Did some car towing with the Expy today

[OVERKILL]

So, a buddy of mine bought a car today

We had a slight detour on the way up there to pick up a stock shortblock for it. Engine in it may have eaten a rod bearing, but he got an incredible deal on the car so it is well worth the hassle.

As you will notice in the pics, the truck is sitting pretty low in the rear. I have the rear seat removed, and in the back is:
1. Stock 302 shortblock
2. 31-spline axles
3. Clutch, flywheel, pressure plate
4. Rockers, intake, valve covers
5. misc. interior pieces
6. Boxes of parts like door pins, plug wires, distributor..etc.

And on top of that, we have the car, on the trailer, LOL!

Combined weight I estimated to be around 11,000lbs.

Gas mileage was 62L/284Km with mostly highway, some in-town. That is ~11Mpg.

Much of the trip was spent in O/D at a little over 100Km/h (60Mph)and the Expy had no problem with the load.

Pics:

 

[daves87rs]

Sweet!

 

[oilboy123]

Looks like the chains were a dragging....... I would have towed in drive myself.

That would be a fun project.

 

[Eric24]

Originally Posted By: oilboy123
Looks like the chains were a dragging....... I would have towed in drive myself.

That would be a fun project.

+1
you never want to tow in overdrive I pulled a 34' camper to Orlando and I forget to turn O/D off on the gear shift and when I pulled over to get gas as I was pumping the gas I could feel the heat from the rear end I had to let it down cool down before we got back on the road

 

[Bluestream]

Yeah, looks like you have a lot of weight on the tongue for that truck to sag in the rear like that...

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: oilboy123
Looks like the chains were a dragging....... I would have towed in drive myself.

That would be a fun project.


It's a 4R100 transmission; it is meant to tow in overdrive. Even says so in the manual, LOL!

Chains were definitely dragging. All the weight in the back of the truck is what is making it sit so low. It's the stuff you CAN'T see.

 

[Nick R]

You shoulda seen our 03 when we towed the jeep. IRS and all that. We had the jeep loaded down with heavy stuff we didn't want to get moved with the rest of the hosuehold goods to keep teh weight down so we had to pay less. That jeep is small, but extremely dense. The rear end of the truck was waayyyy low. The 4.6L for the most part did fine. Mom kept the cruise at 60 with O/D off. Going up hills, it definitely didn't like it, it would slow down till downshift and stay at about 4500 RPM the whole time.

 

[OVERKILL]

We had no problem with hills. Typically she'd just unlock the converter if the grade was decent, so we'd be sitting at about 2,500RPM. Only one hill involved dropping down into 3rd, which was around 3,500RPM IIRC, and only for a second or so until it got the speed back, locked the converter, then grabbed O/D (unlocked) again. Then when the road would level, it would lock the converter (again) in O/D, bringing us back to around 1,700RPM.

 

[Colt45ws]

Thats what I hate about the trans programming. It thinks it needs to lock and unlock the T/C like that. When I pull the big hill going over to Seattle or such I lock it out of O/D so it does not keep doing that...

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Thats what I hate about the trans programming. It thinks it needs to lock and unlock the T/C like that. When I pull the big hill going over to Seattle or such I lock it out of O/D so it does not keep doing that...



Doesn't bother me? LOL!!!

 

[DieselTech]

SWEET FOX!!!!

 

[Colt45ws]

Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Thats what I hate about the trans programming. It thinks it needs to lock and unlock the T/C like that. When I pull the big hill going over to Seattle or such I lock it out of O/D so it does not keep doing that...



Doesn't bother me? LOL!!!

My brother wants that Fox.

 

[nickm50]

The car is absolutely perfect. The guy the car was bought off invested 6 years of his life restoring it to what it is now.

 

[crinkles]

looks like your rear axle came close to capacity, and the load distribution doesn't quite look right.

 

[eljefino]

yah you could have put the clutch, flywheel, etc in the mustang trunk. Man we're a bunch of armchair quarterbacks! I'm happy the uhaul trailer has 4 decent tires.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
yah you could have put the clutch, flywheel, etc in the mustang trunk. Man we're a bunch of armchair quarterbacks! I'm happy the uhaul trailer has 4 decent tires.


Could we have? Yes.

But the car is IMMACULATE. There is no way ANYTHING was going in the Mustang. Much easier to just put it in the Expy.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: crinkles
looks like your rear axle came close to capacity, and the load distribution doesn't quite look right.


Oh, the load distribution was definitely "off", due to the amount of stuff in the back of the SUV.

Towing capacity is 7400lbs, GVWR is 7200lbs. Truck weighs ~6100lbs by itself. As I stated earlier, I estimate we were around 11,000lbs, so definitely within the GCWR for the truck/trailer combo.

 

[GMBoy]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
Thats what I hate about the trans programming. It thinks it needs to lock and unlock the T/C like that. When I pull the big hill going over to Seattle or such I lock it out of O/D so it does not keep doing that...



That's the good thing about GM trucks with their TOW/HAUL switch. Just put it in tow mode and the trans shift calibrations are all optimized for towing. Works great.

 

[Drew99GT]

Tell us more about the Mustang! That thing looks pretty built. Any under hood shots?

 

[ProStreetCamaro]

Your expy is almost a twin of ours. Only difference is ours has the silver trim and ever so slightly different wheels. I need to figure out what rear gears ours has because it is a pig when towing. Does OK on flat ground but going up steep hills it just barely able to maintain speed. The 99 we had with the 4.6 actually crested a steep hill towing my car to the track doing about 25. We started out at the bottom at 65 with pedal to the floor on that hill.


Since we are doing towing pics.