Tow Hooks and suspension struts

[danccooke]

Guys and Gals,
not sure if you can help, a friend of mine is just starting to race his westfield and i pointed out that he doesn't have a tow point and as a marshall i have seen cars towed by suspesion struts which can't do them a lot of good.
where would you find a tow hook/eye for a westfield....any help would be appriciated as i am sure he will end up in paddock hill gravel when he goes for his test day shortly.

Cheers

[graeme]

I think the Blue Book says you've got to have tow points. Caterham used to get away with having "tow" decals on the rollbar until a few years ago. Now they've all got proper towing eyes on the chassis - Caterham did bolt on ones - perhaps Westfield do something similar?

[Mackmot]

I thought all caterhams had a tow eye under the front of the chassis. Ive only built 6 but 3 different types so I presumed they were all the same.

[dtype38]

As with many fibreglass nosed race cars, the obvious answer is to put the tow loop on the front of the chassis under the nose (with an arrow marked "tow" pointing down to it). Trouble with this is that if you head nose first into a gravel trap the loop gets burried and often as not the marshalls will decide its too dangerous to spend the time digging a trench under the front of the car (not unreasonably) and will end up using delicate suspension parts instead.

I've discussed this situation with a few scrutineers and have been told of a simple solution which satisfies everyone: Fit a proper tow loop to front of the chassis, connect this to a short length of suitable tow strap (easily cut from the ones you can by for road cars) and then clip or tie-wrap the loose end of the strap somewhere easily accessable like to the side of the radiator grill. I use a tie wrap and a lable which says "TOW (cut tie-wrap)". This gives the marshalls somewhere easy to hook onto and avoids damage to the car. In my case I have one of these on the back of the car as well since its more likely we need towing backwards out of the gravel than forwards!!