Tow car with roof box

Carrerasax

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So, this w/e I was passed in opposite direction by a MH towing a small car with a roof box!!!!🤣🤣
Isn’t there enough room in the empty car.
Surely enough room in MH and car.
Roof box contents, I wonder 🤔
 
Carrerasax said:
So, this w/e I was passed in opposite direction by a MH towing a small car with a roof box!!!!🤣🤣
Isn’t there enough room in the empty car.
Surely enough room in MH and car.
Roof box contents, I wonder 🤔
Click to expand...
Was it one those A class MHs that is huge but only 2 berth by any chance?
 
Carrerasax said:
So, this w/e I was passed in opposite direction by a MH towing a small car with a roof box!!!!🤣🤣
Isn’t there enough room in the empty car.
Surely enough room in MH and car.
Roof box contents, I wonder 🤔
Click to expand...
Might use the roofbox when driving the SMALL car? Seems perfectly reasonable to me (if all they needed in a tow vehicle was storage space, maybe they would have bought a trailer?)
 
wildebus said:
Might use the roofbox when driving the SMALL car? Seems perfectly reasonable to me (if all they needed in a tow vehicle was storage space, maybe they would have bought a trailer?)
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No, I get that a tow car is useful for getting around locally while touring, but a roof box for these outings🤔
Unless all car seats taken and they have loads of gear even for local trips???
Just made me smile as seemed very amusing 🤣🤣
 
Simples, they had so little usable payload left in the Tupperware that they had piled everything else into the car.
Dozens of cans of beer in the footwells, snacks in the roof box charcoal and logs for the Bbq in the boot.

HTH
 
Carrerasax said:
No, I get that a tow car is useful for getting around locally while touring, but a roof box for these outings🤔
Unless all car seats taken and they have loads of gear even for local trips???
Just made me smile as seemed very amusing 🤣🤣
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Totally agree with Wildebus. Motor Home as a base, roof box for your kit. There's no boot space in a tow car, so if you've got fishing rods, inflatable dinghies or SUPs and you're 4 up in the roof box they go.
 
Might bugger up the GTW if they go too far.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Might bugger up the GTW if they go too far.
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A proportion of the motor home community aren't exactly the most honest people on the planet so many won't give a stuff about being overweight!

When I started working on Ex Ambulances I was shocked at the amount of people turning up without MOTs or the correct license and I soon realised that once someone goes down the dishonesty track e.g VED evaders aren't bothered about lying to their insurers or driving overweight vans or driving >3500kg vans without a C1 and doing up to a 200 mile round trip without an MOT didn't seem to bother some either (clearly Anpr is not the all seeing thing we are led to believe)

I was so appalled I stopped working on them.

I suspect a larger proportion of owners especially newbies are just dumb though and have never even considered weighing their vehicles. You've only got to look at the amount of LWB and especially XLWB Sprinter/Crafters that turn up to events right down on the bump stops to realise the DVSA aren't pulling enough vans over.
 
ANPR seems to work really well, but you have to be seen by one for anything to happen, most rozzer mobiles have them around here and Mway cars do too, and there are static ones but I think the roll out is still early days.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Might bugger up the GTW if they go too far.
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I wonder if people even know what their towing limit is, let alone the GTW?

Even people who DO know their GTW often assume any spare unused payload under the GVW of the van can be transferred to the trailer (or toad) as long as the total remains under the GTW. That is not always the case.
A lot of the Motorhomes with the Alko chassis's are limited to 1000Kg Towing regardless of the GTW and GVW. only the very smallest 'toads' would come within that limit, but you still see these tag-axle Alko-chassis'ed vans pulling cars :(

And also different builds of the 'same' Motorhome. For example, the Autotrail Cheyennes for the 2008 MY had a very different (lower!) Towing capacity to the 2007 MY ones for some reason I don't know (it wasn't the change in the Ducato model - that happened the previous year). My Autotrail was a 3500Kg GVW but had a very high 6000Kg GTW. After the uprate to 3850Kg it still has a 6000GTW.
I don't actually know what the Towing limit is (if it is a straight 2500Kg or higher), but I don't think I will ever tow close to 2500Kg so it doesn't matter I don't know. (most I tow is 600Kg with my Trailer).
 
Without getting into lots of specifics of particular vehicles, I'm fairly sure for a 2 wheel drive 3.5t vehicle the max you can two is 2t, and this has to be a 4 wheel braked trailer, this is what my max was with a 3.5t Sprinter when I was a courier towing a two pallet trailer all day.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Without getting into lots of specifics of particular vehicles, I'm fairly sure for a 2 wheel drive 3.5t vehicle the max you can tow is 2t, and this has to be a 4 wheel braked trailer, this is what my max was with a 3.5t Sprinter when I was a courier towing a two pallet trailer all day.
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My 4.6t LT had a GTW of 6.4t, so that would be your 2t, but my Ducato was 2.5t towing for sure.

Initially I thought the Fiat VIN Plate was out of date after conversion because when I checked the Autotrail Brochure, they had a different GTW to the VIN plate, and so I emailed Autotrail for confirmation. They replied back:
"Thank you for your Email
I've checked the towable weights for the 2008 model range which confirms that the maximum towable weight for the Cheyenne 635 was 1250kg.
I hope this clarifies the situation
Kind Regards
Auto Trail Technical Services"

However, I then realised I didn't have a 2008 Model, but the previous years model (it was registered in Early 2008, hence my confusion).
So I emailed them again, this time instead of just asking about the GTW on a general model year, I quoted the unique number of my Autotrail, and they replied back:
"Hello David
Thank you for the follow up e-mail.
We can confirm that the vehicle is of a 2007 season manufacture with a maximum gross vehicle weight of 3500kgs and a maximum Gross Train Weight of 6000kgs as per the Vin plate attached to your vehicle.
Kind regards
PaulB"

So ...3.5t Ducato, 2.5t GTW.

The Autotrail Brochures are actually very informational (that a word?). It provides pretty detailed data for each of their models and each years brochures has information for that year, not generic. Autotrail actually sent me an Excel Spreadsheet with information on the Towable weights for each model, including the differences depending if on the Fiat, Fiat/Alko, MB 315 or MB318 chassis, and also in each case if the quoted Tow Weight can be exceeded or not if the GVW has not been fully utilized.
Given the detail of info provided, I am 100% confident of what they are telling me for my van (y)
 
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Good for them, I'll have a look at my plate if I ever remember.
 
Pudsey Bear said:
Good for them, I'll have a look at my plate if I ever remember.
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In the words of an annoying but entertaining RV Salesman on YouTube .... "Know before you Tow". (some of these American RVs are fitted with 20,000lb tow hitches for example, but cannot tow close to that in reality)
 
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