Towing question - ZL 1500A

HelluvaEngineer

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Aug 2, 2010
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Atlanta, GA
I have an old Zen-Noh ZL 1500-A that I purchased about 7 years ago and use on my property for small tasks.

There is an event upcoming at my daughter's school and they were asking for a volunteer with a tractor to pull a small wagon. My ZN is barely suited for that job but no one was able to help so I offered to use it if I can work out all of the details.

This means I need to get it about 2 miles down the road to the school. I obviously won't be driving the little tractor itself.

Unfortunately I don't have a trailer myself. I rigged a reverse tow contraption I use to tow it up and down a large hill at my property. It mounts to one of those 3-point receiver adapters. This means that the tractor is going backwards.

My question: will towing the tractor a total of about 4 miles backwards on the road at approx 45mph harm the transmission or anything else? Thanks for reading.
 

North Idaho Wolfman

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No it won't hurt anything in the transmission if it's in neautral.
But I think you pushing it way too much trying to do that at 45MPH in reverse! :eek:

You would be far better off and far safer just driving it with someone following. ;)
 

bucktail

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I'm assuming that the ZL1500A is the Zenoah version of my L1500. Not sure though.

Couple of things.

I don't see a pic of the towing contraption, but what I'm envisioning in my head doesn't seem very stable towing at 45 mph. Towing forward has the steering wheels in front allowing the towed vehicle to follow the towing vehicle. I'm with Wolfman on roading it. You'd be there in under 10 min. You'll probably waste about that fiddling around with your towing setup.

If you do need to tow it backwards and it is indeed stable to tow at 45 mph in that fashion, I'd put a ratchet strap around the hood if the latch in back is missing as most of them that I've seen are. You don't want the hood opening up at 45 mph.

Good luck
 

Dave_eng

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Certainly the tires were never designed for road speeds.

Driving two miles on a public road should be an easy way to get to the school.

I drive and have driven my various tractors for up to two hours each way.

There have been previous threads about trailer towing on tractors without a draw-bar.
The situation that needs to be addressed is what happens if the trailer gets rear end heavy and the tongue wants to rise.

This photo shows one product which uses a chain to hold down the hitch.


Dave
 

HelluvaEngineer

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Aug 2, 2010
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Atlanta, GA
Sorry for the late reply. To close the loop on this, I ended up not taking the tractor to that event. One of the pushrods to the rear brakes broke while I was trying to adjust them.

Anyway, here's a picture of the rig I've been using to tow the tractor up the big hill on my property. I welded the ball receiver in place, but my welder is a bit underpowered for the job so I added one thru-bolt as well, just to be safe, and used safety chains as well.

Thanks everyone for the great ideas (I'll look into rigging that chain for trailer use) and have a great Thanksgiving!
 

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Ladair

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For my L3400 when I need fuel I drive it to a station one mile from my house. But I live on a farm to market road. I drove it 3 miles to a buddys house to work on his driveway. No way I would tow it backward. Not saying it could not be done, I jut don't think I'm skilled enough