We Searched, and we found our Dinghy tow car!

Part 4 in our story… Dinghy Towing our 2018 Chevy Equinox

We did buy our Dinghy Tow Chevy Equinox, I call her Ruby.  She is our perfect Dinghy tow car. We ordered the front baseplate & installed, in order to hook up the tow bar.   They pretty much had to take off the whole front end.  Then it was a challenge to get the wiring hooked up for the electrical as the wires are so small, it was hard to get the connections.  We are still working on getting the lights to work when hooked up to the Motorhome.

Dinghy Towing our 2018 Chevy Equinox

Ok, now here is our funny story about hooking up the first time.  We have never owned a push start vehicle before – our cars have been older.  It didn’t even click into my head when reading the instructions – it sounded easy.  Put the vehicle in neutral, turn key to accessory mode.  Well, how do you do that when you have no key to turn???  So it is 5 pm on a 100+ day in a very hot parking lot in Sacramento on our first trip out of town, trying to get hooked up and on the road.  We can’t figure this out.  We call the dealer, and ½ hour and 4 people later, we figure it out.  It is not in the owner’s manual!  In case there is anyone else out there that needs to know this:

DINGHY TOW CHEVY EQUINOX

HOW TO PUT YOUR 2018 CHEVY EQUINOX INTO ACCESSORY MODE:

1. Start the car with your foot on the brake (you have to in order to start it).
2. Take off the parking brake.
3. Put it into Neutral
4. Push the starter button like you are turning off – the light on it will turn from green to orange.
5. Then on your display (that big fancy computer that lets you talk on your phone, listen to music, etc.), go to Settings, Turn off Display
6. It will keep beeping at you for 30 minutes – not that you can hear it.
7. What we learned later (after dead battery)- turn your lights to OFF

Then after you unhook, you need to let it run for a few minutes.  We used the same older Brakemaster system.

UPDATE:

We were getting messages on the car after towing that didn’t make any sense.  We also had a dead battery after long days a couple of times.  We asked the dealer and they looked it up and said we were supposed to have a battery charger attached.  They insisted it was in the owner’s manual (we bought in July 2018).  I pulled it out and guess what, it’s not there!  So John added a line from the motorhome to plug in when we hook up to keep the car battery charged.  No issues now.

READ MORE ON:
Part 1 click here – 8 things to ask yourself when trying to decide on a tow vehicle

Part 2 click here – Finding a dinghy tow vehicle, the search goes on

Part 3 click here – Our search results for dinghy tow vehicles

Braking System for Dinghy Tow Vehicles

Dinghy Towing our 2018 Chevy Equinox