County Standard Towbar Downforce Load

[OLR-067]

Hi All,

Just wondering if anyone knows what the downforce load of the standard tow bar setup for 85 county would be.I have a dirtbike that weighs around the 110-120kg mark and am looking a bike carrier which weigh about 60kg.The manufacturer recommends to have 60kg spare on downforce load but they are made for hayman reece type.Any ideas on load would be helpful.

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Cheers
Paul

[JDNSW]

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

[100I]

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.

[inside]

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 http://www.aulro.com/afvb/technical-chatter/49415-anyone-know-max-tow-ball-weight-110-landrovers.html

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?

[LoveMyV8County]

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.

[DeeJay]

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...

[LandieMan]

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

[isuzu110]

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.

[101RRS]

In 1974 I had a 1974 Valiant (Mitsubishi) Galant 1600. I also owned a Honda 125 SL and no trailer to pull it so I built a rack to go on the pipe tow bar I had.

The main weight was taken on the tow bar tongue and to stop any twisting motion I welded some angle onto the ends of the tow bar to make some bolting points for the ends of the bike rack as stabilizers. It all worked well.

The cheap pipe tow bar took the weight though the Galant's rear suspension had troubles with the bike and four people in the car and their gear in the boot. I did about 5 trips between Melbourne and Newcastle along the old "goat track" (Hume Highway for our kiddies on the forum) no problems.

So if a little 1600cc car with a pipe tow bar could do it - I am sure a big ruff tuff County with a Hayman Reece engineered tow bar would have no problems.

Garry