What can I tow safely?

[SmokeyWren]

Originally Posted by jlckmj

If you are married to that car for a while, I would consider one of the R-Pod style trailers.

They come up to 20 foot or so, and most have tongue weights in the 240 to 275 range, with empty weights less than 3,000 lbs.

The Forest River R-Pod is a nice small TT. But the specs are misleading.

r-pod RP-179 | Forest River RV - Manufacturer of Travel Trailers - Fifth Wheels - Tent Campers - Motorhomes

Ignore the hitch weight in the specs an compute a realistic tongue weight (TW) as 13% of max trailer weight. The model RP-179 above has a decent floorplan with a real bed, plus a convertible dinette/bed good enough for a couple of crumb snatchers.

UVW 2,756 + CCC 1,036= 3,792 wet and loaded max weight. 13% of 3,792 = 493 TW. That TW is right on the border of requiring a weight-distribution (WD) hitch. In fact, I would not tow that trailer without a good WD hitch such as the Equal-I-Zer or Blue Ox Sway Pro. Add 100 pounds for the WD hitch and total hitch weight is 593 pounds.

The 2018 Hyundai Santa Fe has payload of over 1400 pounds and max trailer weight of 5,000 pounds. The R-Pod /RP-179 should gross less than 4,000 pounds, So the Santa Fe has enough oomph to pull the wet and loaded trailer.

1,424 payload minus 593 hitch weight leaves only 831 pounds available for the weight of driver, passenger(s). and any other weight in the SUV. Possible, but will require attention to the weight added to the SUV if you don't want to be overloaded.

[Raider47]

I went through a similar thought process while looking for a camping solution with my 4runner. I ended up sticking with tent camping until I move back to the mainland United States and can get a bigger tow vehicle. If I had followed through, I would have either got a small aluminum cargo style trailer like this:
https://www.intechrv.com/pursue.php
Or a utility style trailer with a pop up tent like this:
https://www.tepuiadventurerentals.co...enture-trailer

Both could be less than 3,000 lbs loaded and low wind resistance. The only real advantage of the tent trailer is the convenience of having your camping gear loaded and ready to go and the easy tent setup. Also, it would take a bit of DIY skill unless you buy an overpriced “adventure trailer”.
The aluminum cargo style trailers are basically a teardrop style only without the built in kitchen or fancy aerodynamics. I think they are a better value, lighter and more practical.

[sandushinka]

We upgraded from a tent to a small hard shell for the same reasons. We opted for hard shell over pop up because of the drying out issue with popups. We can't store where we live so we wanted something we could drop and forget about.

We tow with a Subaru outback so we are very limited in weight and ended up getting an Aliner Ascape Plus ( https://youtu.be/wt0yUmA9jEI ). Somebody told us to keep it around 60% of the towing capacity, which is about what that model runs for us. We found the tongue weight was the big limiter even within what we could tow. We also got electronic brakes (Prodigy) when we bought it.

We've had it less than a year so I wouldn't say it's battle tested yet. The problems have been mostly minor. It has AC/heat, fridge, propane cooktop, sink and cassette toilet. It is tiny (2 person). We have a screen tent from our camping days that we put over the picnic table, which is where we tend to hang out. We treat it as more of a mobile hotel room. The bed cushions are meh. We just got some Froli bed springs to go under the cushions but have not slept on them yet. I think I read that Tab is putting them on all their trailers standard now.

Just a caution that coming from the tent world, you are trading set up/tear down for maintenance. It's been a learning curve for us but we'd still do it again.

Sandy

[Fritz.]

What I'd do is get a trailer that'll weigh about half of what the tow rig supposedly can tow. Then I'd instal a receiver hitch (2"), a brake controller(and wiring to the hitch), possibly sway control and weight distribution hitch(in the tow rig's owners manual it might say the listed tow capacity only applies if you have those two items, I'd check).

I'd also want a way to keep an eye on the transmission temp to know how hot it was running and how much I was reducing the life of the trans fluid. Heat is the #1 thing that kills transmissions.