Well had my first lift tow experience today, went successfully. Had to recover the M51 dump truck this weekend so took the wrecker out to the canyon to bring it back. M51 was parked towards the top of a fairly steep hill and had been sitting there for awhile. I'd rather tow a vehicle on a trailer (known brakes/wheel ends, safer) but this proved to me that the m816 can lift tow when necessary.
Plan A was to try and back the m816 up to the m51, air up the tires, hook up to it, lift the front end (buried), and drag it down to flat ground to set everything else up for a flat tow. Plan B was to park the wrecker in a safe spot and run the rear winch line out to the M51 and pull it free while someone steered the truck to flat ground. Plan A worked.
Backed up to the M51 and started off by airing up the 4 rear tires. Front tires have holes in the tubes so the plan to flat tow the truck home went bye bye. This picture is taken level to give an idea of the hill slope.
Picked up the front end and tried to drag the truck out of it's hole with no success, so ran a tow strap through the rear wrecker shackles and the front of the m51 and dragged it out. Brakes were dragging on the truck then finally decided to free up just before the bottom of the hill.
With the trucks now on flat ground started to setup for a flat tow. Realized quickly that with my current lack of wrecker BII there was no way to get a good towbar angle with the front tires still on the m51. So lifted the truck, removed the front tires/wheels, and loaded them into the dump bed. This allowed the front axle of the M51 to be roughly 6-8" off the ground with the towbar being flat, much better than the nearly 40 degree upwards angle the towbar was at with the tires on. Hooked up the safety strap at that point, checked over the rigging, then tossed in a pair of batteries for the m51 to have the hazards flashing, good there.
Hopped in the wrecker to test the driving, no steering. Having the m51 with winch hanging back there made the front end too light, even with the crane boom fully retracted. Thankfully another wrecker owner on this forum mentioned before that a easy way to fix this problem is to stuff some wood between the rear axle and the frame rail, to keep it from compressing and basically moving the pivot point forward. Set the m51 down, stuffed a 4x4 between each bump stop/frame on the rear axle, lifted the m51, and problem solved. Steering was back to normal so did some tests while on the dirt (all good) then drove onto the pavement. Took the back roads home at about 30-35mph, using low range through the mountain pass. Stopped to check the tires/hubs/rigging a few times but no issues were found.
Back at the lot set the m51 down in its parking spot then disconnected the wrecker and parked next to it.
Decent side by side comparison of the 395's and 14x20"s. 395's on the wrecker (right), 14"s on the m51 (left)