VW Golf towing delema

news · 2004-09-16T17:51:38+00:00

I've heard of other VW Golf owners towing lightly so I know it's feasable.In my manual it just so happens, that my model's towing capacity says"information not available at time of printing". So I was at the dealertoday, and after about 30 minutes of calling and searching he told me it was777 lbs, after he talked to one of his mechanics. Funny thing is when he wason the phone with VW, they didn't have an answer for him.I'm not 100% confident in this number, since the other two models listed inmy manual are substantially higher (1260lbs for v6, 1000lbs for diesel90hp). My 4 cylinder turbo is about 120 hp. Maybe turbo has a negativeeffect on towing hence the much lower towing capacity, or diesel improvestowing capacity with less horse power, I don't know I'm not a car expert.But if it's only 777 lbs. that puts me in a bad situation because I can'ttow any enclosed trailer realisitcally. A small enclosed trailer, either a4x6, or one of those mini-sporty looking ones weights in at 600lbs. So thatonly leaves me 177lbs maximum of cargo weight, which isn't a whole lot. I'mweighing my stuff out and it's probably going to be 200-300lbs.My car is a VW 2000 GTI. If anyone knows how I can get a hold of theofficial towing capacity, online preferably, that would be great. And thatis, if there is an official towing capacity. For all I know they left it outof the manual because they just never bothered to determine the towingcapacity. My only other alternative is to rent a u-haul with a trailer totow my car, which is going to cost me $1300 to move, and I don't need evenhave the truck space.

Sep 16, 2004 23 Replies

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Mike Hackett 21 years ago

Thanks for the info, though I couldn't tell though whether that's a turbo or not. I think that could be the issue with gas engines. Consider for example the recent thread about synthetic oil, suggests something may be a bit marginal in that area, and dragging a heavy load could put it over the edge. All speculation on my part, of course, but it is sort of funny that that's the only engine VWoA didn't give a rating for.

Turbo gas engines always seem like they are running on borrowed time in the best of circumstances. ;-)

Mike

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Ingo Braune 21 years ago

No, it's not a turbo, it's the new gasoline-direct-injection engine.

Almost all new (european) cars use sythetic oil (turbo or not) mostly because of change intervals extended to 30-50 000km.

That seems to be a VWoA thing, over here the rating for the A4 1.8t was in the 1300-1500kg range, and yes of course it could be had with a trailer hitch from the factory. Back to your "box" trailer. How fast do you want to go with it? Assuming the 150HP turbo will have a v_max of about 220km/h, and considering that wind drag is proportional to the third power of the (air-)speed you would be able to go over 170km/h with a trailer that doubled the wind-drag compared to driving solo. Even with a trippled wind-drag you would still be able to run over 150km/h at full throttle. Do you really want to go that fast with a trailer?

Ingo

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Mike Hackett 21 years ago

Thanks for that bit of info, certainly makes me feel better about the idea. Might have missed that if you mentioned it earlier.

Mike

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ba 9 years ago

replying to Woodchuck, ba wrote: I have a 2004 TDI Golf and have a hitch on it, put on at u-Haul

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