I am presently moving from Los Angeles to Salt Lake City.
I bought a 14 foot 2 axle cargo trailer to run back and forth with.
It weighs about 2300 lbs empty and I'm guessing about 4500 pounds with garbage in it like my furniture and tools. I'll end up making about 3 more trips.

Since I have an automatic, I would like to know if there is anything I can do to assure the transmission doesn't die. This is the first time I have towed with the truck and I've so far made 3 trips.

I try to keep it locked in to overdrive... and on grades, I keep it the next gear down out of overdrive. But the oil has darkened and I am wondering if I should be worried.????

Any help would be apprecidated. I know a standard tranny is best to tow with, but I don't have one in any of my trucks.

98 24V auto stock, 2nd vP 3rd LP. about 130 K miles on it.

 

Towing 4500# won't hurt the tranny. Esecially with stock power. Many tow much more than that more often than you will be without hurting theirs.

 

Carry lots of water with you. It's ugly hot out here in the desert if you haven't noticed. Not sure what it's like to tow 4500 with a stock trans, but if you start lugging just knock it out of od like you've been doing. My 01 seems to do best towing grades keeping the rpm's above 2200. Not too many challenges like towing a trailer on those grades around Baker with a 115+ ambient temp.

 

I pull a 2-3000lb trailer around the city during the summer for work with my auto. I'm far beyond stock and so far so good. Just keep the RPM's above 1800 and you'll be fine.

 

have your trans fluid changed every 40k or so

 

I have towed six times that weight with an auto trans with narry a problem many, many times. My trans has over 400,000 on it now. Like you said, turn the overdrive off in hilly terrain.

 

Don't manually shift down, just lock out overdrive, keep it in "D".
If you manually shift down, you unlock the converter, stock converters don't and can't lock in 2nd.

I've seen tranny temps spike at 280 degrees towing a little 4wheeler trailer loaded with camping supplies up slow (25-30mph) winding roads, as soon as I start heading down the temps come right down to the more managable 190-200.
Just keep the RPMS up to keep the fluid flowing through the cooler, although at those low speeds, not much cooling is going on.

OD locked out, 70MPH, you'll see the RPM's way up there where they have never been before, but these engines were made to run at 3,000 RPMS all day long.


phox