Trailer Towing With Awd - Risky?

[mbsl98]

We tow a 2000 pound boat/trailer rig on occasion, including taking it into the Maine mountains (say 2000 foot elevation). In recent years, our 960 has performed this task admirably, but that car is leaving the fleet, and the towing will be done primarily by the 855T. My interest is really in the sense of risk associated with towing this size rig with our '98 XC, which has a rated capacity of about 3300 pounds. Obviously, the AWD would be good as far as stability and pulling boat up a slippery launch ramp. However, with the concerns over weak links in the drive train, I am worried about the effect of the added weight. Any actual eperiences out there - I'm looking for actual versus theoretical here ;-)

[mbsl98]

Anybody out there with AWD towing a trailer?

[aikitect]

This may be comparing apples to oranges, but since there are no replies here is my experience:

I just got thru towing a 12'x6' U-Haul enclosed trailer with no issues. Granted, I did not pull the weight which you are talking about, but the car performed very well. We spent about 4 hours on the road, 2 hours each way and 1 full tank of gas.

My car is a 2000 V70 R AWD w/ a 5speed automatic.

We were in the foothills of North Carolina and much to my suprise the car did not do a lot of shifting as we went up a few fairly steep grades. Most of the time the car stayed below 3,000 rpms. I think that 4,000 rpm's was the max going up a steep grade.

The car did not run hotter according to the temp guage, but I felt more heat than normal coming from under the car whenever I was getting our toddler out of the back seat.

Also, I drove fairly easy and did not try to see how fast I could excel - I did my best to practice mechanical empathy.

I would recomend getting the brake booster set-up if applicable as I noticed that the car was a little harder to stop (duh) and the ABS kicked in a few times when I was intraffic and was forced to stop faster than I would have liked.