What do you pull your boat with?

[PBJT]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

We pull our 2009 192 Rinker with Either a 2006 Buick Lucerne or a 1995 Jimmy.

Pete

 

[Calglass19]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

Re: My post in this thread...

http://forums.iboats.com/showpost.php?p=1839306&postcount=121

My Silverado got stolen last Sunday morning at 3:15am. I might see it again, but hopefully I can manage to get the crew cab diesel dually I've been looking at...

 

[nimmor]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

Chevy 1500 pulling 14 ft jon boat

 

[abj87]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

We pull our 2009 192 Rinker with Either a 2006 Buick Lucerne or a 1995 Jimmy.

Pete

pbjt how does that work out i have a 07 grand prix (essentially the same car). i was thinking about towing my boat with it,But it weights 2500lbs and the car is rated to 1000lbs. I see you have surge brakes already.

 

[PBJT]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

pbjt how does that work out i have a 07 grand prix (essentially the same car). i was thinking about towing my boat with it,But it weights 2500lbs and the car is rated to 1000lbs. I see you have surge brakes already.

I have the 3800 engine same as your GP. It does labour in towing. I do not use overdrive. I installed a 24000 transmission cooler. Fuel economy towing at 100 kph or 60 mph was 13-14 mpg. The boat and trailer weigh 3500 and the hitch is rated 3500 lbs. GM rates all there cars at 1000 lb towing capacity. It brakes like its not even there, handles pretty much the same but accelleration is a bit weak but I take it easy. The problem is boat ramps....no traction to pull the boat back out of the water. Some ramps are fine but needs to be a good ramp. We also have a 95 Jimmy 4wd and power to weight is the same as the buick, and the Jimmy is just as useless pulling but the rwd pulls out of boat ramps effortlessly.

Pete

 

[Ranger_man]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

Action shot FTW!!!!!

You must be the 3% who actually take your SUV off road...

Nope...I'm the rest of the 3%.


On a side note, Its a new-to-me tow rig.

 

[drrm123]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I use a 2003 Cadillac EXT pulls great have to watch speedo normally end up around 80mph and forget boat is back there, full time 4 wheel drive. Looking for a bigger boat this year, now have 17ft beachcraft, 1st boat. Now hooked

 

[nxbusa]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I pull my 26.5 Galaxy with my lowered 2wd 7.3 Excursion.

 

[TN-25]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

Dad had a number of different Starcraft 16? boats over the years. He towed them with various vehicles including a 1970 Chevy Biscayne 6 cylinder with a 3-in-the-tree, a ?74 Chevy with a 350, an ?86 Mazda B2000 5-speed manual pickup, and lastly a 1994 Ford Aerostar 3.0 V6 5-speed manual (the last new 5-speed manual Aerostar registered in Ontario according to the dealer who located it).


My brother tows a 16' Starcraft with a late model Tahoe.


I once saw a large tri-hull bowrider of about 17?+ length and an i/o Mercruiser attempt to get pulled up a ramp by a 1973 2-door Mercury Comet 302 V8. It had enough power but no traction. There were clouds of blue smoke and the smell of burnt rubber, but that tri-hull didn?t want to budge. I don't think that car was even rated to tow a trailer beyond about class I anyway.

At that same ramp another time I saw a guy launching a 14? runabout with an old Evinrude 40. He forgot to put the drain plug in and the thing sank amazingly quickly.


I may pick up a little trailer and 12? cartopper to run with my ?58 Johnson 7?. It barely qualifies as towing, but I would be towing with a 2003 VW Passat wagon, V6 5-speed manual ( I pretty much always prefer manual). We all drive manual transmissions in our family. Mom got her 1st automatic for her 81st birthday. My Chevelle has a 2-speed Powerglide automatic though.

 

[brown_one]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

i pull my deck boat with a 2006 dodge mega cab. wife won't let me pull anything with her durango.

 

[HappierWet]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I don't know maybe this should start another thread, BUT especially you guys who are towing with smaller tow vehicles. How hot does your rig get towing? I have a 91 cherokee with automatic trans and the 4.0 motor. When I use the 195 thermostat it gets well up toward the red. I used a 160 thermostat during the summer and that helped towing, but if I wasn't towing it ran cool. I was told this meant the choke stayed on because it never saw the right temp. I do have the auxillary trans cooler on. Just wondering what anyone else sees in the temp range.

 

[HappierWet]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I tow with the pickup in my signature. Sometimes I have the 5th wheel in between the pickup and the boat- tandem towing. Nice to get to the lake and have my home with me!

