There are lots of connections between a motorhome and tow car. There are a couple of extraneous hookups: electrical and brakes. Then there are the critical ones: two points where the tow bar connects with the front of the tow car, and two safety cables. It’s okay to disconnect the extraneous hookups before you do anything else; the anything else being “put the car in gear”. When you’re towing, you want the tow car to freewheel, so by various means, depending on the make and model, you put the towcar in neutral or otherwise disconnect the transmission from the drive train.
Back to disconnecting the tow car. If you’re on level ground, it’s even okay to disconnect one side of the tow gear before you walk around to the other side of the car, get in, and put the car in gear. That is what I often do. It’s an efficiency of movement. It’s never a good idea to disconnect the tow car on a hill though. At best, the tow gear will bind up under the stress and be difficult to work with. At worst…
You never never want to disconnect both sides of the tow car before you put the car in gear. Of course, every once in a while, someone will demonstrate why you don’t want to disconnect the tow car before you have control of it. It’s like when you’re sailboating, towing a dinghy. You never want to get into the dinghy, set it free of the mothership, then give the outboard a pull to see if it starts. Starting the outboard is something that should be done at your leisure, while you’re still attached to the sailboat, not while the people on the other sailboat you’re about to be blown into are screaming at you from the deck.
When we were at the
