4 cylinder car and caravan

l was thinking of getting a caravan from the 1980's with a 750kg taree weight, do you think that would be OK and easy to tow with a 4 cylinder toyota camry.

Anthing is possible but think about the windage of any van as well.

A 30Kmh or so headwind would slow you down a LOT and the poor little engine would be working hard.

If it is a manual think about hill starting and clutches and if auto the oil temp.

I think an upgrade would serve you well but it would not be impossible with the Camry, but you would have to ensure the motor is in good condition and maybe fit an additional auto cooler if it is auto. Thousand of Europeans tow with 4 cylinders!!!!
Regards Philip A.

Cranswick,
Towed a Jayco Finch for a couple of years with a 93 4 cyl, manual Camry wagon. No issues at all with motor and transmission towing. Never run hot, drove to NQ from Bris a couple of summers, including driving up the range. Motor and transmission always felt strong. The issue is that was hopeless on dirt roads and always felt precarious in the wet with the front wheel drive. I even got stuck going up a hill in the dirt as run out of traction and had to back down 1.5 ks!!
So not ideal but doable. Like everthing else in life, a compromise and essential to use a WDH.
Cheers
MattD

You are confused about weights

Its the ATM you worry about. That is the max legal loaded weight

Tare is empty weight and who tows an empty caravan.

Personally would never tow anything above a trailer to the tip with a 4 cyl car.

It has nothing to do with the number of cylinders , be it 3,4,5,6 or 8, it has to do with the power and torque, at revs, which need to be examined to decide whether you can tow a particular van or not.

If the van has an ATM below that of your vehicle capacity then you can legally tow it, but I would allow 100-200kg under your vehicle limits for safety.

But frankly, if you get a van with an ATM of around 1000kg to 1200kg, you won't have a problem. Forget the number of cylinders and remember, a lot of the bigger 4WD's have 4 cylinder diesels; eg: Pajero, Prado, and, heaven forbid...the legendary Nissan Patrol and they can tow between 2500kg and 3000kg.

Cranswick,
What ever way you decide to go, ie change your tow vehicle or keep the Camry, make sure that the weight limits of the vehicle, the caravan and the combination are all within the limits set by the vehicle manufacturer.
Failure to do this will invalidate your insurance should things go pearshaped when towing.

Good Luck with your ideas.

Disco.

Cranswick

The 2003 Camry is a fair sized car. Larger, heavier and more powerful than 6 cylinder cars of not long ago. It is big enough. A caravan will not strain the engine. As another has responded fitting a transmission cooler would be wise. This applies to all automatics not just Camrys.

The issues are more to do with traction. A front wheel drive is not ideal for towing. It will do it well enough though. I would not use it to launch a heavy boat on a step boat ramp. :) On bitumen roads or flat dirt roads it should do the job. Steep dirt roads - maybe not.

I would try it and see how it goes. You can always get a different car later.

Re the Falcon, they are not an ideal tow vehicle either. Then again nothing is.

Flynnie

Toyota specs for your 2.4lt vehicle are:
Max Tow Weight 1200kg with a Max Ball Weight of 120kg.
A WDH must be used if ball Weight exceeds 90kg.
ozjohn

My parents have a Camry of similar age and tow a small caravan (approx 13' 6") with it and say that they have no trouble at all. They live in Victoria and recently travelled to Cooktown and back and said that it was terrific. If you would like more details about it, please feel free to get back to me. Good Luck.

We've just come back from a 5720km trip Armidale-Melbourne-Adelaide-Broken Hill-Armidale.

We towed a Jayco Finch with a 2004 2.5lt automatic Subaru Outback. The camper was fairly loaded up and the car occupied two adults and two kids.

Up to around 4000kms the car handled everything perfectly. We were getting 12lt/100km fuel economy which I think is outstanding. Mostly we sat on 90-105km/h.

However we were in Adelaide during the 43 degree days. We had to leave because of the heat. Driving from Adelaide to Broken Hill and then Broken Hill to Cobar was a little concerning. Outside temp was 45 degrees, there was a strong cross wind and the sun was booming down on to the bonnet.

The Subaru didn't want to know about 4th gear. Couldn't get it in there at all. This caused a big problem with fuel consumption. We really chewed through the juice.

My mechanic mate, reckons it the computer is probably designed to do what it did, so as not to put too much load on the transmission when everything is running hot. Either way, at the time I was concerned the transmission might fail.

I think a diesel or a more powerful car would of handled the extreme conditions much better.

Bare in mind, these were very extreme conditions and apart from than that we could not of been happier with the Subaru.