Is that legal? what kind of license? I agree it's cool to take more than one toy at a time though

 

[Joe Dirt]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I tow mine with Snowball... '95 Explorer with the tiny yet fightin' 4.0L V6...

 

[cadunkle]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I don't know maybe this should start another thread, BUT especially you guys who are towing with smaller tow vehicles. How hot does your rig get towing? I have a 91 cherokee with automatic trans and the 4.0 motor. When I use the 195 thermostat it gets well up toward the red. I used a 160 thermostat during the summer and that helped towing, but if I wasn't towing it ran cool. I was told this meant the choke stayed on because it never saw the right temp. I do have the auxillary trans cooler on. Just wondering what anyone else sees in the temp range.

Running a lower temp thermostat will not make any appreciable difference in running temps when towing or in any condition where your truck runs hot. If your cooling system is up to nsuff your temps should not be more than maybe 10*-15* over thermostat temp at the highest loads.

I recommend running a good high flow fail safe thermostat in the temperature you wish to run. There aren't many good reasons to run a 160* thermostat. It wears your cylinder walls a good bit faster and doesn't allow your oil to get as hot. The only time I ran a 160* thermostat is when I was running approx. 11:1 compression and pump 94 octane wasn't good enough.

Do yourself a favor and run either a 180* or 195* thermostat and get a real temperature gauge. If you actually overheat then upgrade your cooling system. 230* is typically where bad things start happening. Seriously, a temperature gauge is cheap insurance.

But anyhow, personally my '86 F-250 stays under 200* when towing.

 

[timdan94]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

my subaru legacy doesn't run any hotter when towing then normal

 

[redright9]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I use my 2002 Expedition 2wd 5.4L to tow my 19' Searay. I do have to say, I wish the brakes on the Expedition where a little better. It has a tow package and four wheel disc brakes, and my trailer has a mechanical brake in the tounge, but still seems like it is working hard to stop..

 

[scoutabout]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

Mentioned it before but never posted pics of the two together.

1952 Ferguson TEA 20. Pulls her out of the water in first gear at idle like there was nothing back there. Downside is top speed in road gear is 15 mph. I try to keep to the right lane.

Front ball is real handy for pushing the Scout around the yard during (sob!) end of season chores...

 

[Jokerswild]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

20 ft bayliner cuddie, tow with a Chevy Silverado 1500, and sometimes my wifes Saturn outlook for short trips.

 

[Euro95]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

My granddad used to have a tractor just like that one, it always scared the crap out of me. Every since i accidentily pulled it out of gear on a ramp and it started to drive down, what a stupid kid i was

 

[tlombard]

Re: What do you pull your boat with?

I have an old 24' pontoon with nothing but a seat for the driver, small console with the throttle, 115hp motor (it flies) and plenty of room for people/coolers which is just how I like it. The more weight I add in seating, the fewer people I can have on board (we just anchor in a cove on a 410 acre private lake). My friend and roommate has an 18' 1986 Conquest ski boat and we have tried many vehicles to pull both of them.

We've used two different Chevy full size trucks and they were pretty good. The next vehicle was a Jeep Cherokee Sport but that thing was scary. The brakes are NOT anywhere near strong enough so it was sold two weeks after being purchased. The next purchase was a '95 Ford F-150 which must not have been right because it struggled to keep up speed on any hill even though it seemed to run great when nothing was hooked up behind it. Most of this summer we've been resorting to a 2003 Jeep Wrangler 4x4 to get the boats the 300 yards from storage and into the water but there is no way that is going to get them home for the winter.

Finally I bought a '94 Isuzu Rodeo with the 3.2L V6 and 4wd back in May. Since I bought it needing a transmission (my dad is a mechanic so I only pay cost and the vehicle was insanely cheap because of the needed repair... and we added a commercial truck size transmission cooler for $40) we didn't tow with it for the first time until recently when bringing the Conquest back home (about 90 miles) and I have to say that out of everything we've ever towed with the Rodeo is by far the most capable of the bunch even though it has the smallest engine. The combination of acceleration (barely have to give it anything), handling and braking is actually astonishing. Isuzu made a really tough SUV... that everyone quit buying when they didn't switch to a uni-body setup like the other car makers. It isn't luxurious or have a car like ride or even get decent gas mileage (oddly enough I see 15mpg city or highway or towing on the highway) but instead it was built to be used and abused. Some friends of the family had a '92 and it took 14 or 15 years of towing, off roading and general abuse before it found the junk yard. Their son got ahold of it and decided it would be fun to jump just like he was in the Dukes of Hazzard. It survived the first two jumps but ended up on the roof the third time. The astonishing part is that it still ran and drove great other than the fact that the roof was caved in.