Motion Pictures The Long Long Trailer - How did they do it?

There is a product called a Tow Toad or something to that effect. It carries the tongue weight.

Jeeze, I don't even wanna tow my 56 Airstream 16 foot bubble with our 56 wagon until I upgrade the crapper Glide transmission

 

trailers and their long long history continues

 

I'm not asking why a 10 year old is back up but as it is..My dad pulled a 20 ft wooden cruiser with a 60 Chevy 283 all over Michigan.

 

Same here. Dad had an 18 foot Thompson deep vee hull, lapestrake wooden outboard and 2 axle Gater trailer, no trailer brakes. Towed it with a 62 or 63 Mercury wagon with whatever displacement MEL v8 (BIG) it had at the time. Took it from Western MA to Lake George on Rt 9. Only problem that weekendwas the load of bad lakeside premix gasoline that caused the engine to seize up halfway thru the weekend. But that's another story...

 

It's not the size of the engine, it's all about the gear ratio.

 

My parents had a '67 Pontiac Catalina that they used to haul a camper all over Maine when I was a kid. 400 V8/TH400, power steering and manual drum brakes on skinny bias ply tires. I can vaguely remember (I was about three years old) we were on our way to some campground when Dad started having severe abdominal pain, so Mom took over and drove straight to the hospital, where Dad had to have his appendix removed. I mostly recall seeing the car in the parking lot with the canoe on the roof, the fender-mounted rearview mirrors and the camper in tow. I'm told that after the surgery, I was left with Dad in his room, and I spied the crank on the end of the bed and started to crank it. Fortunately for Dad, Mom came back before I folded him up!

 

This ancient thread is from a simpler, kinder time

 

THIS ! ………I have seen this movie a few times, including very recently. If you pay attention, you will see the Lincoln ‘stand in’ for the Mercury in a few crucial scenes.

The thing either did not notice before, or had forgotten, was the the tongue dolly that took the brunt of the tongue weight. A much earlier post mentioned the installation of the hitch on the car AND the tongue dolly being shown in movie scenes. I have never seen a street use trailer with a tongue dolly over the decades, but it makes sense…..and really would be a necessity, if one were to expect to pull a trailer the size and weight of the one featured in the movie using a car as light duty as the Mercury.

Ray

 

There's a guy over on "The Ford Barn" that pulls his "Caravan" all over Australia with his stock '33 Ford sedan with no problems.

A guy who worked for me said his dad tried to pull a decent sized travel trailer on the annual family vacation with a 50 Chevrolet. He said they spent most of the trip at various Chevrolet dealerships getting the rod bearings replaced. The next year he bought a Hudson and solved that problem. (I wonder about the clutch; was Hudson still using the cork clutch in the early fifties?)

 

Did you notice the scene where Tacey (Lucy) takes the wheel and Nickey (Rickey) freaks out because she pushes it up to a death defying 30 MPH? One secret is they didn't tow them very fast, there being no interstates at the time.
Car was a new Mercury V8, with a good trailer hitch welded and bolted to the frame. The weight of the trailer hitch was carried on a Slimp dolley, which had 8 inch trailer wheels. It carried the weight and the car supplied the pull. The trailer was also fitted with electric brakes with a hand lever control on the steering column.
A trailer of that size was usually towed by a professional with a 3/4 ton or 1 ton truck especially equipped for trailer towing but people did tow trailers up to 25 or 30 feet with ordinary cars.
The 35 foot New Moon was also a lot lighter than any trailer of similar size made today. It did not have air conditioning and dozens of other features we take for granted. Even so it was beyond the limit of what would have been towed by an ordinary car, but people did tow some big trailers.
Did you notice they changed the Mercury for a disguised Lincoln for the mountain scene?
If I were picking a car to tow a large trailer in 1953 it would have been a Chrysler New Yorker with hemi V8 and 4 speed Fluid Torque Drive transmission.

 

and the size of the guys balls

 

Back in the 55 I towed the Largest Trailer that U-haul I think it was 8 x12
from L.I., NY to Miami, FL. with my Merc and on the Trailer were 2 Motorcycle
2 Sets of Complete Tool's 2 rollaways 2 top boxes & All of
My & My freind everything that we owned The Trailer was loaded
I pulled it with my Stock 50 Mercury in my Avatar.!

Just my 3.5 cents

Live Learn & Die a Fool

P.S. I never travel the Speed limit I always did what I though
was Good for me.! 110 ha ha

 

I haven't seen the movie, but I recall one episode (may have been a story arc) where they wanted to go on a road trip in a Cadillac, and their neighbor got them an old Cadillac touring car. They had a trailer in tow that Lucy filled with rocks from the various places they visited. At one point someone made off with the steering wheel over a disagreement, and they had to pay to get it back.

 

Now that's pretty cool. Ive never seen one of them before, after all these years. It looks like it works very well. Of course today we have load leveling hitches. One thing about that tow dolly, can you imaging the rpm's of those wheel bearings at highway speed with those little 8" wheels? Better make sure they're packed with some good grease before a long trip!

 

And chuck holes could be a little dicey.