Grand Caravan Capability

Newbie here. I have a 2014 Grand Caravan that is rated around 3500 pounds towing. Would this handle a 17T Hi-Lo over all kinds of terrain? A 15T would probably work for us, but they are hard to find.
Thanks for any comments or suggestions.
Don

This doesn't address the towing capacity, rather the cargo capacity:

Just speculating here ... but a van is typically carrying with 4-6 people, pets, fuel and cargo. Perhaps overhead tele's for the kids; meaning they are very heavy to start with.

For stability, your camper needs 15% (just guessing 300 pounds) of its weight on the bumper hitch, and would count against your allowable cargo weight after the mentioned people, pets,etc. My guess is that you'll come up short ... if so then you'll be overloaded/unsafe.

I could be mistaken as I'm not aware of your vans specs nor the camper you're considering.

According to Edmunds your Weights and Capacities are:


MAXIMUM TOWING CAPACITY 3600 lbs.
MAXIMUM PAYLOAD 1540 lbs.

I don't know if that's for a dressed up van or the stripper version, but obviously the more creature comforts the greater the base weight, which will eat up the payload.

So people, their belongings, food, pets, AND gasoline fuel PLUS weight on the trailer tongue can not exceed 1540 pounds. That's not much.

According to this earlier posting : http://www.hilotrailerforum.com/f52/brochure-2004-hi-lo-6/

it claims the 17T weighs 2700 pounds dry, with cargo maxing out at 3800.
For the 15T I'm finding weights of 2100 dry and 3000 max loaded.
Whatever trailer you finally hook up you'll need 15% of that LOADED weight on the bumper and that adds to the vehicles previous payload.

I believe you will need to look towards a much lighter tt, perhaps a tent type.

I agree 100% with Wrascal on this.

When I bought my 1707T, I had a Nissan Frontier with a rated tow weight limit of 5000#. It worked, but to pull the trailer up steep inclines (6% grade), I had to do it in 1st gear, and, to maintain a speed of around 35 mph, I was just under the "redline" rpm.

I also found the engine was running hot doing this in the Arizona summers.

For that reason, I upgraded my tow vehicle to an F150.

I think your Caravan would be hopelessly overloaded with any HiLo.

- Jack

I think your Caravan would be hopelessly overloaded with any HiLo.

Not knowing his actual load we shouldn't say hopeless, maybe its just him and a cat - and he's in no hurry. He can also discard the rear seats and spare tire. Maybe leaving the mother in law and kids behind.

There are lots of cargo robbing/weight reducing options if you put your mind to it.

Thanks for the responses.

Our GC is pretty bare bones and it just DW and a 40 pound dog. Per the owners manual, the stow-n-go seats take off 100 pounds. Minus the known things, I'm thinking my max capacity would be in the neighborhood of 3200 pounds, and 75% of that would be 2400 pounds.

Technically, it will work with the small unit. But, it would be close to the 75% weight. Oh well, it was a thought. FYI, a tent camper is not possible with DW.

Don

The phrase "What we've got here is failure to communicate" is a quotation from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, spoken at different points in the movie first by Strother Martin (as the Captain, a prison warden) and later Paul Newman (as Luke, a young prisoner). (I robbed this off of google).

There are three specs that need to be met to safely tow (previously we've only spoke of two), and they all revolve around how the weights are placed.

First, you can drag up to the tow rating weight of 35-3600#

Second, 15% of your trailer weight should be transferred to the rear axle as cargo weight. Your total cargo limit is 1540# and consists of everything over and above the base vehicle. That includes fuel, pets, people, laptops AND the 15% weight transferred.

Third, the actual bumper hitch has its own weight restrictions. I imagine it'd be pretty modest (my guess 350#) on that bumper but I don't know. Lets just say the hitch is labeled as OK for use up to 500# - that means that your tongue weight can't exceed 500.

Summerizing, you can pull that 3600#. But to safely tow it the van must not be loaded beyond 1540# total, the bumper hitch can't exceed (unknown)#, AND 15% of the trailer weight must be on the bumper. It is my belief (not fact) that the Hi Lo's you mentioned would place too much weight on BOTH the bumper hitch AND rear axle.

"Dragline: He was smiling... That's right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren't a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Oh, Luke. He was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker.

