Flat Towing ?'s

I am planning on flat towing my xj (specs in sig) from colorado back down to Louisiana in a few weeks with my chevy half ton truck. Seeing as how the jeep is lifted, the steering is not as tight as it should be, and it does have some bumpsteer. I will be removing the driveshafts before towing, but my main concern is the steering on the jeep. I know to turn the key to the unlock position so the wheel will turn, but I am worried that the jeep might try to pull the back end of the truck around if I hit a large bump. Normally, when I hit large bumps, the steering wheel simply turns and the jeep turns very little. Also, the alignment is good, so the Jeep tracks fairly strait, slight wandering if on a sidehill, but I do have alot of slop in the steering. Is this slop something I should worry about, or will the fact that it is attached to the truck keep it going strait?

well if it has power stearing that will tighten things up right there, I flat tow mine (6-1/2" lift w/some wandering [normal]),and don't have any problems with it, however only time will tell, heck take it out on a test run and see how it does.

Ok, thanks. My next concern is braking. The truck I will be pulling with is getting all new (upgraded) brakes this weekend, but I am still worried about stopping. I will be in Colorado for the first few hours of my drive, but after that it will flat for the most part. Do you have any kind of braking system on the jeep for towing, or is it unneccesary?

I’m just towing with my 2002 Nissan X-Terra and don’t have any issues, (and have towed it in mountains too), just don’t use the XJ as a trailer by filling it full of stuff.

Oh yea and run your tires at maximum air pressure on the towed rig, this will cut down on friction.

Thanks for your help.

I flat tow mine with 6" lift and it pulls my 3/4 ton dodge diesel all over the road. It helps a little to put some good tight pressure on the steering wheel with a bungee.

I used to flat tow mine quite a bit but got a trailer recently so I don't anymore.

Couple things I noticed, if the truck had no weight in the box the XJ would push the backend around. With the slide in camper on no problem, but empty it was squirly. I had it jack knife on me one time after taking a corner too fast in heavy rain. Fortunatly the truck was in 4WD so I nailed the gas and it straightened out before any damge was done.

I also lost my track bar once while flat towing. I had been having problems with DW and though I had gotton it sorted out. Was flat towing the XJ with the trucker/camper and noticed something felt not quite right, like the Jeep was swaying or soemthing. Looked in the mirror at the XJ and saw the front tire was all over the place. I thought I lost a wheel bearing or the wheel nuts came loose. Nope just the front axle shaking the XJ to pieces and it pounded the bushing right out over the trac bar and broke the lower bolt. The Jeep and been shaking so bad for so long it broke the tiewraps securing my winch to battery cables, they then rubbed on the frame, shorted out and killed the battery. Had to disconnect, drive home, pull the spare Trac bar off of my parts Jeep, buy a battery, drive back and re-install. That's when I decided to get a trailer.