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Vehicle to tow a boat?


thegame

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What kind of vehicle (prob suv or truck) would be good for towing a small boat. I want to get a boat, but my small ass car wont be able to pull it. Hopefully i can do this next year.

Low Cost

Good gas mileage (30+ would be great)

Can tow a boat

Dont know what kind of boat i want yet either. Nothin special. Just something to get out in the water. Gonna get into fishing too.

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harleys have alot of torque :lol:

huh?

You find a truck or SUV that can get 30 mpg, let me know. And I'm not talking about the little Honda SUV's that cant tow itself out of a wet paper bag.

haha im not having much luck. didnt know if they went up that high yet or not.

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First you need to decide on the type of boat you want. If you go with a boat in the 17-18 ft. range (around 3000-3200lbs) you should be able to tow it with most of the modern crossover suv's. For example, my wife's Ford Edge can tow up to 3500# and we get 28mpg on the highway with it, you'll probably get less than 10mpg towing a boat with it though. I have a 21' boat and tow that with a Chevy Avalanche, I get about 12-13mpg when towing.

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First you need to decide on the type of boat you want. If you go with a boat in the 17-18 ft. range (around 3000-3200lbs) you should be able to tow it with most of the modern crossover suv's. For example, my wife's Ford Edge can tow up to 3500# and we get 28mpg on the highway with it, you'll probably get less than 10mpg towing a boat with it though. I have a 21' boat and tow that with a Chevy Avalanche, I get about 12-13mpg when towing.

Exactly....figure out what kind of boat you want first. Basically look realistically at what you want to use it for and how much use and then that should clear things up. If you have questions about boats in general let me know as I have been on and around boats all my life and its a love of mine. My buddy got a 20ft cuddy cabin and pulls it with his Mitsu Endeavor but not sure on the gas mileage.

As people have said towing a boat I wouldnt expect better than 15mpg with any truck/suv.

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My F-150 pick up gets right at 20 mpg with no trailer, might lose 3-4 mpg with a trailer and a heavy boat.

The wife's Expedition gets around 18 mpg and a trailer with two bikes on it doesn't drop her mpg at all. Big V8 motors aren't all that much affected by small trailers.

Smaller motors are gonna have to rev a lot higher and that's what kills the mpg so much.

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Weigh all options like said before.

1 how often you will be towing vs commuting with it

2 how far will you be towing

3 how much weight you will be towing

4 how much you want to spend on a tow vehicle

5 how many different places will you tow to?

Considering number 5 you may just rent a dock space for the season and borrow a bro's truck twice a year to get it back and forth.

:popcorn:

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I used to have a 16' MFG trihull... i could pull it with a 70 beetle, a 87 bronco II, a 86 s-10 blazer, or a 98 olds intrigue...the tongue weight was nill, and the boat was really light.

figure out what you boat/trailer will be first....

if you get a big enough one to "dock" and only need to tow it twice a year (to and from the dock/dry dock or storage unit) you could rent a decent sized truck from uhaul or enterprise and save a ton of money.

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My F-150 pick up gets right at 20 mpg with no trailer, might lose 3-4 mpg with a trailer and a heavy boat.

The wife's Expedition gets around 18 mpg and a trailer with two bikes on it doesn't drop her mpg at all. Big V8 motors aren't all that much affected by small trailers.

Smaller motors are gonna have to rev a lot higher and that's what kills the mpg so much.

I guarantee you will lose more than 3-4 mpg, my 07 F150 (5.4L) only got 9-10 mpg towing my 20' boat.

Also, really think about how much you are going to use the boat. I love boating and grew up around boats, but Ohio weather sucks for us boaters most of the time. When I bought our new boat a couple years ago I had visions of getting everyone together and hanging out at the lake on weekends. Unfortunately it didn't happen that way, for some reason (unknown to myself) its hard to get a group together to go boating. What's wrong with people?? My wife says I'm an ass, I don't care about other people and my social skills need an overhaul, but its just that I don't deal well with stupidity and ignorance.

Anyways, I now have a $34k boat that just sits in the driveway, it saw water 3 times last year and once (so far) this year. Anyone want to be my friend and go to the lake?:rolleyes:

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