Towing and offroading impressions

[Ilka Wagner]

So I haven't towed anything for a long time because I sold my last SUV years ago. I'm thinking about buying a used travel trailer. Anyone have experience towing something with a gross weight between 5k and 7k pounds with the Expedition? Also, I'm looking at some used Expeditions and Navigators, but I cannot tell from online advertisements which ones have the max towing package. It's frustrating. VIN numbers don't get me anywhere either. Any ideas how to check online?

I've been researching this quite a bit. If you look on the dash, you should see the integrated brake controller, will be to the right of the steering wheel, by the radio. Also, if you look at the door label, under "axle" it will have a 3L if it has 3.73 differential. It will also have a 7-pin connector at the hitch and a trans cooler in front of the radiator. These are things that have helped me confirm the HD tow if not on the ad. Also, some depends on the year model as well.

 

[zoey2015]

So I haven't towed anything for a long time because I sold my last SUV years ago. I'm thinking about buying a used travel trailer. Anyone have experience towing something with a gross weight between 5k and 7k pounds with the Expedition? Also, I'm looking at some used Expeditions and Navigators, but I cannot tell from online advertisements which ones have the max towing package. It's frustrating. VIN numbers don't get me anywhere either. Any ideas how to check online?

I just went through the process to get a used Limited with the 302A and HD tow packages last week. Although not many have the HD tow on the used cars market, I have seen about one or two coming to the market every week under $55K with less than 30K miles. I used cars.com and autotrader and put "heavy-duty trailer" in the text filter to configure email notifications.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[duneslider]

Had another trailer towing trip and some more offroading, and some offroading with the trailer.

We found a sweet camp spot and decided to pull the trailer up a few days later to camp for a few days. The paved road up the canyon was narrow, steep, and winding. I got stuck behind an F150 towing a tractor and we were only going about 15-20 and that just was not enough speed to keep the transmission cool. It got warmer than I would have liked but not so warm I felt it was an issue. I really think we needed a little more speed to keep things cool. Once I hit the dirt roads I put it into 4L and the temps came down really quick and all was good temp wise for the rest of the tow. The roads ended up being a bit rougher than I remembered and the trailer wanted to drag here and there and I had to be careful not to rip the plumbing off. Never once felt like there was an issue with not enough power though, that was always great.

Coming back down the canyon was great too. Home for me is at about 4500ft and the camp spot was about 9300ft. We camped in the Heber Mountain area, the town of Heber is about 5600'. So, we went up 3700' in a relatively short distance and had to come back down that. On the dirt roads that were really steep I used the hill descent control and it maintained speed great and worked really well even with the trailer on. Very impressed with that and I even used it a bit on the paved roads on the steeper sections where the turns were tighter and I couldn't go faster than 20. Other wise, I kept it in tow/haul and it did well at maintaining speed with the occasional tap of the brakes to bring it down a little slower.

We went out on a few trails to let the kids play in some streams and ponds and I did find a few places where I rubbed the undercarriage a bit. My brother's chevy pickup rubbed too and it has a shorter wheelbase than the expedition. Only bigger tires and a lift would have helped.

Overall, I was very happy with the expedition and wouldn't hesitate to buy one again.

 

[duneslider]

Had another trailer towing trip and some more offroading, and some offroading with the trailer.

We found a sweet camp spot and decided to pull the trailer up a few days later to camp for a few days. The paved road up the canyon was narrow, steep, and winding. I got stuck behind an F150 towing a tractor and we were only going about 15-20 and that just was not enough speed to keep the transmission cool. It got warmer than I would have liked but not so warm I felt it was an issue. I really think we needed a little more speed to keep things cool. Once I hit the dirt roads I put it into 4L and the temps came down really quick and all was good temp wise for the rest of the tow. The roads ended up being a bit rougher than I remembered and the trailer wanted to drag here and there and I had to be careful not to rip the plumbing off. Never once felt like there was an issue with not enough power though, that was always great.

