help with a Nissan Terrano

[sharpy]

Hi, I've a friend who has one of these its 9yr old and a 2.4 litre petrol, the problem he has is this

1, when he has his 1 tonne caravan in tow it needs extremely high revs when traveling to get him up hills anymore than a slight incline?

2, again with the caravan, it wont move it very well in reverse when positioning the caravan with 4 wheel drive engaged and diff lock and low gear?

3, does 4 wheel drive work in reverse?

I know, i have suggested "we buy any car.com" to be fair he is after a Landy, but until then, any ideas?

Cheers Paul

[Aragorn]

not that helpful, but for 2) does the caravan have overrun brakes and if so does it have a mechanism to disable them when reversing?

for 1) the engine revs are limited entirely by the gear ratios... Do you mean that he has to drop down into a lower gear to pull it up hills? The engine makes more power at higher revs, so you may just find that hes having to drop a gear and use more RPM's to enable the engine to generate enough power to drag it up hill?

[sharpy]

not that helpful, but for 2) does the caravan have overrun brakes and if so does it have a mechanism to disable them when reversing?

for 1) the engine revs are limited entirely by the gear ratios... Do you mean that he has to drop down into a lower gear to pull it up hills? The engine makes more power at higher revs, so you may just find that hes having to drop a gear and use more RPM's to enable the engine to generate enough power to drag it up hill?

Ive spoke to him and he is unsure about the overrun brakes, but he does have a motor mover, which he tells me is a device that enables you to move the caravan by hand, and it moves backwards, forwards fine with this

Cheers paul

[Bowie69]

The motor mover probably isn't putting enough force on the overrun brakes to engage them, whereas the car will easily have enough grunt.

Normally moving forward a couple of feet, and then back again will release them.

[Aragorn]

dont some hitches have a pin or bar you drop into place to disable the brakes for manoevering?

[sgnas]

2. Isn't the Terrano 2wd in normal mode. This means there is no centre diff. Manouvreing in 4wd low box will VERY quickly wind the transmission up and require a lot of enginre effort to overcome. My Frontera used to do this a lot.