101 Forward Control Land Rover pages

Towbar

The 101 was designed for towing (a field gun, actually, so it ought to manage a caravan or trailer OK!) However, the conversion that Marshalls do to make it into an ambulance made fitting a towbar difficult, since the rear doors and step arrangement ar in the way. I've always intended to fit a towbar, and modified the rear doors and step ages ago. But I've only just got round to doing the towing bracket itself.

There are drillings to bolt a NATO hitch to the rear chassis crossmember. However, that's no good for towing an 'ordinary' trailer or caravan, since it's FAR too high. Making a drop plate that big would create too much leverage on the chassis, so it needs to be braced in some way, and the whole lot needs to be strong enough to tow something that is close to the vehicle's towing limit (which is awfully high).

Here's what I came up with. It's made of 5mm steel plate, with 40mm angle holding it together. The bracketry at the back came from a disco towbar, which gives some useful holes and fixings, and there's a fairly standard adjustable towarbar bracket on the front. It's fixed to the NATO fixings on the chassis, and the lower edge is braced forwards to plates bolted between the bumpstops and the chassis (with uprated bolts).