..........Now would you like to know the REST of that story?

That's MY trailer (well I rented it anyway) and tow hitch, hooked to Brad92SE's Turbo VE.

I drove my VE to the track with the trailer (there's about 500lb of stuff in there, BTW) and blew the engine at the track. since I was the event organizer and was bringing a booth for BlehmCo, I had to have some way to get it all to the car show. Brad volunteered to let me put the hitch on his car and he drove the trailer from the track to Dallas.

I then put the hitch on Jayson Byrd's 3 gen (blackandwhite) and he drove the trailer from Dallas back to Houston after the show so I could unload the stuff, then then dropped the trailer off near his house on the north side of Houston.

So in one weekend, three 3 gens towed that damn trailer around a good portion of Texas.


All that said, all of the cars were 5 spds and were towing on basically flat ground. None of the cars had a problem towing that trailer.

The tow hitch bolts to the rear bumper support framework- if you can call what's back there "frame". There are actually bolt holes back there from the factory to attach a tow hitch. It's only a Class I hitch rated for like 3000lb, but the car shouldn't tow any more than about 1500lb or so. I have much larger than factory brakes and had no problems pulling it or stopping it. (hell, I was doing 100+mph with that trailer on several occasions and cruised 100+ miles at 80+mph with it.)

I WOULD NOT tow across country with an automatic. Across town, sure. Turn the overdrive off and go. (NEVER, EVER TOW WITH THE OVERDRIVE ON IN ANY VEHICLE!!!!!) 1000lb? sure. no problems. Just make sure you double your stopping distances and make sure you have good brake pads on it.

Towing through mountains on an automatic? I wouldn't try it if it were my car.

 

You're not feeling the O/D engage/disengage. You're feeling the torque converter lock up/slip.
Our transmissions have four forward gears. 3rd gear is 1:1. 4th gear is 0.694:1, which is a "true overdrive" since the mainshaft spins faster than the input shaft.

The shifter itself only uses 1-3 and then 4th gear (OD) is engaged via the button on the side of the stick. Why it is that way, I don't know. But that's the way Nissan designed it.

the feeling you get in each gear is again the torque converter locking up, NOT the thing shifting into overdrive in each gear.

FYI... The last cars that had external overdrives were built in the 60s. Ford used an external secondary electronic overdrive on the end of their 3 spd manual tranny so you could run it through 1st, let off the gas and engage 1-OD and go farther in 1st gear.
do it again in 2nd.
and again in 3rd.
so the car had 6 forward gear ratios with only three shifts and one additional electronic overdrive. pretty sweet actually.

 

I can especially confirm this, since i wired a manual TC lockup switch on my a/t... somehow there was a safety mechanism that prevented lockup in 1st gear despite the TC lockup solenoid being hardwired ON, but in 2nd-4th the rpms were totally solid, just like a manual tranny... and the o/d switch didn't do a darn thing except allow me to enter 4th gear. Granted, driving in such a "manual mode" killed my tranny..... or so i assume, but it did allow me to actually see the true speed/rpm correlation, instead of the wishy-washy depends-on-throttle nature of proper automatic transmission driving. It also let me know i had a bad front motor mount, since it would slam the entire front end of the car around every time i tried to 'rev match' a downshift.

 

dude..i was joking.

chillout.

 

all i read into it was that he was telling an entertaining story about past Maxus's

 

Don't mind blackmax, he gets butthurt quite often..

 

give him some shopping kartz to tow around with his max... he'll be alright

 

Awwwwwwwwww

 

No difference in the Australian 3rd gen Autos, the OD is simply 4th Gear, exactly the same as 5th gear on 5speed Manual transmissions, by selecting the O/D off switch, you are just preventing the transmission selecting 4th Gear, no more no less. Exactly the same as leaving a 5speed in 4th Gear. The O/D switch has no impact on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or reverse gears. Also, the Torque converter lockup clutch does not operate in 1st or 2nd. It will operate in 3rd if you exceed 90km/h with the OD switch off, or over 70km/h in 4th (OD switch on).

The only switch that will make a difference to the auto shifting points is the power/comfort switch which simply changes the shift points, in Power, it holds gears longer before up shifting, downshifts with less throttle input.

 

i checked today, and no, they wont. With a spacer they MIGHT, if you look at the shape of the inside of the wheel, you can see how you lose clearance on the last inch or so.. but you can just as easily get some 4.5genSE wheels which are 16", which look good on our cars anyways.

 

thanks for the info - i'll look into it