Tow bars are meant for recovery of vehicles , long and short, period, A convoy say like the one that when NJ Guard went to Louisiana and back, with a few m series vehicles and some HEMMITs to tow em home
again, one thinks only NJ would do something like this with vehicles that old, BUT it IS done all the time , NO unit towing there vehicles is going to drop there trucks off to another states guard unit, they would laugh at them , in theater and in CONUS these trucks have been tow barred for many hundreds of miles at a time when needed. there is no bulletins of failures or not to do this, and wheeled vehicles have been doing this on roads for a long long time, Now the weak welds of one particular nsn number tow bars required all to be upgraded, that just made sense, but remember they worked fine before that, Now a tow should by rule always be slow and the shortest distance, that is what it says and that makes sense, As far as the Mraps , these vehicles are just soooo much heavier than ours it just makes sense to say in the manual to get a dedicated wrecker asap . and the bigger the vehicle the more dangerous it is. Like said here, the pins do bend and brake and the main pin will then fall out, that is driver error, its happened to me and was my fault not the fault of the devise, we are in control of the devise, it is up to us, Replace the snap pins and watch for wear, but I do not need to replace the main pins unless they are noticeably worn, No one should hook up and drive 300 miles with out scheduled maintenance stops to look feel and inspect all, the more U do it the more safe U will be. Chains need to be secured, tape to hold in place a clevis is fine , the clevis takes the pull not the tape. but use common sense, look at it, if it looks like when needed the clevis on the safety chain when pulled will force the clevis tighter than it is correct, If anyone does not feel this type of tow works, PLEASE never do it, U may be feeling more than U know. this is a good thread, all printed info should be read and re read. towing a deuce with a deuce is not for the inexperienced, But to get the experience, i have said before, hook up the best u know, in a large enough lot, and hit 25 and slam on the brakes, and do it at 30 if u think U will be driving that fast, do Not Wait until U need to it to find out how well U will handle it, the truck will do just fine, People need the practice and experience,
Personally I LOVE to tow bar and have been doing it with many types of vehicles for many many years, I can get a Mule a Jeep and 2 deuces to a show by myself and done it, I have hooked up deuce to 5 ton and deuce to deuce or to jeep by myself so many times now i just do it, I have tow barred my mule in short convoys with the deuce for fun also, .... do it and do it safe , remember the only one to blame if it hits , is the driver, not the vehicle. so keep it safe...