I am gettting ready to fab up a tow bar and I'm looking for some ideas on design. Anyone have a prefered length or width of the mounting points. Thanks in advance. Brett:)

Some people tow off of their front shackles (with shackles made for this purpose). That would be your width if you went that route.

I too am thinking of building a tow bar so I'm curious to see what poeple have done.

You do know you can buy a pre-built complete tow far setup for under $100, right? Do you actually think you can build it for less than that, figuring in your time?

I had a tow bar on the last YJ I had that was welded on the bumper but centered on the frame. It was a shorty tow bar that when swung up and locked was below the height of the hood so you could drive with it. The top of the tow bar had 2" box like a trailer reciever and it was pinned. The actual tow hitch portion about 30" slipped into it and pinned when you towed. It was sweet because you didn't have to take off and stash a tow hitch, it was always with you. You could throw the end piece behind the seat in case you broke down and it didn't take much room. You can even weld on some brackets for your hi-lift with no problem.

Yeah, this will be for my EB so I'll fab some mount's for the bumper, I can't decide wether to make it folding like you mentioned ,or just keep it as simple as possible. I usually trailer it anyways but this one trip I need to flat tow it. Oh yeah, I guarantee I can build a far superior product than what I would get for under $100 thanks though ;) Brett

Alex---I've made numerous tow bars and my most recent design is 'different'....I made it 10 feet long....used 2 ten foot pieces of thin 2x2x.063 tubing cross braced 2 places and I used a chunk of chain to secure the bar to each shackle on the towed rig. see this link http://dreamwater.com/zuk/tow.html ....it towed just fine. The longer the tow bar the less chance that the towed rig will take control at 60 mph on the hi-way due to swaying back and forth.

Yeah, not knowing anything about your personal situation, I was going to make a wise-ass comment about "do you actually think you can....", but I see that was already done.