Trailering

[Doyt W. Echelberger]

For the archives, Larry...........IMO, your experience demonstrated that 
the factory guidelines we all talked about last year were for new cars.

Apparently, drivers of older cars need to exercise considerable judgement 
about establishing constraints/lower limits for their older cars, based on 
personal knowledge of the condition of all the systems.

What they are doing by towing a trailer is testing the limits of many of 
the car's systems, especially the ability of those systems to handle 
unusually high heat loads.

I suspect that, had your car been new or nearly new, it probably would not 
have experienced the failures that you mention.

For those reasons, my choice of trailer towing vehicles is a 3/4 ton 
Suburban with a 454 engine and maximum truck-sized cooling capacity, with 
an extra cooler for the transmission fluid. And on a hot day I have to keep 
speeds below 50 mph or even that rig starts to cook and has to be slowed down.

Doyt Echelberger
87 5ktq



 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
At 08:22 AM 6/1/2001 -0400, you wrote:
I initiated some discussion in this forum about the advisability of
pulling a trailer with my '89 non-Q.  The consensus was to use the DeLan
hitch which is rated for 2500 lbs and observe the Audi manual limits on
tongue weight and total trailer weight.  ..........snip.............

The car had enough power to travel at the speed limit during almost all 
conditions.  Thanks
very much for all the good advice from the list.

Our experience was not totally pleasant though.  On one of the hills
just north of Scranton, PA, the heater control valve broke and coolant
cascaded out.  The warning light appeared but I didn't react quickly
enough and blew a head gasket. ...........snip................

Another point.  Boost level would stay very high when traversing the
hill country thru PA if one didn't modulate the foot pedal.  I tried to
keep the boost under 1.0 so as not to work the turbo too hard.  It was
not always possible but, if you can accept the reduction of speed from
65 to 50 as you climb the hill, this was often doable.

Bottom line - With one reservation, I would recommend trailering with
the Audi turbo, particularly if the terrain was relatively flat and the
temperature was below 25 degrees C.  I found that, as the ambient
temperature increased, the coolant temp increased also.  During
conditions of high outside temperature, it ran rather close to 106
degrees C., even with Audi's summer thermostat, making me feel a bit
uncomfortable.  I am aware of the Audi design requirement to run
normally at the high end of the temperature range, but my car had never
exceeded 102 degrees before - at least when I observed the gauge.

Again, thanks for all the help from the list.

Larry Newman