Mondeo mods for towing??
At the moment I tow a Venus 505 MPTLM 1380 kg with an old Freelander 1, it's stable if a bit slow.
The time has come to drop down to one car and I have been considering a Mondeo. I want something cheap to buy, run as the family car and use for occasional towing. My wife and I have retired so our day to day milage isn't high, I have tried towing with a borrowed and rather knackered Mondeo in the past, I thought I'd burnt the clutch out and it suffered a bad case of bum droop!
What is needed to make a n older Mondeo a viable tug, a better clutch, stiffer suspension? is it worth the extra cost or should I look for something else?
atb aamcle
Comments
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How old are you considering? My 2000 (Y-reg) Mk2 1.8 TD tows perfectly. Completely standard, and original clutch. My van is only 1100kg though.
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We tow a van with an MTPLM of 1350 with a Mondeo and on the older versions we added spring assisters, but no longer need them on our current car. We have a TDCi 2012 now, and no problems towing.
With the previous older Mondeos we did (sometimes) notice a 'clutch' smell when reversing but this never seemed to cause a real problem and we never required a new clutch.
I wouldn't even think about a petrol Mondeo - we had one on loan from Ford one year, and it was hopeless - underpowered and overheated on hills.
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We caravan in France, so use a lot of overnight sites. We much prefer an estate for caravanning - it means you can get a lot of the 'clutter' which sometimes goes in the middle of the van, into the car - leaving it free to do a quick set-up for just one night and it makes it easier to get the noseweight right, because we put the heavier stuff such as the awning/spare wheel/and our inflatable canoe in the car. We prefer the Turbo Diesel, which has good torque, and our current model is a 2012 TDCi six speed estate.
I don't know how much you have to spend but Mondeos can be had for very little money, and seem to go on for ever - but make sure you get a full service history. Our previous car was an ex-company car with full service history (not from his own company - they wanted too much for his own car!!!!) We bought it cheap when OH was made redundant, and we sold it privately for not much less than we paid for it in when we bought our current car new in 2012.
We've had a Mondeo and used it for towing since about 1999 - so that must be a recommendation. In fact my OH could have had a much more prestigious car as a director of the company, but chose to stick with the Mondeo and have a cash bonus instead.
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I towed with some 60 plate Mondeo, it was absolutely brilliant. I'd say it was almost is not equal to towing with our Free lander 2, it felt so solid and was never short of power even towing our 1555kg challenger. We had the 2L 163bhp power shift model which
seem to be very popular. Far more reliable than our Free lander Too!0
