New tow vehicle - Chevy Suburban

 

I spent an hour last night searching all of the RPO codes (options), and discovered my "really good deal" was really a "hell of a deal".  They had priced it thinking it had a 3.08 rear, then they confirmed it had the 3.42 before I went to see it.  Still allowed me to talk them down $500 when their original price was way below everything else on the market to start with.  Now that I've run all the codes I see it also has the heavy-duty cooling/trailering option which bumps up the towing capacity another ~2000 pounds.  I can do 7900 pounds total with a combined weight of 14,000.  Not that I'll ever tow that much.

 

I do like the Active Fuel Management system, I saw it shifting from V4 to V8 during the test drive.  Supposedly it reactivates in 20 ms so should be transparent to the driver.  I'll be testing that out over the next few weeks.  Lots of mpg variables to play with, like if there is much difference in leaving it in 2WD or Auto; it has a bug deflector so I may try it on and off; and playing with the AFM to see just how much difference I see tank-to-tank if I try to keep it in V4 mode as much as possible vs. driving normally.

 

I wanted a 2009 or newer because of the 6-speed tranny, specifically for towing.  That was one of the big downsides of my Sienna - it has a huge gap between 2nd and 3rd gear.  I would hit a slight incline and it would drop into 3rd, but 3rd was so close to 4th that it still couldn't keep up so it would soon drop to 2nd.  2nd was a lot lower to get into the power curve so the rpms would shoot up to a billion and torque steer would suddenly be a big problem (front wheel drive).  I will enjoy towing with rear-wheel drive and a well-balanced tranny.  I noticed it has an auto hill braking mode when in tow mode which will be nice, too.  Not that I needed brakes on hills much since the pod is such a nice air dam!