XJ Cherokee's and caravan towing

[brizXJ]

Thanks Hillsjeep, being involved in the caravan industry for a number of years I am very aware of the misunderstanding by the general public of the need to comply with the vehicles manufacturer in relation to towball imitations, even today many Caravan specific publications still list AGM's but convienently shy away from towball limits.
Interesting to note that Mitsubishi engineeers applied a 120 kg towball limit to a version of Pajero some years ago, the Mitsubishi sales people were shocked and could see sales drop as people went to other brands, it appears that someone 'got to' the engineers as the next 'upgrade' had the limit increased to 250kg with absoloutly no modifications to the structral integrity of the vehicle...this point may have missed the Australian media but made significant waves in the USA.
Rest assured that in the situation of a 'serious' claim on an insurance company they will seek compliance before forking out.
Load levelling devices have no effect on altering a vehicles towball capacity, the purpose of which is to simply transfer mass foward.

[hillsjeep]

Hmmn perhaps I'd better stick to the tents and 5 star hotels then

[brizXJ]

Ha ha, no, not really, to my knowledge the compliance, or non-compliance, to the towball limit has not been contested by our insurance friends, I do know of incidences whereby exceeding the recommended AGM has been though....its just that we have been discussing a 'grey' area as far as towing is concerned.
You are correct in pointing out that one should aim for 10 - 15% of the AGM to be on the towball, this does not go down well with the Sales guys when some popular vehicles have a towball limit of just 80kg!!....and this is the reason why towball limitations get to take a back seat.
Thanks for the chat.

[hillsjeep]

Cheers, have a great trip and post lots of pics!

[fabio]

Quick Question, How do you measure the weight on the towball? Also does this apply if you have a Treg type coupling, or only for balls? Thanks.

[brizXJ]

Hi Fabio, the towball refers to the amount of static weight that us applied to the vehicle at the point where the drawbar and towbar meet, it is relevant to any type of tow hitch.....it is quite important as if it is excessive or if it is not sufficient it can cause severe handling problems as the towing vehicle no longer 'holds' the road as designed.
To measure it is quite easy but it depends on what you anticipate the weight to be, if you think it will be about <120kg then you can use ordinary bathroom scales, if you do you should use an object such as a stool with a block or something under the hitch, dont just sit the jockey wheel on the scales.
If the weight is expected to be a little more then this you can still do it with your bathroom scales but you need to apply a procedure, I suggest you visit this site; http://www.haymanreese.com.au/index.htm
If you do it you need to ensure the trailer is level and is carrying its normal load.

[junglejuice]

Hi guys I noticed that you both say that you had no troubles towing do you both run on pulp when doing so? I only ask because I have towed a trailer with a canopy on it that was above the roof of the xj by about a foot and it struggled to maintain speed out on the highway and soon as a hill was found it would be back to 80 before you could blink.
Premium helped greatly for me so what did you guys do and did you use overdrive all time like normal or what?