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Old 05-05-2021, 04:58 PM
thstone thstone is offline
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Join Date: Aug 2020
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 63
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** Towing Update **

Sorry for the lengthy delay in posting! The biotech business that I run has been super busy and I’ve been car racing a lot.

At this point, I have towed on four separate trips using two different trailers for a total of 1,440 miles. The shortest trip was 230 miles (round trip) and the longest was 750 miles (round trip).

The trailers each weighed around 4400 lbs as towed (including fresh water, food, and gear). Both trailers have empty weights around 3800 lbs and GVWR’s (max weight) around 5,000 lbs. As such, both trailers are well within the X5 tow rating of 6,000 lbs.

Payload weight and hitch (or tongue) weight is also a consideration in towing. The hitch weight of each of the trailers is about 450 lbs which is well within the X5 rating of 600 lbs.

In terms of payload, the X5 carries 450 lbs hitch weight + 190 lbs for me + 110 lbs for my wife + another 100 lbs of gear for a total of 850 lbs. This is well within the X5 payload capacity of 1,345 lbs.

Combining the trailer weight (4400 lbs) with the X5 weight (5240 lbs), there is a total of 9,640 lbs (nearly 5 tons!) that we’re driving around.

With all of that weight, the 3.0L E53 X5 does a pretty good job of accelerating and getting up the hills. On a level road, the engine is working to get up to my typical highway cruising speed of 60-65 mph, but not overly hard. However, the low torque rating for the 3.0L engine becomes obvious as soon as an uphill grade is encountered causing the transmission to downshift a gear to allow the engine maintain an appropriate rpm. A big plus here is that the transmission shifts seamlessly and never hunts back and forth between gears.

Continued next post...

Last edited by thstone; 05-05-2021 at 05:04 PM.
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