Hello,

I have a Dodge Caravan (V6 3.3)

My question is this. I am looking to buy a 17 foot travel trailer. In the specs it says it weighs 2500 lbs. The gentleman at the dealership says my mini-van can tow it with no problems. Of course I am sceptical, because he may just want to sell it. I will be getting the electric break system hooked up along with a Tranmission Cooling package. I know enough to take things slow when I do tow anything, but I want to make sure that I don't ruin my mini-van after towing the trailer only a few times.

In the Owner's manual it says max combined weight of vehicle and trailer not to exceed 6600lbs. So is that simply 6600-2500=4100lbs left over for the weight of the car and its passengers and contents when we go camping?

Any thoughts?

(see picture of trailer type)

[IMG]local://upfiles/41778/BFE5A13AC449474DBE7CC1D41F353A59.jpg[/IMG]

 

My gut would say the van is not capable. But check it out yourself...

Inside one of the trailer's kitchen cabinets will be a little sticker with weights listed. My hunch is that the 2500lbs. (if accurate) is a dry weight without any fluids in the trailers tanks or without any luggage, food, recreation equipment, pots/pans, etc. All that stuff adds up!

A quick calc.assuming 2500lb. dry weight....

6600lb GCVW - approximate 4300 caravan curb weight - 2500lb trailer dry weight = 200lbs overweight without any fluids, luggage, people, etc.

 

Also, check out what the tongue weight of the trailer is and compare that to the max. tongue weight in the GC owner's manual and the class of receiver hitch you have.

 

I would say run dont walk away from that dealer. He is full of crap.


http://www-5.dodge.com/towing5/D/home.html
www.trailerlife.com

 

You have some good advice here, but frankly, the Dodge or Chrysler minivans are somewhat fragile. From a marketing standpoint all of the vans have to be competitive as far as towing capaicity, but non of them are very good at sustained towing. I wouldn't make a habit of it with your Dodge--your transmission will fail prematurely.

 

I'd agree with sumncguy. I've looked at travel trailers. My wife has an 05 GC and I have an 02 Dakota. My guess is that the salesman looked at the GVWR of your van and compared it to the dry wieght of your van. Your van could probably handle the empty trailer as long as your family is going to follow in another vehicle with all your camping gear. Look at the GVWR of the trailer,and be able to tow that,because your're definitely going to fill it up before you tow it!

I think you should take a look at a small folding trailer. They're much lighter and have less wind resistance. I've seen a Durango flipped over in a ditch. A cross-wind caught the trailer.

 

I would say to anyone that travels daily in heavy traffic with loads of people or plan on travelling and pulling a trailer, put an external tranny cooler on. They save your tranny and dont be afraid to change the tranny fluid every couple of years or sooner!! Ive done ours twice already(change fluid) when we bought it 2 years ago and again last month!! no noticable problems except the o ring behind the torque converter leaks a little!!

 

Sumncguy has summed it up quite succinctly and good follow up from Cdn Colin.The GC is definately not the correct vehicle to tow this trailer. I bought a pop up trailer a couple of years back (2000# dry weight) and it tows quite nicely. The low profile helps a lot, the wind resistance of this travel trailer will kill you. Incidentally when I purchased the salesguy was also trying to sell me one of these travel trailers to tow behindmy GC. I pointed out he didn't have a clue, turned around, walked out, and purchased mypop upelsewhere.

 

Thanks all for the info. But not only did I talk with the dealership, I also called around and talked to people from Van and Truck World. He said no matter what you do, even if you don't tow anything you may have tranny issues. Those tranny'sare notorious for going. He said that a tranny cooler will help.And since the trailer is only a single axle I shouldn't need electric brakes.
We'll see I guess.

In that one link from above (www.trailerlife.com)it says my caravancan tow 3800 lbs, but with the'optional trailer-prepartion group required'

What does that mean?

This link below, it says 1800lbs. No wonder I get mixed messages

http://www-5.dodge.com/towing5/D/home.html

 

You really need to look at all the weight definitions.

GCVW = GROSS COMBINED VEHICLE WEIGH thats the truck and everything in it and the trailer, everything in it.

GVW = Gross vehicle weight both the truck and trailer will have this.
GAWR = Gross axle weight rating .. how much an axle can handle.
Payload = Max the truck can carry ..... GVW - actual weight of the truck = Payload
Tongue weight = downward force exerted on the truck from the weight of the trailer (and everything in it). Should usually be 10-15% of the GVW of the trailer.

So, if the truck weighs 6000 lbs with all fluids and a full tank of gas and the GVW is 8000. These number are abitrary. Then that means that I have 2000 total lbs to play with.

If all the passengers, all the weight added to the truck, the tongue weight, and what ever stuff you have in the trailer .. clothes, food, bikes, floats, bath and kitchen utensils blah blah blah .. is greater then 2000 lbs, then you have execeeded the trucks capacity no matter what the max amount (in weight) you can tow ... you know what ....

Go here http://www.geocities.com/vidalch_1/sumguyscamper.html its a cheap web site I through together to use when necessary. On that page you will see a Tow Demonstrator.
Download it and plug in the numbers.