Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryland
I have a trailer hitch on my Civic VX and use it to tow a small 10 foot long by 4.5 foot wide flat bed trailer and have found that while towing that trailer on the interstate and around town I still get 39-40mpg, much better then I could with a pick up truck and for things like 12 foot long sheets of drywall I would still need a trailer even if I had a pickup truck, I still barrow a pickup truck for hauling dirt, gravel and other loads that would end up weighing more then my Civic does, but for hauling dry wall, lumber, trash and other bulky items it works great!
I started thinking more about this while talking to a friend of mine about trailers as he had a small one for his ridding lawn mower and towed it with his Toyota Avalon and was telling me that his daughter wanted to get one as well to tow behind her Chevy Malibu.
So what kind of trailers do the rest of you use and what do you do with them? are you able to eliminate the use of a pickup truck all together?
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I've got a 1,000-lb GVW kit trailer I bought for $136 back in the 1980s.That same trailer is available today at Harbor Freight Tools for the same identical price as 25 years ago.------------- I've used it as a flatbed,with a box on it to carry sand and aggregate,and also with a crude aerodynamic shell fabbed up from electrical metal tubing ( skeleton ) and 1/8-inch Luan Mahogony (sp?) door skin covered in one layer of FRP,and FRP Radii cast from the inside of large SCD -80 pipe and FRP corners cast inside hemispherical barbecue lids.------------- The trailer went to California and back behind the CRX and I averaged 50-mpg,even at over 3,300 pounds gross.She had no sides or belly or axle fairing or leafspring fairing,something I hope to remedy for the September trip to the West Coast behind the T-100.Also hope to have the movable gap-fillers( which cut drag by 20% ).--------- I'm hoping she will "add" mpg.----------P.S. I also have a Suzuki TM 400-based 1-wheel trailer which only got 48-mpg behind the CRX,but it turns out that I had 2 burned through vacuum lines near the firewall that I could not detect ;til I got home.She might have done better.Hope to retest one day.