Ford Galaxy TDi

[oldievanner]

Any body tow with a Galaxy TDi with an auto box.Any comments appreciated, good or detrimental

 

[Icemaker]

the galaxy itself is a very very good towcar, i had the alhambra equivalent in the 130 tdi manual version (i assume you mean the old galaxy as opposed to the new one)but the auto is the vw tiptronic box which is not that tough and known to have faults hence the reason it is only available with the 115 bhp engine.

if you take in to account the 10 % of power that you generally lose with auto boxes then the you are towing a caravan with a large and heavy car that only has around 103 bhp available which is pretty poor.

I would think very carefully about this car / engine / gearbox combination as its probably going to prove dissapointing to you.

If you are talking about the new galaxy then ive never heard of anyone towing with an auto up to now and since once again the gearbox is only available in a lower power version of the 2.0 tdci (130 bhp as opposed to the manuals 140 bhp)i would say once again that the gearbox is being restricted for a reason which may not prove too good for towing.

 

[RogerL]

The old Galaxy (VW Sharan/Alhambra) used a VW autobox which can be fragile when worked hard - Galaxy plus caravan is a lot of weight.

The new Galaxy (S-Max/Mondeo) uses an Aisin-Warner autobox made by a division of Toyota and fitted to Lexus, Toyota, Volvo, Opel, Vauxhall. It's capable of handling high torque like the 3.0V6 turbodiesel Vauxhall and has an excellent reputation.

Modern autoboxes have zero power loss at cruising speeds by using lockup clutches to eliminate the torque converter - there is still a power loss during acceleration but the torque converter more than makes up for that.

 

[Garfield]

The auto box on my father in law's 2002 Galaxy was apparently a Japanese box, it self destructed at 30,000 miles, we towed with a Sharan, now an S-max both are very stable towcars but don't touch the autos unless you are prepared to shell out