[EcoCivic]

Hello everyone, I am wondering if the angle of my tow bar could affect stability. Sorry for the dumb question, but I have never flat towed anything before and I can’t seem to find an answer to my question.

Long story short, my 04 Honda Civic has been sitting in a buddy’s yard in North Carolina for a few years because the engine blew up and I moved out of the state since then. I decided to go to North Carolina to flat tow it back home with my 05 Civic.

Once I got it hooked up and took off, everything felt fine. Until I reached 35 MPH, at which point the car I was towing started pushing my car all over the road. I was constantly having to make corrections to stay in my lane. It felt stable while climbing hills, even small ones, but on flat ground or going down hills, not good. Also, when I tried to stop, the brakes had good power thanks to my upgrades, but my front tires locked up and skidded as if they lost traction.

I suspected that something may be loose or falling apart, so I immediately pulled over and checked my tow bar and hitch to ensure that everything was still tight and not falling apart, everything was good.

My next thought was that my hitch is quite low, causing the tow bar to point down significantly. My car is lowered by about 1-1.5 inches, and I attached the tow bar to the front bumper of my white Civic, so as you can see, the tow bar was far from level.

So my next step was to (very carefully) drive to a hardware store and buy a drop down hitch, which I flipped around so it raised my ball up by about 1 to 2 inches to help level my tow bar a little bit. The stability seemed a little better, I could then drive 38-40 MPH on flat ground before it started acting up, but it was still not fit to drive 600 miles on the highway to get home.

So I am wondering if the tow bar pointing down could be making stability and/or braking performance worse. I am thinking that’s probably the problem because I am thinking if I am pulling that car down rather than straight forwards that couldn’t be good. Also, I am thinking that the car I am towing is likely pushing down on the back of my car causing the front end to lift up when I brake rather than pushing my car straight forwards, causing a loss of traction. Does that sound reasonable?

Also, those of you who are about to say “You can’t tow with a Civic!”, you can. I pulled a U Haul trailer 600 miles home when I moved. I stopped at a weigh station to weigh my setup, and the trailer and my Civic weighed 5400 pounds. So the trailer was probably 2500+ pounds and my little Civic pulled it no problem with the performance upgrades I did to it. It had enough power, it was stable, and it stopped okay. Not great, but good enough that I felt safe.

Thank you very much in advance to those who provide any useful info on this topic. Like I said, I am not an expert on towing, so any information will be greatly appreciated

EDIT: Here’s some other information that I forgot to include.

I removed the CV axles from the car before I pulled it and installed ends from junk axles in the wheel hubs so I didn’t damage the transmission

The key was in the ignition and the steering wheel turned freely, I didn’t tie it up.

Yes I have safety chains, they just weren’t on in the pictures

Yes, I had functional lighting