Coming back down the canyon was great too. Home for me is at about 4500ft and the camp spot was about 9300ft. We camped in the Heber Mountain area, the town of Heber is about 5600'. So, we went up 3700' in a relatively short distance and had to come back down that. On the dirt roads that were really steep I used the hill descent control and it maintained speed great and worked really well even with the trailer on. Very impressed with that and I even used it a bit on the paved roads on the steeper sections where the turns were tighter and I couldn't go faster than 20. Other wise, I kept it in tow/haul and it did well at maintaining speed with the occasional tap of the brakes to bring it down a little slower.

We went out on a few trails to let the kids play in some streams and ponds and I did find a few places where I rubbed the undercarriage a bit. My brother's chevy pickup rubbed too and it has a shorter wheelbase than the expedition. Only bigger tires and a lift would have helped.

Overall, I was very happy with the expedition and wouldn't hesitate to buy one again.

 

[Artie]

Had another trailer towing trip and some more offroading, and some offroading with the trailer.

We found a sweet camp spot and decided to pull the trailer up a few days later to camp for a few days. The paved road up the canyon was narrow, steep, and winding. I got stuck behind an F150 towing a tractor and we were only going about 15-20 and that just was not enough speed to keep the transmission cool. It got warmer than I would have liked but not so warm I felt it was an issue. I really think we needed a little more speed to keep things cool. Once I hit the dirt roads I put it into 4L and the temps came down really quick and all was good temp wise for the rest of the tow. The roads ended up being a bit rougher than I remembered and the trailer wanted to drag here and there and I had to be careful not to rip the plumbing off. Never once felt like there was an issue with not enough power though, that was always great.

Coming back down the canyon was great too. Home for me is at about 4500ft and the camp spot was about 9300ft. We camped in the Heber Mountain area, the town of Heber is about 5600'. So, we went up 3700' in a relatively short distance and had to come back down that. On the dirt roads that were really steep I used the hill descent control and it maintained speed great and worked really well even with the trailer on. Very impressed with that and I even used it a bit on the paved roads on the steeper sections where the turns were tighter and I couldn't go faster than 20. Other wise, I kept it in tow/haul and it did well at maintaining speed with the occasional tap of the brakes to bring it down a little slower.

We went out on a few trails to let the kids play in some streams and ponds and I did find a few places where I rubbed the undercarriage a bit. My brother's chevy pickup rubbed too and it has a shorter wheelbase than the expedition. Only bigger tires and a lift would have helped.

Overall, I was very happy with the expedition and wouldn't hesitate to buy one again.

What did your trans temp get up to? How big a trailer?

 

[duneslider]

To be totally honest, I have no idea, I don't drive it much and haven't messed with the screens much and didn't realize it had a digital read out for the transmission. I just saw the needle climbing towards the yellow and it got this close | | to the yellow. Once I put it into 4L it dropped back to straight vertical pretty quick. So, not sure what temp that would be. Now that I know it has a digital readout I will keep an eye on it.

I am guessing this weekend the trailer weighed about 4500-4800lbs and the outside temp at that time was 85deg. On the highway towing up the mountain it never budged maintaining 65-70. On the trip to Moab it never budged either. It didn't budge until I was stuck pulling up a steep hill at 15mph, just not enough air flow at that speed and it was probably shifting a lot too there was a fair amount of speeding up and slowing down. I tried going to manual and just leaving it in 2nd but that didn't seem to make much difference.

The engine and oil temp gauges didn't seem to change much, if at all. My jeep commander with the hemi also got hot on this same pull, the transmission would go a touch over 240 and the engine coolant temp would get up pretty hot too and that was at a speed of 25-35. (speed limit is 25 on this section) My brother was ahead of me in front of the slow poke and he said his truck was in the 220's. That is when I realized I probably had a transmission temp gauge and went and looked. At that point the temp was at 211 after crawling up the mountain in 4L.

