Towing With Steptronic

[Jacques Neser]

Guys,

I am in the process of looking at buying a 4.8 GRX, how good is this gearbox for towing, does it overheat, does it last, any info welcome, I intend in towing my skiboat with it, and it is fron JHB to JBay.

Jacques

[Peter Vee]

Hi Jacques,

I have towed a heavily laden off road trailer for 1800km with no hassles - am going to be towing my ski boat with it soon and will post feedback here.

(PS - one of main reason for swopping from Disco TDV6 to Patrol was because the Disco's box hassled me when under stress while towwing up big hills or in thick beach sand)

Regards,

Peter

[Tinus lotz]

I pull big trailers and boats all the time and has never had any hassles !! There is a small mod were you can even tow with speedcontrol on in manual will try to find the link. My patrol has got 125000 of hard kilos and stronger than ever!!!

[Chris Skinner]

Hi
I had same concerns when I was considering moving to the tiptronic feature vs my old 4.5 manual.
Since changing over I have had the opportunity to tow my boat from the coast back to Pretoria for annual maintenance.
The Tiptronic performed admirably - I find towing a lot less tiring as no need to concentrate on gear changes to the same extent as before. I just leave it in 4th gear in the tiptronic mode (so does not use 5th for obvious reasons), and away you go. You can also then change down manually as required up hills etc with the flick of the wrist.
As you can see below, I have quite a heavy trailer...
As said on previous posts, I will not consider going back (unless of course if reliability became an issue).
Very interestingly - I had at least 15% improvement on my consumption vs the 4.5 manual when towing.

[Peter Vee]

Hah ... another Nomads member... nice rig Chris!

Peter V
(Nomads 91C aka FawnyCat)