I think you would be alright with even a 21'. The max load allowed on the 21' is at the limit of the vans rating but you don't have to load it to the limit. Tounge is 350# but that still allows a bunch for passengers and stuff in the van. That year van automatically had the heavy duty brakes and cooling along with the same high power 3.6 in the Ram pickup, Challenger, and Jeep Grand Cherokee. More power then any F150 or Ram 1500 that was around when my camper was new (1995). The problem when towing normally is frontal area at freeway speeds but the hi-lo design takes care of that.
I would use a good trailer brake controller and a load distribution hitch.

If the Caravans were F-150s they'd have 5000-7000lb tow ratings.

That's meaning that if they were F-150s with the same cargo and axle ratings, similar power and 15" wheels. (i.e. about same size brakes)

In fact, you can configure a F-150 with a supercab and end up 2 or 300lb below what a Caravan will carry, yet still somehow have a tow rating of 5 or 6 thousand, with less reserve on the 3300lb axle from the get go because it weighs closer to 5000lb from the start.

I believe though the 1500ish figure is for a well loaded with options van, I think the cargos go as high as 1850 with nothing in the back, and the strippers are about 1750.

You can go back to the 1980s and find that the pentastar has more power than the top end V8s in the 3/4 tons that were rated 10,000lb and even they had only 11" disks on front and 9" drums on back back then.

I think it should make next to no difference for braking once you go over 2000lb with appropriate trailer brakes and controller properly set up.

But, tires, tires supplied on a GC are probably inadequate to exceed 3500.

Not going into a unibody vs full frame misdirection, fact is, last gen of Dodge full size van was unibody since late 60s and had 10k TRs, also many SUVs have been unibody last couple of decades, rated very high. It does just mean you need a little more care in hitch selection to transfer load to structure.

So you should actually be asking, why oh why are they rated so low?
i) Marketing (of more highly profitable trucks) ii)Lawyers iii) Cost to crash test... yeah actually this one surprised me, but from industry insiders I learned that factory supplied passenger vehicles have to pass tests where their crumple zones crumple right and do not unduly damage or pierce other vehicles. So they have to design factory hitches that basically fall off under duress, or fold up. Trucks get free pass. So they only go for bare minimum that won't hurt their sales much, apart from on high profit models that can soak it up and it becomes a feature of. This is why you get no towing whatsoever on modern econoboxes. They can, but the factory can't sell them with a hitch on, so they say nope (Without spending a few million extra on the testing, which probably puts $500 on invoice of every car, which is huge).

So bit of a stupid decision matrix there, if can't tow with sedan because rearenders get killed by hitch, then buy truck because you're allowed to kill rearenders with hitch.

Anyway, if you want to tow at 80 and brag how safe you are doing it, buy an oversize truck, if you want to tow at or below speed rating of trailer tires, and don't have a freakout about downshifting, then go with something that's just enough.

Hah, look at this...

https://books.google.ca/books?id=M-...#v=onepage&q=minivan braking distance&f=false

It's the old platform, but I'd say the other vehicles have only improved in about the same proportion as minivans have since then.

Minivan is 2nd best in 0-60 acceleration and 3rd best in stopping, against TRUCKS

Note that this is with the old spec 150HP 3.3 and I assume it does not have the Chrysler tow package as max towing is listed at 1750 there.

I believe that the same comparative performance is true today. Todays minivans have solo 60-0 stopping distances of around 130ft or less, todays trucks or SUVs.. well they're still calling 170ft "good" some 3/4s are up near 200ft with no load!!!

Add into this that the incidence of rollovers and center of gravity is lower in minivans than most SUVs and trucks, and that they can slalom at much higher speeds on magazine's test courses and it all adds up to the picture that they have to be dynamically safer too.

All this is affirming my belief that half tonne trucks are "overrated" for towing, no wonder some recommendations say you should only go for 75% of max with them. It is also affirming my belief that minivans are in fact somewhat underrated.

Of course, you don't want to be towing max with 7 passengers and their luggage, but put same weight in some specs of half tonne and the tow rating has gone negative, lets apply same standards.

Depending on state and local legislation you may be legally limited to the sticker weight. But I would contend, that with a 5000lb hitch and 5000lb braked trailer on a minivan, it would stop shorter, slalom faster, and accelerate acceptably compared to many half tonne trucks. By all objective standards it would be safer!

