I have a 3.8 liter Chrysler van, have you had any experience pulling a trailer. I am told I can pull 2080 pounds gross weight, however I will have things in the van a well. I am not going to be pulling over 2000 pounds total. Maybe a 5 x 10 foot trailer.
Your thoughts would be apprecaited.
Mark 314-267-6944 if you would like to call.
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314 is in the St Louis area so your pretty much a flat lander. You have to remember that when you get into hill country or the mountains that 3.8 is going to be sweating! You need to remember that towing your capacity on flat trips just once in a while will be OK but towing your capacity going uphill changes things drastically. I pull a 14' tandem axle with a Ford F150 and my towing capacity is 7,900. I generally keep it around 6,000 for regular trips. It does fine trough the mountains and hill country.
You can do it. It will be painful. But a 5x10 is a relatively small trailer, and the minivan can probably handle the load. Leo's tips are sound -- pay attention!
1) Make sure that the hitch is the proper height for the tongue of the trailer. When viewed in profile, the trailer floor should be parallel to the ground, not tipped up into the air.
2) Brakes on the trailer are a must. Electric brakes are best, but you probably won't find them on a small trailer. Surge brakes are better than no brakes at all, and won't require a brake controller in the tow vehicle.
3) The weight of the empty trailer figures into the GVW, and is likely to be around 600-800 pounds. So if the minivan can haul 2080 total, the amount of material in the trailer will be limited to about 1200 pounds, minus your weight plus any passengers and luggage. You can see that this may limit the overall weight you can carry to the point of being inconvenient. This is why I upgraded to a larger trailer, and then to a larger tow vehicle.
I hauled two different trailers with a 4.8L Jeep, a 6x10 Wells Cargo with a GVW of about 2500 pounds and a larger 7x17 Pace v-nose, that tops out at about 7000 GVW. Believe it or not, the Jeep had the power to tow the larger trailer, but it was slow. The7x17 trailer's wheelbase was also a lot longer than the Jeep, which caused some wagging and tense moments, especially downhill in a cross-wind. I now tow that trailer with a Toyota Tundra 5.7L truck. The trailer has weight balancing rods between the trailer and the truck, which help keep everything level, and balances out the tongue weight properly. It's a world of difference. The Tundra with the larger trailer gets better gas mileage than the Jeep did. Not surprising, considering how hard the Jeep hard to work. The Tundra is designed for towing, with a GCVW of about 10,500 pounds. It gets 13 mpg on some hauls, as good as some vans. But it takes practice to maneuver it into shows, park it, store it... This trailer is a bit too large, but it's what I've got at the present time.
I've learned the hard way that this trailer is a little shorter then a u haul. Full I bet it's only about 130 lbs more. Canvas is pretty light. I wonder how much a trimline weighs anyway! hmmmm
I did a small experiment with my trailer. I had to deliver a a set of canvas prints to a restaurant about 40 miles away, filled up the car went there, got back, filed it up again and wrote down the mileage.
2003 Subaru Outback 185,000 miles.
I got 31 MPH for the trip (a little high I feel - normally I'm in the 27mph range)
hooked up the trailer, put tent polls in it for extra weight and the 3x7 foot canvas I was delivering and went to deliver it to a different town, again, about 40 miles away.
Got back filled up the car.
20mpg (a little low as I had 10 miles of city stop and go).
Point is I figure about a 6-8 mpg drop.
I have two friends who pulledtrailers with minivans. And both had transmission troubles after a while. Both trailers were 5x8 Haulmarks.
One, who has salsas, bought a new Chrysler minivan with the 4.0 litre engine and he says it's a world of difference.
Hi Mark,
I'm certainly not an expert on this, but I did pull a 5X8 trailer behind a Subaru Outback, 6 Cylinder 3.6 liter engine for 3 years or about 70,000 miles. Though car no longer pulls a trailer, it still runs beautifully at well over 100,000 miles. That said, there are things to keep in mind when pulling a trailer with a car.
* I think your engine would struggle with a 5X10 trailer especially if you have mountains to climb... most of my shows were in the flat lands of the mid-west. I recall pulling the trailer over the mountains of Virginia for a show in Roanoke, the car struggled. You will need to check with a certified mechanic for your vehicle. I suspect 5X8 would be the largest size that you would want to go with.
* My 5X8 trailer was equipped with surge brakes and I highly recommend this if pulling the trailer with a car like vehicle. The brakes on a car are just not heavy duty and it takes a while to stop that much weight. My first year pulling a trailer, I rented from U-haul. At the end of the year I had to replace the breaks.
* My Subaru is equipped with a Sportshift transmission, which means I could take it out of automatic and put it into a manual shift mode. This worked very well. What you don't want to do is have your car shift into overdrive...the transmission will have to work too hard with any change of terrain. I would always manually shift to 4th. I would also change transmission fluid annually, well below the recommended mileage for change.
* Balancing the load can be tricky. I suspect the allowable tongue weight for your vehicle will be about 200lbs. That means that the bulk of your weight needs to go over the trailer axial. Too much weight in the front of the trailer will create problems. The suspension system of a car is not made to handle a greater tongue weight than recommended. Sure there are other ways to balance the load, but it will cost you to rig your trailer
* Your gas mileage will take quite a hit. I was down about 8 miles per gallon. Oh, one other thing, many state tolls will cost you twice as much for the extra axial.
I've since traded the trailer for an 8 cylinder Chevy Express cargo van. No regrets and much easier to pack up and unload. No problems making it over mountains. Hope this helps,
Cheers, LC
They are super convenient since you can leave them packed up all the time, though.