Am planning to tow a 20' boat. All up weight of boat and trailer about 1400kg. I am a bit worried about the back end of the AWD (TL) being a bit low for both towing and launching. Anyone had experience of this who can give me some useful info? Any tips on special gear to make it work better?

Am planning to tow a 20' boat. All up weight of boat and trailer about 1400kg. I am a bit worried about the back end of the AWD (TL) being a bit low for both towing and launching. Anyone had experience of this who can give me some useful info? Any tips on special gear to make it work better?

Pull out in 1st or low. Best pick higher tide or rising tide as ramp will be dry. dropping tide will leave you a slimmy ramp. most people will say awd is sweet but i watched a Patrol slid on the ramp last weekend with a 12-1400kg tinny. low tide and slimmy ramp can even effect the best of them..:)

Have personally pulled our 6m plate alloy centre console out of the water with our TH magna, would expect you would be fine on that front with an awd, but yes, low gear. (I dont know much about the effect of the back end being low, cant help)

Have towed the boat around with the TH but only at a max of about 60km/h and on backstreets, getting it up to speed isnt particularly the problem when towing with a 6cyl sedan, its making it stop when you need to, so be careful. Hence why we also have a landcruiser now...

Towed my 1300kg boat for 12 years with a KE verada, KL Gtvi and now 380.

Never been stuck on a ramp getting out although some of the ramps at low tide get a coating of sand which require some wheelspin.

My towing is always at least 2 hours to get to the water and twice a year as much as 14 hours to get to Airlie Beach or Port Stephens.

I have load levelling bars and initially spent a good deal of time getting towball downforce right.

Tow everywhere at the posted speed limit where appropriate and use cruise control.

AWD should be a good machine for towing and retrieving

Many thanks to Ego, Pretzel and mike481950. I am very interested in the comment on load levelling bars. Do they successfully stop the back end of the car being pushed any lower than it already is? I was thinking of having up-rated springs for this, but maybe the load levellers are the way to go.

The torsion (load levelling) bars do raise the rear end as they transfer weight off the cars rear axle and onto the trailers wheels

Thanks Mike. Sounds like the way to go.

Have towed the boat around with the TH but only at a max of about 60km/h and on backstreets, getting it up to speed isnt particularly the problem when towing with a 6cyl sedan, its making it stop when you need to, so be careful. Hence why we also have a landcruiser now...

Any trailer over 750kg legally has to have some sort of brakes, in theory the Magna should be able to cope just as fine as a Landcruiser etc., which without tailer brakes is also limited to 750kg. In practice many of the trailer brakes are pretty poor and don't brake as well as their legal obligation suggests.

Just remember on a boatramp the car will seem like it is pullling more than 1400kg. You'll have the weight of the contents of the boat (all the fish?) including all the spray water etc, the resistance of the water you are pulling against, and of course the consideration that the boat ramp is at an angle. Since he Magna isn't really designed for towing these are just extra things to be wary of, the last thing you want to do is slowly twist the back end! With 1400kg its probably going to be ok! although I wouldn't go much higher than that.

I have totally standard 04 TL AWD- tow 1100kg fibre glass half cab with V6 outboard- AWD has no problem on boat ramp at all- bing full time AWD with LSD in back end I have NEVER lost traction or induced any wheelspin on any boat ramp I have ever used- including slippery ones at low tide and even having the trailer drop off the end of the ramp at low tide- it just applies so much tractive force so long as you take it easy- previous tow vehicle- Landrover Discovery TD5- prior to that Discovery TDi- AWD Magn tows just as easy as either of previous 2 did. Might add- trailer is very well balanced so does not drop a lot of weight onto the back end- standard spring appear quite soft so if you had a lot of tow ball weight could make it sage pretty badly. Trailer run only over rider disc brakes.

Also depends on the load rating of your towbar which commonly came in 1200Kg and 1500Kg versions from a range of manufacturers. Note Magnas both FWD and AWD have a maximum tow rating of 1500Kg braked with a correctly rated towbar and as mentioned before 750Kg unbraked.

The other thing too is you will pick a good boat ramp you like to use reguarly. The ramp is the one that i would say counts for about 70-80% of your launching & Retrieving experience.