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