The fuse. The only point of concern in Chrysler vans is the transmission, teething troubles in the 90s gave it a bad reputation, and it has been highly improved into the 2000s but can still give trouble if abused or fed the wrong fluid, or none at all. However, hard part failures are extremely rare, it's more to do with electronic glitches, and those care not what load you've been putting it under really, they just happen, although towing while you have one could damage frictions unduly. Chrysler were already making minivans when they designed this trans, they intended it to go in heavy vehicles with V6es, don't let anyone tell you it's just a "car" transmission, it's doing what it was meant to. However, you'll find just as many horror stories about GMs 4L60E which is apparently their "light" tow vehicle transmisson. Then again Ford has not been free of transmission problems. Look on any towing site and there's people having transmission issues with everything. It's how hard you use it and how well you service it. Service it obsessively, use it sympathetically.


If you're curious why I turned up here, I was in fact looking up specs for a HiLo 22L to determine whether I thought it suitable for my Chrysler minivan, wellll yes and no, it's looking like it's gonna be around 4000lb, which for reasons given above, does not phase me in the least. However, with a 15% hitch weight recommendation, the damn thing wants to plant 600lb down on the hook. Since I cannot determine that my current factory hitch will take more than 500lb, I think I will look for something different. Otherwise we get into one of those "exact right this" and "exact right that" scenarios where all the planets have to line up to get the rig set up right, and I'd spend as much on the new hitch etc as the trailer. Also I'm not real happy with having a tongue weight so high that 2 people can't move the thing. I would have been considering a tire upgrade however, they seemed like they were going to be near limit.

Another guy who thinks minivans have got what it takes is Andy at canam rv, canamrv.ca I might end up going there to get things set up right if I need to, seems he has the industry and practical experience for it.


Anyway, just to give you my reckonings, my van has 1650lb payload available, I intend to tow with up to 900-1000lb worth of bodies, 5 people, so I can actually yank one of my benches out and gain 100lb back. So I can run with 500lb on the hitch 5 people and 2-350lb of "crap" inside before I've hit GVWR. "Average" suitcase stuffed with vacation clothes/effects comes in around 30lb, so that's like 10 suitcases, which is 2 per person, which is probably excessive really. You'd probably have a lot of that in the trailer. Reasonable expectation for what you'd "need" inside would be day packs/bags at 15lb a person, 40lb of cooler with refreshments.

Yah, if you've got 7 mafia enforcers, you'll not really be wanting to take the bosses speedboat down to the keys to make a pickup offshore, but if some of those bodies are young kids you still really get most of the tow rating, depending how nose heavy trailer is.


What I would say, if the arbitrary numbers bandied around and considered legal, were not legal, and you were to do this all on performance based facts, would be not to buy a truck to pull something until you needed a RAM 3500 dually with diesel, everything below that, the minivan will do it. Yes I'm serious, you get a custom fitted class 4 to spread 1000lb hitch weight to the structure adequately and you could tow 10,000lb with 2 people onboard just as safely as a truck rated for it. Braked of course. I don't even know why I'm saying "just as" since it's possible it could in fact be safer.... and that's gonna blow peoples minds with the apparent absurdity of it.

For what it is worth, my Hi-Lo and Coleman dealer friend used to tell customers that the Grand Caravan with V6 and the towing package was good for the Coleman popup but not so good for the Hi-Lo. Trying to stay within safe limits easily becomes hard to do. A rule of thumb using 80% of your vehicle's towing weight rating for your trailer maximum weight helps to keep you within limits.

I am not an expert so take it for what it is worth.

Yah, I'm saying "safe" is based on arbitrary numbers here, when an "overloaded" minivan seems by all the vital statistics like stopping distance and maneuverability and roll over angle seems like it should be safer than an "80%" loaded half tonne, dubbya tee eff? as they say.

Another thing seldom rated in tow rating is frontal area and the coefficient of drag of what you are towing. Sometimes it's a cooling issue more then a supporting and braking issue. So sometimes 5000# with the frontal area of a Hi-lo is better then 3500# with standard 8' wide 8' high lightweight travel trailers. Also in the case of the Grand Caravan, the distance from the centerline of the rear axle to the hitch is less then many pickups. This makes them tow even better with less tail wagging the dog. A cargo caravan with the 3rd seat removed and a 5th wheel style hitch right over the rear axle might be a pretty cool tow rig.

