What do you tow with your B?

mkguitar wrote:

RoadHogg wrote:
In general, OD is a marketing scam that has only negative effects on vehicles and consumers.

You can;t be serious.


a driver should be smarter than the vehicle and know how to match gearing to conditions and engine load.

Some vehicles will have a tow/haul mode to change transmission shift points.


Know thy vehicle


Mike

"should be" I agree. What should be has never translated into what drivers actually are. However, I don't follow how my comment relates to your comment about what a driver should be. Help me out? Thanks.

RoadHogg wrote:
In general, OD is a marketing scam that has only negative effects on vehicles and consumers.

You can;t be serious.


a driver should be smarter than the vehicle and know how to match gearing to conditions and engine load.

Some vehicles will have a tow/haul mode to change transmission shift points.


Know thy vehicle

Esp for RoadHogg, who lives in a place where if he turns West out his driveway has about 1000 miles of flat road before he sees a hill...or a curve.

BTW There is a CDN trailer similar to the Scamp- the Trillium.




Mike

I disagree with the no OD advice. That depends on the transmission design. There are plenty of vehicles and transmissions that can happily tow in OD.

This is a thread that goes to a daydream I have every year. I see it as having a two-part RV. Part One is used for driving around, and Part Two stays at the camp site. And Part One has some minimal RV facilities. This is where the dream becomes fuzzy. Trying to decide which functions to duplicate in both parts, and which functions are exclusive to just one.

Functions:
Transportation (for how many?)
Rest room
Sleeping
Kitchen
Lounging/ Living Room/ TV

There are places to buy small TT's or toyhaulers anywhere from just a bare shell inside, to fitting them with various RV components. You just have to decide which of the above functions the trailer must do.

I think I'd like the trailer to be the living room, kitchen, dry bath. It should have A/C. Maybe a furnace, maybe not. A nice sofa, an easy chair, television, and eating area. But no beds.

And pull it with a cargo van conversion with the basic floorplan of the Winn. Travato 59K (shown below). The van would have only a cassette toilet or possibly a plumbed toilet with minimal tankage. No kitchen except a plug in cooler. Two good twin beds as shown. Heating and cooling. This would be the camp's bedroom, and would be a great touring camper as well.

It is is a small car or SUV, although you get Motorbikes,attached to the rear bumper

truepath wrote:
I was recently talking with a transmission mechanic who had just finished rebuilding a Dodge 4sp with OD transmission for a friend of mine. The transmission was trashed when the van was used to pull a sail boat several hundred miles. The mechanic told me that the OD on these transmissions are prone to failure when called upon to pull trailers. He recommended turning OD off when pulling anything other than a very small trailer and even then he recommended turning OD off on long inclines or traveling into strong headwinds. This is going to require slowing down, unless you want to spend a fortune on fuel.

Based on my knowledge and experience with these transmissions, I would not disagree with that advice. I would go as far as to advise anyone towing with any brand of automatic OD transmission to tow with OD OFF. OD OFF puts a transmission into "Direct" mode, thereby all but eliminating the transmission doing any heavy lifting.

In general, OD is a marketing scam that has only negative effects on vehicles and consumers.

I was recently talking with a transmission mechanic who had just finished rebuilding a Dodge 4sp with OD transmission for a friend of mine. The transmission was trashed when the van was used to pull a sail boat several hundred miles. The mechanic told me that the OD on these transmissions are prone to failure when called upon to pull trailers. He recommended turning OD off when pulling anything other than a very small trailer and even then he recommended turning OD off on long inclines or traveling into strong headwinds. This is going to require slowing down, unless you want to spend a fortune on fuel.

RoadHogg wrote:

Do you know the stated towing rating of the Sprinter?

5000 lbs.

sprintstream wrote:
We have got a Sprinter Gulfstream and we've a towed an Intrepid 500 miles with no problem. Also towed a packed 12 ft U-Haul 500 miles into a 20 mph head wind. What fun that was.

Was that flat towing or on a dolly or trailer? Do you know the stated towing rating of the Sprinter?

We have got a Sprinter Gulfstream and we've a towed an Intrepid 500 miles with no problem. Also towed a packed 12 ft U-Haul 500 miles into a 20 mph head wind. What fun that was.