Yamaha 2400/ Towing 2 Cents

Your Jeep Grand Cherokee would probably do just fine. We recently started a trip with a 2016 Ford Escape SE 2L Ecoboost. We had an encounter with ice and wind that put the Escape out of commission and damaged the R-Pod. I patched the R-Pod, and we bought a 2010 Nissan Frontier LE Crew Cab with 4L V6. It worked hard, but we got home. When we got the Frontier, we were in South Jordan, Utah. We traveled to Gilbert, Arizona, Whetstone, Arizona, and back home to North Carolina. In some respects the 2L Ecoboost engine did better since it did not lose power at higher elevations. However, the V6 did okay. I just limit the speed to 60 mph.

The reason for limiting the speed to 60 mph is that seems to be the sweet spot for not feeling like we are crawling and not killing the mileage (and vehicle) trying to tow faster. Wind resistance increases exponentially with speed, not linearly, so the resistance at even 65 mph is much greater than at 60 mph. Even more so at 70 mph. In addition, the tires are not really made to go faster than 65 mph (unless you replace them with good load range D tires rated at 85 mph).

If you had the Grand Cherokee Diesel, you would be golden. However, the V8 should be adequate.

As for the generator, you may be able to run it. I can run ours on a Generac iX2000 which is 2000 watts running, 2200 watts surge capable. It really revs up when the compressor kicks in, but then settles down. The best I can say is to try it and see if it works for you.

I edited my post to add a comment about the generator.

11 mpg is not too awful. On some of the segments of our trip with climbing, especially at higher elevations, that is what I got. However, on some segments, it was closer to 14 mpg. The Frontier is rated at 19 mpg highway. The general rule of thumb is for gasoline engines, you will get about half the rated mpg when towing. This seems to be true even with larger tow vehicles. Diesels do better.

Thanks Furpod!  I owned a 1996 and 2001 Dodge Cummins year's ago.  Guess I got spoiled driving and towing with them.  It's been a while since I towed anything.

Wind resistance varies with the square of the speed. If you compare 60 mph to 66 mph, you can see that the higher speed is 1.1 times greater. This 1.1 squared equals 1.21, which means that the wind resistance is 1.21 times greater (also equal to 21% greater).

It also means 21% more energy is in the package should you crash.

Tow slow, amigo.

Originally posted by Our pod Wind resistance varies with the square of the speed. If you compare 60 mph to 66 mph, you can see that the higher speed is 1.1 times greater. This 1.1 squared equals 1.21, which means that the wind resistance is 1.21 times greater (also equal to 21% greater). It also means 21% more energy is in the package should you crash. Tow slow, amigo.

Thank you for providing the math It isn't quite exponential, but it is also not linear. If I got it right, then an increase from 60 to 65 is 1.08333333 times greater. Rounding to 1.08 and then squaring that gives 1.1664, which when rounded gives 1.17 times greater or 17% times greater. An increase from 60 to 70 yields an increase of 25% in wind resistance. An increase from 60 to 75 mph yields an increase of 56%.

What throws a real monkey wrench into trying to figure this out is one has to account for the wind. It has been a LOOOOOOOONG time since I took Physics in High School. Trying to figure out the additional force (or decrease if it is a tailwind) is way beyond my ability at this point. However, would a 20 mph headwind mean that if you are towing at 60 mph, the force is equal to if you are towing at 70 mph? It sure feels that way.