Message Forums

Your handbook should tell you what you can tow. Having an auto will put you at a slight disadvantage, and if planning on touring the italian alps in august you may wish to invest in an extra transmission cooler. Other people will no doubt be along with a link to cuddles list of towcars, but no blue face now:)

If you passed your test after 1/1/97 there are further restrictions on what you can tow (ie the MAX permissable weight of the van must not exceed the unladen weight of the car)

If you are not overly fussy about end bathrooms, older larger vans should certainly be towable with your car, my last sprite was a 4-6 berth (depending how you set it up) and had a max weight of under 1000kg that made it technically towable with some quite light and weedy cars.

on the plate under the bonnet, there should be listed 4 weights

the first two are axle weights, the third should be max vehicle weigh, and the 4th gross trainweight (car & trailer combined) gross trainweight will not give you a max trailer weight (that can be much higher than train-car) but it will give you an idea where you can start.

for a 2-berth end bathroom my g/f has an old (mid 80s) eldiss that maxes at about 950kg, her P reg manual 1.8 petrol laguna is technically very capable of hauling that and fine once up to speed, and my similar specified and older daewoo barely notices it there.

The advantage of an older van (apart from weight) is you can buy one for a few hundred, try it for a season before you commit to a second mortgage on a newer one and if you time it right re-sell with little loss, maybe even a small profit. Nothing worse than signing a 10k loan agreement and then realising you hate towing and get claustraphobic :)

Guessing a little here but......

6   1910 ------ Max loaded vehicle weight
5    3460 ------- Max Gross Train Wieght (GTW)

So given that, if you load your car to its max, your trailer and load can weigh no more than 1470kg, This is probably somewhere close to your max tow capacity, perhaps a little under, BUT if you passed your driving test after 1/1/97 it is unlikely you will be allowed to tow such a caravan legally (your kerbweight is I guess somewhere around 12-1300kg)

i tow a abi tristar unladen 840kg laden 1006kg and that is with my 2.0l auto mondeo.

pulls it no problem. have been up and down 16% gradient hill just try to get the power on early and sometimes turn the overdrive off or go into sport mode for a short while.

also use 1.8zetec mondeo this also tows my van without problems just try to anticipate hills early to get the power on.

only thing i would advise is you get the spring assistors fitted only £15 the pair and it takes 10mins to do them yourself, saves the back end sagging.

I tow a 1450 kg Hymer Nova with my 115 TDCi mondeo, the nose weight is restricted to 75 kg but this is no problem. The car would manage more easily but at this level I am nearing 95% if I load it up to it's maximum.

Quote: Originally posted by petersandyglen on 24/6/2007

---

Message for Bill Lord. I notice you have the same Van as me and you are only 8 miles away. Could we get together for a Yarn or two? Petersandyglen,

---

It's like catching a moving target catching me, mail me  on tunshill at uku dot co dot uk ( change the at and the dots to characters ) and we can try to sort something out.