can u tow in 6 gear

hey guy

i have a new st d40 and i have the 6 speed i do a lot of towing but i want to no if u can tow in 6 gear or not i tow about 2000kg so it not to heavy but still heavy

Cant say for sure about the D40 gearbox but I tow in 5th gear in my D22. Mainly on the flat.

I come to a hill Ill drop back to 4th, in 5th Ill keep it above 90km/h in 5th if it drops below Ill drop it back to 4th.

Dave.

The short answer is "yes".

If you're on a flat road or a downhill and you've got enough speed to give you 1600+rpm then you ought to be able to maintain speed in top gear. I tow 1.8T all the time and regularly get into overdrive in my 5 speed auto. That's where it's most economical.

Naturally you need to change down if the engine starts to strain too much, and changing down just before a hill climb helps climbing it.

ok thanks guy

I would agree and say yes you can, but in pretty specific circumstances.

I have a D22 like Dave and tow in fifth gear regularly, but I don't even let it get down to 90kmh before I drop to fourth, as soon as it drops below 100kmh I go to fourth gear. Basically whenever the next gear down will be below about 3500 rpm I drop it back. It may be a diesel but making things fizzle and fight along at low rpm is a good way to vibrate the oil plugs out of crankshafts and hammer gearboxes to death. Peak torque may be around 2000 rpm but IMO trying to drive it at peak torque is the wrong approach for hills, halfway or higher between peak torque and peak power is the ticket.

I usually tow a tandem trailer and track car, about 17-1800kg.

I tow a Malibu wakeboard boat 2.2Tonne+ with my D40. Use 6th gear whenever I can. No probs doing this so far 112000km on it.

I have a mate with an import TERANO that blew his box while towing a car from Melbourne to Adelaide. He recons the mechanic the fixed it made him feel like a twat cos he should have known better than to tow in top gear because 4th gear (in a 5 speed box) is on a direct shaft through the box but 5th is on a offset shaft in the box and causes extra heat (or something, I didnt go into specifics with him) when under load. At the time I thought it was BS but who knows?

DVR said:

I have a mate with an import TERANO that blew his box while towing a car from Melbourne to Adelaide. He recons the mechanic the fixed it made him feel like a twat cos he should have known better than to tow in top gear because 4th gear (in a 5 speed box) is on a direct shaft through the box but 5th is on a offset shaft in the box and causes extra heat (or something, I didnt go into specifics with him) when under load. At the time I thought it was BS but who knows?

Click to expand...

That would be a WD21 Terrano? Turbo diesel manual? If so it'd have the FS5W71C, a gearbox world-renowned for shitting its pants when towing in fifth. Mine was dodgy when I bought it and died within two months, incidentally while towing (in fifth) on an interstate trip. I was late for an appointment at VicRoads Shepparton to register the trailer so I was hammering it and it died at the border. So I fitted a FS5R30A and I can tow in fifth all I want

The FS5W71C isn't known for its strength in 4wd application's.

Especially 5th gear. The bearings aren't either really.

Dave.

DVR said:

I have a mate with an import TERANO that blew his box while towing a car from Melbourne to Adelaide. He recons the mechanic the fixed it made him feel like a twat cos he should have known better than to tow in top gear because 4th gear (in a 5 speed box) is on a direct shaft through the box but 5th is on a offset shaft in the box and causes extra heat (or something, I didnt go into specifics with him) when under load. At the time I thought it was BS but who knows?

Click to expand...

Actually that sums up the situation perfectly. Fourth gear in a typical five speed manual couples the input and mainshafts together directly, like putting a D22 in 4WD. Fifth gear goes out via the input drive and driven gears and the layshaft, to the top gear drive and given gears with heaps of side loadings and thrust going on, and the bearings out in the extension housing supporting fifth are not as large or well supported as the lower gears.


I would never have called the FS5W71C a particularly weak box, I am sticking 300 odd horsepower through one in my track car, including Phillip Island where it spends a fair whack of time at full load in top at 200 or more KMH and I will be happy to put more power into it once I have some time to tune the car for more (Easy, more boost, but more boost than I have now will need proper tuning rather than my rough track tune or engine failures will be my problem, not gearboxes) But I would not pick one to tow with at low RPM in top gear or I reckon top gear failures would be the order of the day.

ok then guy

so is that a yes or no then

I would go back to my original answer.

Basically I would to tow in 6th if I had A D40 or R51 manual, but only at highway cruising speeds and not unless it would hold the speed with substantially less than full throttle applied. Full noise needed or just not holding the speed, don't wait, just drop back to fifth.

Regards letting it lug down to lower speeds, friends of the family bought a Patrol in the mid 80's and were promptly horrified by the fuel bill (Petrol GQ) and crept around like most people drove the diesels, changing gears at about 1500 RPM almost no matter what, and letting it run down in top gear towing a horsefloat. Fizzled 3 gearboxes to death in warranty (which would probably have been about 30,000KM back then) Other folk I know shift at respectable speeds and still have the original gearbox in the one they bought at around the same time.

I aggree with the bluester. I tow a 1.8t van, & use 6th as soon as I hit the flat road, but never let the thing drop below 2000rpm. I even got just under 15l/100k driving from Geelong to Bendigo through Dalesford & those hills.

ok to tow 6th gear on flat no wind. hills and head wind better in 5th.current tows 24 foot van 2.7 t or 20ft boat 350 lt fuel 2.6 t see garage looking at chips with bottom end power gains

I towed a one ton camper trailer to/from Sydney last weekend mostly in 6th gear in my d40 no problems at all. But if I was towing something heavier I would be dropping down the gears fairly quickly rather than putting strain on an overdrive.

As stated by others, overdirves aren't suited for towing up hills or where power is needed, but not an issue for coasting along the flats to help acheive good fuel ecconomy. I'd be dropping back to 5th gear very quickly, even 4th gear where necessary if towing 2t as you said you where doing.