Hersbird said:

Another thing seldom rated in tow rating is frontal area and the coefficient of drag of what you are towing. Sometimes it's a cooling issue more then a supporting and braking issue. So sometimes 5000# with the frontal area of a Hi-lo is better then 3500# with standard 8' wide 8' high lightweight travel trailers. Also in the case of the Grand Caravan, the distance from the centerline of the rear axle to the hitch is less then many pickups. This makes them tow even better with less tail wagging the dog. A cargo caravan with the 3rd seat removed and a 5th wheel style hitch right over the rear axle might be a pretty cool tow rig.

Click to expand...

Yes, the drag thing is seldom looked at carefully. I believe that an aerodynamic package will put less overall strain on the trans even if weight is high, compared to half the weight that's a plain flat faced slab sided brick.

cD of a cube is about 1.15 so a dinky 10ft long box trailer even though it may weight 1200lb, could be straining the trans worse at highway speed than a 24ft long box trailer at 3000lb because the length of the body lowers the cD so it actually might be down to about 0.8 overall. so practically a 33% reduction in aero drag, and the rolling resistance from weight probably only went up 10%, and since that's only 10% of the total, you come out with something like 1% added from weight and 25% dropped from drag.

And that's before you drop it the same height as the vehicle, then you get more of a "Bullet train" effect, from the more aero shape of most vehicles, and whole combo probably drops to a cD of 0.4 or less. In certain circumstances, and maybe some careful tweaking, it may even be possible to get below the cD of the vehicle by itself, just with the help of the length.

Do what's right for you, but I won't even hook up my utility trailer to our Odyssey (2015). Minivans are designed to carry people, and their cargo, and not much else.

Yes if you're full of people and their cargo, you have no load capacity left for hitch weight. If you're running with 5 people, lose a removable bench for another 100lb back, keep personal effects in TV to minimum, then you've got a few hundred pounds for hitch weight left.

However, in as much as it's designed to carry people it's designed to handle a fair bit of weight and stop it in a shortish distance, and not roll over when you jink round highway debris. So the stability, load capability and brakes are all there. Caravan stops in 130ft, RAM 1500s with base brakes stop in 150ft from 60 mph, empty, loaded, it's something like 150 and 180. With 2000lb of unbraked trailer, Caravan can haul it to a stop in under 190, and the RAM 1500 is probably not managing less than 200ft, put brakes on and set them up, and theoretically there should be even less braking load than a 2000lb trailer, however heavy it is, otherwise, why does nobody have unbraked ratings higher than 2000lb?... so if we suspect with trailer brakes properly set up, you can stop a minivan in less distance than a RAM 1500 with the same trailer, then what's left to worry about?

HardlyLurking
it seems that you like your minivan and just like anything else, minivan were designed with a purpose of moving people, use of inside space for most capacity, but I don't believe they were designed for towing, sure there are 2 dr sport cars, like mustange or a camaro with best braking and power rating, but they were designed for a specific purpose and towing is not it.
the other issue with front wheel drive is the power is all the way in front and without going into specific with phusics, their towing capacity is less than rwd, look at the new full size vans from ford with fwd, they are rated less than the prior models that had rwd with body on frame.

Yes, he obviously has been mislead.

HL, refer back to my Jan 12? post. There are several aspects involved with towing, and they limit what any vehicle can "safely" tow.

Starting point: forget how much your vehicle engine can pull/drag/ or is claimed capable of handling, that is all secondary to these basic weight facts. Also forget Cd and rollover data.

First is how much weight can be attached to the bumper. Just a guess but I'll venture only a MAX of 350 pounds for a typical minivan, before it'll eventually break loose from the bumper/frame. You'll also want your front wheels to remain properly loaded (for steering) and headlights to still point down the road, not into oncoming eyes.

Closely related Second, to safely tow, you need a MINIMUN of 10% (Ideally 15%) of the trailers total weight on the bumper. Example, a camper with a total loaded weight of 3000 pounds requires a minimum of 300 pounds (but recommended weight of 450 pounds) on the bumper. This is to insure that it handles true/straight (no tail wagging the dog).

Third, the tow vehicle axles and tires are capable of only safely carrying so many pounds. Most minivans, when fueled, loaded with passengers and all of their cargo will now typically approach this maximum, leaving very little available weight to safely hook up a trailer. BUT, even if you remove 500 pounds of seats and cargo, you still must follow the above limitations.

The reality is a typical minvan may be successful in pulling a lite weight trailer loaded with a golf cart, but is not designed to carry a camper across the interstates at 65 MPH.

^^^ Nicely stated, Racketycoon!

The simple fact is, you run out of Tow Vehicle long before you overtax its engine.

- Jack