Ok folks, I've have a Suzuki vitara allgrip automatic. It weighs 1265 kg. Suzuki say it can tow a max of 1200kg.
My van is a sterling europa with mass in running order weight of 960kg.
On various towing websites, they say my car should tow this unit without difficulty. But it does not!
Suggestions please.
You don't say exactly what you are experiencing but the weight difference between the car and caravan should ensure it tows 'well' when loaded correctly and with the correct nose weight. This generally means it's stable without significant snaking etc.
If you're referring to performance then the outfit will be as lot slower than just the car that's just physics.
You have near doubled the weight, so the time to 60 will have doubled, possibly more.
On a hill the car has near double the mass to pull plus all the wind resistance at higher speed so you'll need to be using a much lower gear (cars are geared for emmisions not drivability) and a lot more revs.
This is less noticeable in a diesel as peak engine power is often around 2000rpm Vs 4000+ in a petrol turbo and 6000+ in a non turbo petrol.
On paper the outfit looks fine, you may need to adjust your expectations or switch to a high torque diesel.
Hi, thanks for your reply. It feels as if the van is towing the car, not the other way around. I've checked with Suzuki, who say it should tow fine. Maybe it's just me.
As above, what is the plated mtplm? having a look around, a 2 berth Europa has a mtplm of 1,200kg so on the max for towing limit and just under 100% towing ratio.
They will tell you whats legal, not how well it tows.
Some will tell you how well their car tows but when you try it you find it underpowered or the vans heavier than the car. Personal opinions will vary a lot.
1.4 boosterjet engine? You will need to work that fairly hard when towing, keeping the revs up around 4000rpm.
Thats the issue with small boosted engines, yes they are fairly efficient until the turbo kicks in then they drink fuel, and you need to keep them in the powerband which maybe a fairly small range of revs.
Reports from the 1L turbo Focus said excellent torque from such a small engine then they road trip in a loaded car and comments turned to.. it needed plenty of gear changes on the hills.
Well it's a whole stack of variables and personal expectations piled on top of 'the numbers'.
My outfit doesn't look good on paper, but my Citroen C4 GP at 1350kg Kerb tows my Lunar with 1310Kg MTPLM like a dream, and the 'puny' petrol 1.2 litre 3 cylinder engine returns 27-30mpg, cruises happily in 6th gear, will exceed the towing speed limit more than willingly (generally use the cruise control/speed limiter to avoid inadvertently getting too fast!), overtakes trucks at more than a snails pace, pulls up hills well enough and accelerates from standstill to traffic speed without being an embarrassment. OK, maybe a diesel or a bigger engine could be held in a higher gear for longer or accelerate quicker, but you could say that for just about every tow car, but I think the fuel consumption says a lot, it really isn't being thrashed to death to achieve acceptable performance, I've been to Wales and Cumbria, so not just pootling along flat roads.
It handles well, partly because I load the caravan sensibly and balance the loads correctly, I've towed on motorways full of HGVs and big coaches, I been in pretty gusty winds, and I've never felt the tail wag the dog to a concerning degree.
As I said at the start, a whole bunch of variables play their part, things like gear ratios, power bands, chassis handling, all things that are difficult to factor in to the equation from a theoretical point of view. Some cars are inherently good tow cars, some just aren't. To a large degree, until you try a particular outfit, you will never know if it's good or bad. I used to regularly tow a power boat behind a fair number of different cars, some cars you didn't know it was there, others scared the cr*p out of you and you didn't want to do more than 40mph, same boat, so all down to the car!
There should be a plate on the car, probably inside the door pillar with 4 weights listed.
The top two are the Gross Train Weight (GTW) and the Maximum Authorised Mass (MAM) of the car.
The GWT is most the combined loaded weights of car and caravan can be.
If you have the wife and kids plus 2 rotteilers and the kitchen sink inside the car and 4 bikes on the roof you are not going to be able to tow such a heavy caravan as you can with just 2 of you.
Just as a side not about loading and snaking, we have just moved to the BMW x1 2018, from a 2015 VX insignia Touerer 2.0 TDCI SRI, and we could not get this combo to work with our van at 1300 kgs fully laded weight. Not matter what we did it was unstable at 55 - 60 mph. All other vehicles prior have been excellent tow cars. The BMW X1 towed like a dream, with similar loading and placement of items in the van.
And i am cautious of weights etc.
BMW X1
Car KB weight = 1615Kgs log book, Actual on weight bridge 1652 Kgs.
van empty 1035 Kgs, loaded for two weeks 1287 Kgs, weight bridge.
VX insignia
Car KB weight = 1745Kgs log book, Actual on weight bridge 1800 Kgs
Same caravan.
Hi we have the BMW X1 2.0D Xdive 4x4 model .
Indeed this is one of the reasons we chose this vehicle, although boot space limited.
Will see how next outing goes.
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Topic: Car to caravan ratio.
via mobile 23/5/2019 at 1:33pm
