Thread: New to towing - jerking / tugging trailer - transmission damage?

Do you have enough weight on the draw bar? If the draw bar is lifting at the tow bar you will get undesirable affects

Originally Posted by Guss

Do you have enough weight on the draw bar? If the draw bar is lifting at the tow bar you will get undesirable affects

I actually have no idea how much weight there is. I do know that I was concerned about putting too much weight on the drawbar so may have been erring too far.

I am heading off for the weekend. I will try and find a measurement.

I will create a list of what I will be adding too.

Cheers

Should aim for about 10 percent of the trailer weight on the drawer.

I personally think you are better to take it to a Land Rover mechanic while towing the trailer, taking them for a drive and asking if it's normal. Too hard to diagnose a "fault" that may or may not be there on a forum.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Towing in sport mode does not keep it in 5th.
It just enables quicker kick down and holds longer.

The op has a d3 , unless the d4 six speed has different TCU programming then I will stick with my statement that it will keep 5th in sport mode , I have an sdv6 6 speed coming in tomorrow so I will find out, until then you might want to let us know at which speed / load yours drop into 6th at when in sport mode.

Originally Posted by vee8auto

in the context that the original poster has queried transmission damage because something funky is going on when towing I thought it would be worth mentioning the advice for towing given by a Land Rover specialist. So unless another person, a guru level transmission dude who specialises in the internal workings control functions of that particular 6 speed auto box comes along and refutes or clarifies the advanced functions I reckon it should be considered a likely factor.

Sure, it might be furphy, I might have got my wires crossed, but as my previous career was as a specialist on industrial gas turbines and all their electronic, pneumatic and hydraulic systems I am fairly confident that I understood what the guy was telling me and I reckon what he said made sense.

You are right to tow in sport mode , as well as listening to your lr specialist ( especially if it happens to be Kevin from rovertech) I worked with him for a few years a long time ago, I'm by no means a guru on zf ( I've only done one rebuild)

So all the talk of the gearbox selecting a better program when a trailer is detected is moot then if you STILL have to select sports mode to tow. I think all this is wives tales and personal preferences to be frank. The car was designed to tow. If any of this was required it's more than capable of doing it all automatically without us having to select any of it.

Originally Posted by DI5CO

I personally think you are better to take it to a Land Rover mechanic while towing the trailer, taking them for a drive and asking if it's normal. Too hard to diagnose a "fault" that may or may not be there on a forum.

Yes That sounds very sane - just try to stop my brain thinking about it until I can get it to the mech

Originally Posted by discorevy

The op has a d3 , unless the d4 six speed has different TCU programming then I will stick with my statement that it will keep 5th in sport mode , I have an sdv6 6 speed coming in tomorrow so I will find out, until then you might want to let us know at which speed / load yours drop into 6th at when in sport mode.

A six speed has the full range in gears in sport mode - it is only the shift points and the time it hangs on in gear that changes and this applies to 5th in Sport mode - it hangs on to 5th for a long time before it goes into 6th.

Try driving on a freeway at a steady 100kph in sport mode - after you have been in 5th for about a minute or so and driving at a steady speed it changes up to 6th - I have seen the specific specs sometime back but it is something like 10o kph and a minute or two.

I have had a 2.7TDV6 with ZF 6 speed for 7 years and 140,000km and I can assure you it goes into 6th in Sport mode and it does it when I am towing my camper in the right conditions.

Garry