Joined
·
69 Posts
Hey all,
Like many of you I'm interested in understanding the range impact of towing trailers. Personally, I have several that I'd like to tow - everything from a small trailer with a 14' NRS raft to a 27' travel trailer. I have access to many different types of trailers for testing and this morning I logged a control drive on one of two routes for testing.
The first route is a flat 62mi loop that we use for testing our specialty vehicles (at work). This route has 679' of elevation gain.
The second route is 95 miles total with about 2500' of elevation gain. The majority of the climbing is in the first 1/2 (it's an out and back) so I should be able to make it home if it starts consuming more than I'm anticipating.
I ran the first route this morning driving the speed limit as a control in Conserve mode. I'm going to repeat the test in towing mode (no trailer, however). I know that you can tow in conserve mode (because I tried it) but I'm admittedly unsure of the differences between tow mode and conserve mode (I'm assuming 4wd vs 2wd at minimum). I'm hoping that this gives me a comparison of the energy used just by switching from conserve to tow mode. While I'd love to run these tests in triplicate, I'm just not sure I have time to drive these routes that many times.
I AM planning to run these courses in both conserve and towing modes in the following configurations:
What other things would people like to see tested? I'm not making any promises, but I would be curious to hear other ideas out there as I get some testing on this truck.
Seth
Like many of you I'm interested in understanding the range impact of towing trailers. Personally, I have several that I'd like to tow - everything from a small trailer with a 14' NRS raft to a 27' travel trailer. I have access to many different types of trailers for testing and this morning I logged a control drive on one of two routes for testing.
The first route is a flat 62mi loop that we use for testing our specialty vehicles (at work). This route has 679' of elevation gain.
The second route is 95 miles total with about 2500' of elevation gain. The majority of the climbing is in the first 1/2 (it's an out and back) so I should be able to make it home if it starts consuming more than I'm anticipating.
I ran the first route this morning driving the speed limit as a control in Conserve mode. I'm going to repeat the test in towing mode (no trailer, however). I know that you can tow in conserve mode (because I tried it) but I'm admittedly unsure of the differences between tow mode and conserve mode (I'm assuming 4wd vs 2wd at minimum). I'm hoping that this gives me a comparison of the energy used just by switching from conserve to tow mode. While I'd love to run these tests in triplicate, I'm just not sure I have time to drive these routes that many times.
I AM planning to run these courses in both conserve and towing modes in the following configurations:
- Unladen (control)
- Pulling a flatbed with ~5-6000# weight (to match the weight of the travel trailer below)
- Pulling a 27' ~5-6000# travel trailer
- Pulling a flatbed with raft and motorcycle rack (much lighter and middle of the road on wind resistance).
What other things would people like to see tested? I'm not making any promises, but I would be curious to hear other ideas out there as I get some testing on this truck.
Seth