Anyone tow a camper with your 4JB1t zoozys

[BalkaRoo]

I have had my old 2.8 Jackaroo for years and love it even if its still standard and not all that powerful BUT recently I got married and now instead of one or two of us in it when we go touring my 14 year old stepdaughter can come as well, meaning my double bed in the back can't be used because I need the rear seat for the third passenger. Recently I acquired a small but reasonably heavy camper trailer and although I knew it would not be all that fast I couldn't believe how much it pulled the car up, we drove from southwest western Australia over the Nullarbor into SA then down to Portland and the Great ocean road through Melbourne then home through the Grampians and back over the Nullarbor again. I am afraid the lack of performance has scared me and I was wondering if anyone else is successfully towing small single axle trailers with their 2.8s and if so what modifications they have had to do to get it to a successful performance. My old bus is running fine but has almost 600,000ks on the clock so isn't new and I am wondering if I can get enough extra power to tow this thing at about 100 kph or so even uphill because when I go touring with my mates that is the sort of speed they want to cruise at. When we went to Victoria it was just the three of us with no other vehicle to have to keep up to.

I have looked into whether replacing it would be a option but from what I can find out nothing even approaches the economy and performance of the old jackaroo until you get to something worth $25 grand or so and with mortgages and such like I won't be able to afford that any time soon so can you economically and reliably get enough performance to tow at high speed on road and if so what do you have to do. I don't want a race car, just a reliable higher speed cruiser that is able to maintain the speed I have always travelled at before when on these trips.

By the way, when we went from Esperance on the south coast through to Balladonia on the Eyre Highway we detoured through the Cape Arid National Park and I am still amazed at how good its low speed 4X4 performance is even when towing the camper on the rough 4WD tracks so its only the high speed performance that's lacking and if I can modify it to work on road I would hate to ruin its awesome off road ability's.

Thanks blokes,
Graham

[geeves]

I used to tow a Topagee brave for a while with my wagon along with 2 kids a wife camping gear and 20l water and it did ok. The Topagee was 700kg dry weight. A few specs on your trailer might help.
I was running 31 inch tyres at the time and the topagee was low slung not a off road camper. Even then it was happy at the speed limit but was reluctant on hills without a run. On the Napier Taupo I was down to 25kph and second on one of the hills but that was before a couple of mods that helped a lot . 2.5 inch exhaust lets the turbo spool up from lower revs and it will hold boost all the way to the red line. Free flow filter also helps breathing I had a unifilter in my 2.8 but have k&Ns in both my current wagons) A snorkel helps a lot in 2 ways. First it takes cooler air from above the cab but more importantly it gets rid of the highly restrictive intake pipe that runs from the side of the air cleaner to just behind the battery. If you dont do deep river crossings you may be able to replumb this to take cold air from behind the grill.
After the mods it was still no rocket ship but held its own when towing quite well as long as I wasnt slowed at the bottom of a big hill. I got stuck behind an old woman in a toyota starlet on the west Taupo road who obviously thought the speed limit was 80 and stuck fanatically to that. Overtaking lanes on every uphill and she pulled away from me only to have me on her tail all the way down the other side. There is a intersection along there where you need to turn right She hesitated and no one was coming the other way so I snuck down the wrong side of the road island and never saw her again.
Another option is to fit 4.5 diffs but thats a big job and will reduce ecconomy a little

[MUVIT]

600,000 on a un opened engine?
I think she must be geting tired...
Have you ever had to replace the turbo or refurb the injectors?

[BalkaRoo]

Thanks Allan ! Its a bit of a can of worms knowing what to do, I like the car a lot and really don't want to get rid of it and by the sound of it your trailer is similar weight wise to what I was towing. I surpose I have some time to think about it before I have to decide which way to jump because my next big trip won't be until next year although a couple of smaller ones may happen in the spring.

MUVIT, the "odometer" is just under the 600,000 but I can only vouch that it hasn't had the engine opened up for the last 200,000 of those, a previous owner may have had the engine done before I got it but at the moment it doesn't blow any smoke, doesn't breath out the breather and doesn't use any oil until a change is getting close so a bit of dilution is happening, but it seems to be running well.

Thanks Blokes,

Graham

[geeves]

How bad does it smoke when cold? It might just need new injectors and a fuel setting tweek to get a little more out of it Also the tappets might never of been adjusted. The book says do them every 30000km but I know my tappet cover had never been off at 200000km One tappet needed a 10th of a turn the rest were good.
Ecconomy onan openroad run without trailer might also show a few hints as would fitting a boost guage (is turbo still giving full boost)
Also the way you drive could be an issue. These motors like to rev and really dont perform well under 2000rpm.

[BalkaRoo]

The engine doesn't smoke when cold unless you give it a boot full when its very cold !
I had the injectors replaced and the pump checked out about 4 years ago and got them to check the timing which was slightly retarded but not too bad according to the bloke that did it, I also got the turbo checked out at that time (before we did the Gibb River road) and that all checked out fine at the time, and as for the tappets I did them before we went to Victoria in April at the same time I replaced all the coolant hoses. It does have the annoying habit of dying on me when its very cold and needing to be bled to get it started again. It doesn't happen very often but is very annoying when it does. I have read (probably here) that it is caused by some little valve in the fuel pump but I never worried too much because it only happens a couple of times a year.

She's a nice old bus just a bit lacking in power for towing, although I may have to do another gearbox if I keep it, the syncros are starting to get pretty weak now although other than that the box is fine.

I haven't had the trailer weighed but I recon about 800kg fully loaded would be pretty close. I am still looking at all the options at the moment but I can't see anything I like any better at the moment and some of the vehicles that mates have suggested as replacements would bankrupt me I am sure.

Anyway, thanks for the info and the interest,
Graham

[geeves]

fit a boost guage to see if you are getting full boost Maybe increase the fuel a little and see what happens