Quote:
Originally Posted by fotozeman
I have a Nissan Quest MiniVan, rated 3500#. I went to a dealer today, and they basically told me that I would not be able to tow a Trail Manor, not even the 2619, that basically all I would be able to tow would be a pop up. I am new to trailering, so I am a bit confused what I can really tow.
In simple terms, does anyone have any suggestions for what to look for in a trailer weight that I can tow with my Quest?
Also, does anybody have any experiences of towing Trail Manor trailers, possibly the 2619, or 2720, with vehicles rated at 3500# such as mini vans?
We really like the design of the Trail Manor Trailers better than the Pop Up Trailers, but if we really shouldn't tow them with our Quest, then we will have to begin searching other options.
Thanks for any ideas or help.
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In this thread, I provide the exact weights for towing my 3023 with a Toyota Highlander:
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ad.php?t=10652
Separately in this forum, we have discussed lots of things about towing. It turns out that tow ratings are guidelines, not laws, and that there is a lot of variation in owner experience and expectation. There are also major variations in how people use these trailers. Major parts of a manufacturer's tow rating include not only engineering analysis, but also durability (will the transmission hold up?) and legal issues (are people really going to drive the speed limit when towing, or are they going to drive like they do otherwise and then blame us for their problems?). In other words, opinions are many and facts are few. For these reasons I highly value real world actual owner experience. Search Nissan Quest on this forum to look for people who have actually done this, and maybe message them separately to find out more about what they've learned.
I almost never tell someone else what to do, but I do speculate about what I might do under a specific circumstance. Here is how I would approach your situation:
- If under warranty, I would be cautious about violating the specs or discussing that very much with the people responsible for warranty repairs. Instead, I'd be talking to RV dealers who are more likely to know about this stuff. In my experience, car dealers don't know much about towing because people there haven't done much of it except for lightweight trailers.
- I would find out exactly what the owner's manual and driver's side door post sticker say about that 3500# rating. Many manufacturers give you a tow rating, and then take a big chunk of it away by telling you to subtract tow vehicle loads from the trailer tow rating. My Toyota axle and tow ratings are actually on the generous side , where the sum of the axle weights is substantially greater than the gross vehicle weight rating (meaning that you don't have to balance the tow vehicle to the last pound in order to be able to use the whole vehicle rated capacity), and where the difference between the tow vehicle loaded on the scale and the Gross Combined Weight Rating is still more than 4000#.
- I think it is very important to know what you tow. My 3023 is 2915# in the brochure and 3950# on the road lightly loaded. But a 2619 should be able to be pretty darned close to 3500#, if not under.
- For all these reasons, I'd expect a Dodge Caravan to have issues with a TrailManor, yet we have owners reporting good experiences. I ascribe this to people being cautious about their towing speeds (65mph on a flat road on a hot day is harder on the transmission than you might think) and not living or vacationing in extreme places (altitudes above 6000 feet, unpaved trails, and 50 miles off into the boondocks).
- I would ALWAYS use a properly adjusted weight distributing hitch and brake controller, even from home to the storage yard.
- Depending a bit on the actual tow vehicle axle and payload ratings, I'm thinking I'd like to try towing with a Nissan Quest before deciding it wasn't going to work (unless I lived out West, of course, where the consensus of user experience seems to suggest that more tow vehicle is always better). A Nissan Quest has enough horsepower to do this, but I think I'd probably want the factory tow package. You WILL need a 500# rated hitch receiver (not 350#) because you will have nearly that in tongue weight under the best of circumstances.