Thread: County Standard Towbar Downforce Load

There does not appear to be any figure listed in the specifications. The concept of a specified download for towing seems to not have been thought of until the introduction of an ADR for towbars about 1990, after the County was manufactured. Certainly in thirty years of towing before then, I had never heard of it.

John

Also consider the 'lost load'.
I the load centre directly on the towball were say 6 or 8" from the crossmember, but with a bike rack/cradle [the way I am picturing it] you are looking at a load centre of at least 2 or 3 times that so you are losing considerable capacity.

Originally Posted by OLR-067

Any ideas on load would be helpful.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I think tow ball limit is linked to your payload which is roughly linked to your rear suspension. I remember seeing tow ball limits change depending on if you are at maximum payload or not.

Anyway enough guessing there's some more info here if you ignore the mud slinging Anyone know the max tow ball weight for 110 landrovers?

To be on the safe side you would have to say 150kg unless you can find strong evidence otherwise. Maybe you could tie some support from the carrier to your roof rack to lessen the tow ball load?

What type of towball arrangement do you have?

The tow ball on my County slides in vertically from below with a locating pin to hold it.

If yours is the same then it will be either the strength of the pin or the strength of the welds on the towball holder that you may need an engineer to advise you on.

There are different towbar arrangements, the two '85 Counties I have are both different.
Having towed a caravan, the principal is to have the towball down weight 10% of towed weight- up to a point.
IE a 1600kg van should be around 160kg, seeing as a County can tow 3500kg you sure would'nt want 350kg down weight, probably not much more than 160kg.
Given that you are looking at not even 10% of the 3500kg capacity- why worry?
As long as it tows OK...

Hi all,

I got advised of this from another forum recently that I thought might be interesting to some looking guidelines for maximum tow ball down force on Landies. There seems to be a lot of debate on it.

Updated Towing Mass Guide January 2009
Following advice from Land Rover Aust, the towing specification in the November 2008 Towing Mass Guide has been amended to reflect an upgrade to the allowable tow ball download for the Land Rover Defender 110 Td5 and 130 Td5 models that were released from 03/1999 to 10/2007. If these vehicles are fitted with Land Rover accessory tow bars, Pt No RAA 608 for the 110 model and RAA 607 for the 130 models, the tow ball download can be increased to 250kg provided the vehicle’s GVM and axle loads are not exceeded. The Towing Mass Guide on the industry website has been upgraded to show the new specifications.

Cheers, Iain

Something else to think about....

On my previous '85 County, the previous owner had a towbar that bolted onto the rear crossmember. He had towed horse floats with it.

The towbar was not a HR type. Just 4 bolts from memory into the rear crossmember.

He had managed to crease the rear crossmember vertically, both left and right of the bolt holes due to reversing the horse float and the turning stresses involved.

Your downweight may/may not be OK. I'd keep an eye on spreading the turning forces on the crossmember.

HR style spread this load by attaching to the chassis rails as well as the crossmember.