I have a 3.8 liter Chrysler van, have you had any experience pulling a trailer. I am told I can pull 2080 pounds gross weight, however I will have things in the van a well. I am not going to be pulling over 2000 pounds total. Maybe a 5 x 10 foot trailer.
Your thoughts would be apprecaited.
Mark 314-267-6944 if you would like to call.
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314 is in the St Louis area so your pretty much a flat lander. You have to remember that when you get into hill country or the mountains that 3.8 is going to be sweating! You need to remember that towing your capacity on flat trips just once in a while will be OK but towing your capacity going uphill changes things drastically. I pull a 14' tandem axle with a Ford F150 and my towing capacity is 7,900. I generally keep it around 6,000 for regular trips. It does fine trough the mountains and hill country.
You can do it. It will be painful. But a 5x10 is a relatively small trailer, and the minivan can probably handle the load. Leo's tips are sound -- pay attention!
1) Make sure that the hitch is the proper height for the tongue of the trailer. When viewed in profile, the trailer floor should be parallel to the ground, not tipped up into the air.
2) Brakes on the trailer are a must. Electric brakes are best, but you probably won't find them on a small trailer. Surge brakes are better than no brakes at all, and won't require a brake controller in the tow vehicle.
3) The weight of the empty trailer figures into the GVW, and is likely to be around 600-800 pounds. So if the minivan can haul 2080 total, the amount of material in the trailer will be limited to about 1200 pounds, minus your weight plus any passengers and luggage. You can see that this may limit the overall weight you can carry to the point of being inconvenient. This is why I upgraded to a larger trailer, and then to a larger tow vehicle.
I hauled two different trailers with a 4.8L Jeep, a 6x10 Wells Cargo with a GVW of about 2500 pounds and a larger 7x17 Pace v-nose, that tops out at about 7000 GVW. Believe it or not, the Jeep had the power to tow the larger trailer, but it was slow. The7x17 trailer's wheelbase was also a lot longer than the Jeep, which caused some wagging and tense moments, especially downhill in a cross-wind. I now tow that trailer with a Toyota Tundra 5.7L truck. The trailer has weight balancing rods between the trailer and the truck, which help keep everything level, and balances out the tongue weight properly. It's a world of difference. The Tundra with the larger trailer gets better gas mileage than the Jeep did. Not surprising, considering how hard the Jeep hard to work. The Tundra is designed for towing, with a GCVW of about 10,500 pounds. It gets 13 mpg on some hauls, as good as some vans. But it takes practice to maneuver it into shows, park it, store it... This trailer is a bit too large, but it's what I've got at the present time.
I've learned the hard way that this trailer is a little shorter then a u haul. Full I bet it's only about 130 lbs more. Canvas is pretty light. I wonder how much a trimline weighs anyway! hmmmm
I did a small experiment with my trailer. I had to deliver a a set of canvas prints to a restaurant about 40 miles away, filled up the car went there, got back, filed it up again and wrote down the mileage.
2003 Subaru Outback 185,000 miles.
I got 31 MPH for the trip (a little high I feel - normally I'm in the 27mph range)
hooked up the trailer, put tent polls in it for extra weight and the 3x7 foot canvas I was delivering and went to deliver it to a different town, again, about 40 miles away.
Got back filled up the car.
20mpg (a little low as I had 10 miles of city stop and go).
Point is I figure about a 6-8 mpg drop.
I have two friends who pulledtrailers with minivans. And both had transmission troubles after a while. Both trailers were 5x8 Haulmarks.
One, who has salsas, bought a new Chrysler minivan with the 4.0 litre engine and he says it's a world of difference.
They are super convenient since you can leave them packed up all the time, though.