 

[Artie]

To be totally honest, I have no idea, I don't drive it much and haven't messed with the screens much and didn't realize it had a digital read out for the transmission. I just saw the needle climbing towards the yellow and it got this close | | to the yellow. Once I put it into 4L it dropped back to straight vertical pretty quick. So, not sure what temp that would be. Now that I know it has a digital readout I will keep an eye on it.

I am guessing this weekend the trailer weighed about 4500-4800lbs and the outside temp at that time was 85deg. On the highway towing up the mountain it never budged maintaining 65-70. On the trip to Moab it never budged either. It didn't budge until I was stuck pulling up a steep hill at 15mph, just not enough air flow at that speed and it was probably shifting a lot too there was a fair amount of speeding up and slowing down. I tried going to manual and just leaving it in 2nd but that didn't seem to make much difference.

The engine and oil temp gauges didn't seem to change much, if at all. My jeep commander with the hemi also got hot on this same pull, the transmission would go a touch over 240 and the engine coolant temp would get up pretty hot too and that was at a speed of 25-35. (speed limit is 25 on this section) My brother was ahead of me in front of the slow poke and he said his truck was in the 220's. That is when I realized I probably had a transmission temp gauge and went and looked. At that point the temp was at 211 after crawling up the mountain in 4L.

Thanks for the info. We are in the market for an overland type trailer and one of my concerns has been towing while doing some off pavement driving. I’m guessing trailer will be about 4-4500 lbs and we’ll have our two kids and gear in the truck. We’ll do a bunch of trips here on the east coast but eventually will do some out west as well and we may just get a more dedicated 4x4 for the west trips like canyon land. My wife is getting ready for something new anyway.

 

[duneslider]

What are you planning to do in Canyonlands that you don't feel the Expedition can do? We are down in that area yearly and I wouldn't be concerned with the expedition in that area at all unless you are planning on some specific offroad adventure but I think the expedition can handle just about anything any other stock SUV can handle aside from a Jeep Wrangler.

 

[Artie]

What are you planning to do in Canyonlands that you don't feel the Expedition can do? We are down in that area yearly and I wouldn't be concerned with the expedition in that area at all unless you are planning on some specific offroad adventure but I think the expedition can handle just about anything any other stock SUV can handle aside from a Jeep Wrangler.

We want to do the White Rim road for sure. On top of that we would like to do any number of off pavement over-landing. We took a month long honeymoon and spent it in the southwest in my Subaru Baja, we could get to most of the places we wanted but found that AWD just wasn’t enough to makes us feel confident. Now with kids and looking at the Conqueror trailers we are just now researching these types of trips with a larger vehicle and trailer so the list is just starting to grow as far as locations. We have both camped, hiked, and overlanded before we met but she had a 4Runner and I had that Baja, I’m not as experienced with a larger vehicle and kid level amounts of gear so there is a learning curve for us.

 

[duneslider]

I honestly don't think a 4runner can do much more than the expedition (stock to stock). A smaller vehicle would have a better approach, departure, and breakover but I just don't see you going on stuff that would be that difficult. I mean I saw a stock expedition go up baby lions back in moab. I do that in my wrangler but I don't think I am interested in doing that in my expedition but I guess it could do it.

The new jeep gladiator would be a sweet overland vehicle and will tow 7500lbs. The 4runners are only rated to tow 5000# so that trailer would have you maxed out or over the safe limit. A raptor would be cool and do what you want! The new Rangers look really nice and would be a little better offroad. All other options will feel cramped compared to the Expedition.

I would rock the Lincoln and ditch the 22's for some 18's and all terrains and go for it. Maybe look at the skid plate thread and add a few of those.

The first 4th Gen I saw was a Lincoln bombing a dirt road in Moab. That was when I realized my next suv wasn't going to be a Jeep (we had been waiting/hoping for the Grand Wagoneer to come out)