Towing with a minivan, and truck obsessions...
Well, let me be the first to say that I think you can pull a trailmanor just great at 8500 feet with a Chrysler/Dodge minivan. But it's less clear how well that will work for you if you do it very often.
- You have about a third less horsepower than you and your TV would have in my neighborhood, so you'll spend a bigger part of your towing experience at full throttle than Bill or I will. And you have much bigger and longer hills to climb than I do.
- Your TV is rated for towing 3000#+ with the factory tow package, but I promise you that our friends in the car business have never thought much about durability at 8500 feet when they offer opinions about tow ratings. The attached file is a couple pages from a 2005 Caravan owner's manual
- The glass jaw for the lighter tow vehicle is often the transmission. Bill's Caravan experience could come sooner for someone who lives at 8500 feet and drives at full throttle a lot. Or maybe they last longer there, with the lowered horsepower and all. Remembering, of course, that new cars are much more expensive than new transmissions, you have to make your own decision, here.
- However, the most important issue is safety. For that, it's about how the vehicle stops, not how fast it can go. Think carefully about how often you want to approach those 5+ mile down grades, too.
Honestly, I think I'd be happier doing this habitually in the heavier vehicle for all of these issues. What's the difference about doing it once and doing it all the time? Once, you can pay extra attention. Once you might have the discipline to drive 10 mph slower. Once, your vehicle might be able to forgive you better than for something you're going to do 100 times. The bottom line is that in challenging circumstances, you must provide the extra margin for being in a place the manufacturers haven't expected you to be, and I expect that you'll find you'll be happier with your TV in Kansas than in Colorado.
The people of altitude who do this all the time are less flexible about the lighter TV's for important reasons.
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