Towing an Electric Car | Master Tow Dolly Purchase

So we went with the tow dolly! The decision was pretty much made for us by the fact that my Fiat 500e lease, which only has another seven months left, is non-transferable by Chrysler Capital. So within weeks of heading out on the road, we now have decided to ditch our bikes and bring a tow car after all. Don’t have time to read this now? Pin it for later! We only recommend products we love and your support means a lot to us! This post contains affiliate links and if you make a purchase after clicking on our links we will receive compensation at no additional cost to you.

Fiat 500e

The next complication: My Fiat 500e needs to be towed via a dolly. We had really hoped to flat/four wheel tow since everybody says this is so much more convenient, but this car being a front wheel drive automatic it will destroy the transmission if we try to do that. Are you looking to tow an electric car? Read how we towed our Fiat 500e.

Tow Dolly

A tow dolly is essentially a half trailer, towed behind the motorhome, that you drive the tow vehicle’s front wheels up on to be pulled. This accomplishes the same effect of a tow truck (not the flat bed kind). The car remains in park, with no parking brake on, steering lock enabled, and the front wheels are strapped down to the dolly.

Are you trying to decide which tow dolly to purchase for your RV? We went with Master Tow. We share the total cost after all the maintenance and repairs and our recommended tow dolly straps.

Master Tow Dolly

We found new tow dollies with no accessories are about $1200, and if you want some extras like electric or surge brakes, that costs about 50% more. In the end, we found a used Master Tow Dolly with electric brakes on OfferUp that I negotiated down to $700. It’s going to need a little work like a new seven blade connector that powers the lights and brakes off the motorhome, as well as possibly a wheel bearing adjustment and new grease just to be on the safe side since I don’t exactly know how well maintained it was.

The tires look pretty decent although maybe the tread is a little more worn down on the inside, but I’m not exactly sure since this is not really my forte. I went ahead and bought tire pressure sensors (I recommend this Tire Pressure Monitoring System) for the tow dolly tires in case something happens we’ll at least notice a blowout quickly.

There is also one of the support bars on the neck that looks like it was damaged in some way since it is wrapped in tons of black electrical tape with a thick screw or bolt acting as a splint of sorts. The good news is the Master Tow website sells all the parts online, enough that you could probably assemble one on your own if you just bought one of everything off the site, hah! I know this maybe sounds like more hassle than it’s worth to buy used and save some money, but I think about $100 in new parts, watching a few YouTube videos, and some spare time I could replace everything that looks questionable on it. I’ll have learned some new skills too, and major brownie points with Jeri!

Tow Dolly Straps

The used dolly we purchased didn’t come with straps (seems common in the ads I looked at online) so I just went on Amazon, searched for tow dolly straps, and went with the 2 pack of straps with the combination of best + most reviews. These were not the least or most expensive, but the reviews were glowing (they are now an Amazon’s Choice selection). Their “basket” style design turned out to be extremely easy to use vs some less positive comments about other types of straps I was reading about. Six months and 10,000 miles of towing later, they were dirty but still looked new and exhibited no fraying or stretching under tension. We could get them on and off in a matter of a couple minutes once we got the hang of things. They even come with a little bag for storing them when not using.

Repairs

Well, it turned out to be more like another $700 in repairs since I opted to get the entire axle serviced including new wheel bearings, removing the old grease to add add new grease, checking the brakes, replacing a couple broken lights, and even new tires since the originals were close to 14 years old according to the date codes so they could have tire rot.

The mobile repair service we used due to our short timetable also did all the electrical work to put on a new connector. In the end, we still saved about $600+ vs buying new! I’m sure after we get rid of the Fiat I can probably recoup most of the cost as these hold their value well, especially when serviced well.

Would you rather flat tow or dingy tow a vehicle? Check out our Tow car or no tow car? article for a guide which tells you which vehicles are towable in this fashion. Want more motorhome information? Take a look at our Motorhome articles. What are we doing next? Don’t miss an article, subscribe today.