Towing with a Toyota Sienna

[commodor47]

Hi Sara,

Welcome to the board and to the TM family. We are members of the New England Pilgrim Chapter of the TrailBlazers and will be at the Spring Rally (in May) at the Mystic KOA. Looking forward to meeting you guys then. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions.

Dick

For the last two years I've been towing our 3124KB with our 2004 Toyota Sienna. Here's what I did to prepare the Sienna.

First of all make sure you have the Class III hitch receiver. If you bought the towing package from the dealer they might have put on a Class II hitch. The Class III is the one with a 2" square receiver.

Second I went to Camping World and had them install the Prodigy Brake Controller. They also ran the wiring back to the hitch and installed a Bargman electrical receiver.

Third make sure you have a WDH when you go and pick up the TM, the person I bought my TM from sold his Equalizer WDH with the TM. As you can see from the attached Pix, the Sienna hitch is very low. Without a WDH you will be dragging your hitch on every bump in the road. With the WDH the Sienna only settled down about 1 - 2 inches. I had no problems steering because the WDH put weight on the front drive wheels.

We've taken our TM on many outings, mostly Florida, Geogia & East Coast trips. The worst mountain areas that we navigated were up in the North East of Georgia, up to Unicoi State Park. I wouldn't try any big mountains on the West coast though.

The biggest problem so far has been the freezing up of the front brake calipers, and new brake pads. The Sienna pulls the TM without a lot of problems, I've had it up to 70Mph on flat Florida turnpikes, but try to stay between 60 - 65 Mph. I normally get about 19 Mpg average without the TM, when on trips I typically get about 15 Mpg.

I've recently moved to a Tundra as my TV, since we will be taking more trips out west.

Originally Posted by Mr. Adventure

If you have the tow package, then you already have the transmission cooler. You really need to use a Weight Distributing Hitch, too!

I could not find a full description of the tow package and whether it included a transmission cooler. Either way it takes about 1 minute to determine if the cooler is there.

Our Sienna had the towing package, but the shop foreman told us to have a transmission cooler installed for towing.

[MariaG]

I'm wondering why the assorted auto manufacturers don't all mean the same thing when they say "tow package". We have the original window sticker for our van and it says tow package, but there was no transmission cooler, hitch, or wiring harness to the bumper, we had to install all of those. According to the local Dodge dealership, "tow package" for this vehicle meant a heavier duty radiator and place to plug a trailer wiring harness into. Go figure. Luckily, my husband is a mechanic. *g*

I think that is true for the Sienna, also, MariaG. We had to have all that installed, too.

[Mr. Adventure]

Originally Posted by rubydoodle

Our Sienna had the towing package, but the shop foreman told us to have a transmission cooler installed for towing.

You're absolutely right, if your 2007 Sienna is like the 2008. The transmision cooler is not included in the tow package. It's really hard to figure out exactly what the towing status of a vehicle is without owning it because there are so many variables. I guess I shouldn't be guessing!

http://www.toyota.com/sienna/options.html

Originally Posted by ng2951

I could not find a full description of the tow package and whether it included a transmission cooler. Either way it takes about 1 minute to determine if the cooler is there.

...for the none mechanically inclined, can you explain the 1 minute process?

Originally Posted by Kentwesley

...for the none mechanically inclined, can you explain the 1 minute process?

Its pretty simple if you can recognize the transmission. If a cooler has been installed, there should be two pipes coming from the transmission headed towards the radiator. The transmission radiator should be separate but near the engine radiator.

Originally Posted by ng2951

Its pretty simple if you can recognize the transmission. If a cooler has been installed, there should be two pipes coming from the transmission headed towards the radiator. The transmission radiator should be separate but near the engine radiator.

I think most vehicles with automatic transmissions have a cooler as mentioned. But with towing you would either need an cooler with more capacity than standard, or ideally, an auxillary transmission cooler. The auxillary transmission cooler will probably be somewhere between the radiator and front grill where you can easily see it. The lines from this will go to (or from) the regular transmission cooler adjacent to the engine cooling radiator.

Chap