Towing with a TDI

Thanks for the chuckles! A few comments:

1. The scientific community also brought us "global warming" so you're
right - you can't trust at least some of those bozos.
2. We'll probably go Euro style some day. After all, you brought us
the Mercedes and the Aston Martin, both great cars. All we did was
bring you the moon.
3. Yaaas... Powers of ten. Let's talk about dodecafurlongs and
hectares. Microhenries are useful, however.
4. Nah... Not calling a spade a spade is the first step to Sharia
law. Note that was a reference to a card game.
5. I'm neither liberal, socialist, Chinese, nor Russian, and I did use
the metric system for my engineering degree. I simply like the system
of knots and feet for my flying.
6. Really? Did the French invent the metric system? If so, I learned
something today (a good thing!)
7. Actually, I do understand metric (see 5 above).
8. My comments were in actual numeric order.
9. Spring is approaching in the northern himisphere. Or is that the
northern 5 decispheres?
10. This is all in fun. I hope you took it that way.

:-D

On 2/19/2015 7:49 AM, wrote:
On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 4:46:10 PM UTC-6, Dan Marotta wrote:
Why can't we all go metric? Because 10s of litres per 100 miles is
a silly measurement compared to miles per gallon. Same with knots
airspeed and lift/sink vs. km/hr and m/s. How about inches per
teaspoon for mileage?






On 2/18/2015 7:44 AM,
wrote:



On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 7:00:07 AM UTC-6, Nigel Pocock wrote:


I did about 7500 miles towing trailers round europe last year behind a SWB
toyota land cruiser tdi and a VW passat TDi130 estate.
With the land cruiser you didnt notice you had anything on the back (even
with a Nimbus 4 in a cobra trailer). However fuel consumption was in the
low 20mpg and it was uncomfortable.

The Passat was great. Measured fuel consumption was 47mpg with a LS6/18 in
a tube trailer. Very comfortable and stable up to well in excess of the
legal lmit.

As said elsewhere the TDI engine characteristics are great for towing.
Loads of mid range torque that avoids constant gear changing that you get
with a similar size petrol engine.

The trick with stability with trailers is to get the weight distibution
corect. You want as much as possible over the axle(s) but with a sensible
amount on the draw bar. (not hundreds of pounds as I have seen advocated
here) If you put all the spare gubbins in the front and back of the trailer
you end up with a "dumbell" which is potentially unstable.

Nigel





Nigel, your mpg numbers are obviously based on British gallons which are kind of an inflated type of imperial gallons (too lazy to look it up right now). I think our mpg values would be 10-20% lower than your numbers. Why can't we all go metric???





--

Dan Marotta
Dan and Steve,

Here are a couple more good solid American-value based reasons not to go metric:
1. The scientific community is all metric. Can't trust those bozos.
2. You want us to go Euro-style? Will never happen in this country
3. Powers of ten are too easy to convert. We rather stay with funny conversion factors and fractions, keeps the mind sharp.
4. Isn't metric the first step to Sharia law?
6. Only liberal socialists (and the Chinese/Russians) use the metric system.
5. The French invented the metric nonsense
6. I don't understand metric

Anybody else? Did I miss any other 'good' reasons?

--
Dan Marotta