Towing with a TDI

At 14:44 18 February 2015, 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???


47mpgUK =39mpg US = 6l/100km
My brain hurts now

Apples / apples comparisons really aren't possible between US and anywhere else. Emissions regs are a bit different in USA, resulting in lower economy US for both diesel and gas. As well, USA gasoline is diluted with ethanol for political reasons (basically, Archer Daniels Midland corporation owns more of Congress than "We, the People") which further erodes gas economy.

T8