Tow vehicle/RV match
Hello, Thanks to anyone who offers some advice. Complete newbie here :) I have a Dodge Grand Caravan that was purchased with a tow package. Per the owners manual: GCWR is 8,900 lbs Max Tongue We...
Forum Discussion
I have a 2014 Chrysler Town & Country with 80k miles. I have towed pretty large loads with this Van including a 480 lb tongue weight POP UP with a weight distribution hitch... yep over the owners manual rating...way way over... it I was under the receiver hitches rating of 500 lbs with weight distribution.
Van handled like it was on rails towing this combo.
All Pentastar Mini Vans have HD cooling. The transmission and the power steering cooler is a combo cooler IIRC... it's much bigger than the puny transmission cooler on my current F150 (that shall be rectified very soon)
This Minivan has been overloaded many times and does nothing but laugh and ask for more. Now I am not advocating overloading a vehicle, that's one of the primary reasons that I bought my F150. It's just very easy to overload one of these vans.
Now, here is my reality check for you.
My POP up towed AWESOME behind my van. Great power, great MPG, great handling.
But, I rented one of the taller UHaul trailers and it was about 1/2 the weight of the PUP...let me tell ya, that aerodynamic drag on these vans with a high profile trailer is REAL...it was more dramatic difference on my Van towing that UHaul than my old F150 had pulling a Mid profile travel Trailer. No joke.
So here is my Suggestion...go for a pop up. The Van will handle it great as long as you manage the tongue weight.
Like I said, my tongue weight was 480 lbs
Now, I did not intend for my tongue weight to be that heavy. My pop up was supposed to have around 260 lbs of tongue weight from the factory but loaded and ready to camp it was nearly 500 lbs.
Single axle trailers, depending on where the axle sits can have a tremendously disproportionately high tongue weight for what I was expecting. My Pup was only 3200 lbs scaled and 480 of that was tongue weight! Yep that's right on 15%. If I would have had a front storage locker it probably would have been more.
Feel free to PM me if you want to.
Thanks!
Jeremiah
Van handled like it was on rails towing this combo.
All Pentastar Mini Vans have HD cooling. The transmission and the power steering cooler is a combo cooler IIRC... it's much bigger than the puny transmission cooler on my current F150 (that shall be rectified very soon)
This Minivan has been overloaded many times and does nothing but laugh and ask for more. Now I am not advocating overloading a vehicle, that's one of the primary reasons that I bought my F150. It's just very easy to overload one of these vans.
Now, here is my reality check for you.
My POP up towed AWESOME behind my van. Great power, great MPG, great handling.
But, I rented one of the taller UHaul trailers and it was about 1/2 the weight of the PUP...let me tell ya, that aerodynamic drag on these vans with a high profile trailer is REAL...it was more dramatic difference on my Van towing that UHaul than my old F150 had pulling a Mid profile travel Trailer. No joke.
So here is my Suggestion...go for a pop up. The Van will handle it great as long as you manage the tongue weight.
Like I said, my tongue weight was 480 lbs
Now, I did not intend for my tongue weight to be that heavy. My pop up was supposed to have around 260 lbs of tongue weight from the factory but loaded and ready to camp it was nearly 500 lbs.
Single axle trailers, depending on where the axle sits can have a tremendously disproportionately high tongue weight for what I was expecting. My Pup was only 3200 lbs scaled and 480 of that was tongue weight! Yep that's right on 15%. If I would have had a front storage locker it probably would have been more.
Feel free to PM me if you want to.
Thanks!
Jeremiah
