What about using a Ford Transit connect to pull a tear?

[CCrew]

Nice Transit! Thanks for the report. It is one of three vehicles that I am considering once mine dies.

Well, a couple of days and I'll let you know how it does at 1900lbs on Colorado mountain passes! Fully loaded, we leave in the am to take our daughter out there.. Couple hundred lbs of tongue weight had no effect.

[CCrew]

Posting from CO. Made it here with zero issue, did see some loss of power once we hit the high plains in Colorado. Averaged 19.3mpg with a full load with the only drawback in my book being the 15gal tank. Due to distances had to be sure fuel stops weren't an issue. Came into 1 with 3/4 of a gallon in the tank. All in all this was a heavy load across a long distance with a variation of terrain and the TC did better than I expected. .

Saw a whopping two teardrops on the trip. One aluminum in KS and one woodie in CO

[pchast]

Glad its working out. It can be a challenge planning fuel stops.

[kudzu]

Glad all went well. Did a x-country trip early this year, Georgia to San Diego & back, with my 2010 TC towing a 1500 lb camper. Did extreme Southern route on the way out & came back via Grand Canyon on more Northern route. All went quite well & will probably do a trip out to Yellowstone next year. The TC tows comfortably at 60-63 mph max. We just accept that & factor that into our plans. The TC can go faster when towing & it can accelerate uphill under load, but there's a feeling that you're really pushing things. It's just not something I'm comfortable doing often or for long stretches. In Big Bend we camped in Chisos Basin. It was foggy & dark as we drove up to the campground so everyone was going slow. The next day as we drove back down I just kept saying, "I can't believe the van towed the camper up here. What was I thinking?!" Going over the big hills in Cali we just had to tuck in with the big rigs & chug along. On some we did just 40 mph. TC could have pulled faster but why stress things when we were keeping pace with others in the slow lane? It just didn't seem worth it.

The TC is great as a daily driver & hauler for me. Getting on & off the interstate & quick lane changes are no problem. That's important since we do a lot of highway driving, especially in & around Atlanta. Towing wasn't a real consideration when I bought my van. For our East coast & occasional Midwest camping trips, the TC will do just fine. For a few Western trips we can arrange things so that it works. However, I will say that a Transit Connect would not be my first choice for a lot of towing and it certainly isn't what I'd want for mountainous, high altitude towing. We'll make it work because that is what I have but I probably won't buy another TC. Have recently looked at getting a truck or larger van because between the 3 large dogs, our kayaks, bike & recumbent trike... well, we've got a lot of stuff. Have decided that it's just not worth the price for now. The others are simply too large & costs are too high.

For the record, my TC gets what I consider poor gas mileage. On average it's getting 25-26 mpg. (And my prior vehicle was a 2002 Prius that was still getting 48-50 mpg with 260,000 miles on odo so I know how a bit about driving for good MPGs.) For something this size it should do much better. On the Cali trip, I was dreading what all that towing would do to my mileage. It turns out we averaged 22 mpg! It worked out to approx. 15% reduction in MPG. Considering what we were asking of that little van, I think that's pretty good. So yeah, I think I'll keep it for a while.
Life is full of compromises. The TC has been a good one for me.

[CCrew]

Kudzu,
Not to take away from your experience, but I'm sure you're aware that the 2010 of yours and the 2014 of mine are a bit apples/oranges on the comparison. Yours is a 2.0L versus my 2.5 (Both Duratec) and a 4 speed automatic in 2010 versus the 6 speed overdrive in the 2014.

We actually pulled the trailer in both directions, heavily loaded going out and very lightly loaded coming back (1000lbs total). Coming back we saw right in between 23-24mpg. Obviously a bit of difference as our regular mpg is about 26-28 city and 32-35 highway


Does seem to be some improvement in the newer generations.

[kudzu]

Yep. It's apples & oranges, not just the vehicle but what we were towing as well. Was actually trying to make a comparison between older & newer versions.

[Ned B]

Wow that transit connect gets better gas mileage than I would've thought, I might replace my 2005- escape hybrid with A TC

[catinmoon]

Kudzu,
Not to take away from your experience, but I'm sure you're aware that the 2010 of yours and the 2014 of mine are a bit apples/oranges on the comparison. Yours is a 2.0L versus my 2.5 (Both Duratec) and a 4 speed automatic in 2010 versus the 6 speed overdrive in the 2014.

We actually pulled the trailer in both directions, heavily loaded going out and very lightly loaded coming back (1000lbs total). Coming back we saw right in between 23-24mpg. Obviously a bit of difference as our regular mpg is about 26-28 city and 32-35 highway


Does seem to be some improvement in the newer generations.

Thanks for posting about your experience with the new er Transit connect. Colorado is a good test of hills. I started this thread a while back then somehow stopped getting notices about postings, so am just seeing all the posts. I'm still in the market. CCrew your TC looks great! Just curious how you got such a good price -- maybe I can use some of your strategies for negotiation. I live in So Cal so prices are "slightly higher west of the Rockies". Do they still say that? Seems true.

Best,
STephanie (catinmoon)