4 down. In either case, as I said before, retiring and going FT is supposed to be fun and I'm more than willing to pay for what it will take to make our FT living fun and easy.
Think this thru before you commit. Good luck my friend.
dont ask me how I know 
but only for a short distance...thank you nice passer byers 
) and easy to unhook dont forget the emergency brake....
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