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towing with the tower down


hawaiianstyln

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Anyone ever drop the tower and tow with it down while pulling on long trips? Bout to tow 1100 miles one way and am SURE that I would get better gas mileage if I had that tower down and safely secured so it would bounce on the windshield or anything. You add a tower, 4 tower speakers, 6 light bar system, racks, bimini and that has to be some serious drag.

I was just thinking of dropping the titan II down and somehow secure it so it doesn't bounce around or damage the windshield if I hit a bump.

Any thoughts or am I wasting my time here....??....

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MalibuNation
Anyone ever drop the tower and tow with it down while pulling on long trips? Bout to tow 1100 miles one way and am SURE that I would get better gas mileage if I had that tower down and safely secured so it would bounce on the windshield or anything. You add a tower, 4 tower speakers, 6 light bar system, racks, bimini and that has to be some serious drag.

I was just thinking of dropping the titan II down and somehow secure it so it doesn't bounce around or damage the windshield if I hit a bump.

Any thoughts or am I wasting my time here....??....

I'd do it ... maybe rig some schedule 40 PVC pipe somehow, maybe in the hole where the table stand goes ... if you have that option.

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that's exactly what I was thinking of doing... :)

2200 miles round trip is a lot of gas and i'm just trying to save as much as possible at 10-11 mpg. :(

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I've built some stands out of sched 40 PVC & T-joints. I cut the T-Joints on a table saw. I only use them to pull in/out of my storage area & not for towing.

Add a velcro rope keeper screwed into T-Joint to secure stand to the tower (or one of the 'ball & bungees') & half of a velcro pad (hook part) to keep it from moving on the carpet you should be OK. You could still have some bounce, but the stand should stay & catch it when it lands.

Don't know how much you would save (a quick guestimate says about 20 gallons if you get 1 MPG more). Theoretically, you could get the rear hoop below the windshield into the smooth air pocket & it could make a difference. However, if you don't get the rear hoop down into the air pocket, you would be exposing the sides of the speakers to the air flow instead of the fronts. Typically the sides are much larger, so it could work against you.

The biggest down-side is if the front support fails, you'll then likely need to replace your windshield - which will cost way more than any savings.

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This is what I normally do too, help with the drag, but also keeps the road grime and bugs to a minimum. Like others have said, PVC works great for this and is cheap, just be sure to wrap the tower in something soft where its supported on a long trip like that.

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I don't know about towing with it down..... Sure you should see mileage, but what happens when you hit a good bump and the leg slips on the carpet. You have a (god knows how heavy) tower bouncing on your windshield, upholstery, gelcoat or whatever is in it's path -depending on which tower you have. Also possibly putting extra stress on the pivot points and mounting hardware. I'm PRETTY SURE any tower manufacturer is going to tell you to tow with tower in upright position. I use a PVC leg just to get in/out of my garage also.

Good luck with that...

Patrick

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I have the titan II series which I've also purchased the "malibu tower foam pads" from Tillys marine a while back. They are not your normal thin piece of rubber that goes around the tower where the tower rest on the windshield. I think those pieces used to come with the boat if you had a titan tower. However, they are actually thick foam padding with a nylon wrap around the foam. If I tow with it down, I would need to make sure the front Titan wishbone is not resting on the tower at any point and would need to secure it to some sort of PVC stand (then the stand would have to be tied down, assuming). I'm not worried about the back titan leg, because I can let that rest on the sundeck with some foam in between (and tie that down).

I guess in all reality, I could just unhook the front titan wishbone and wrap any point that could damage upholstry and put it inside the stadim area in the boat. That's the way they shipped my boat from the MFG. Merced had wrapped carpet and foam around the legs and placed the front wishbone inside the boat in a position that would not damage anything. Then I would not have to worry about the windshield I guess.

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A friend tows his Santera with the tower down (no speakers even). He has an older throttle body Suburban & states that he can really "feel" the difference in power. He has not commented on the mileage.

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Would this really increase your mileage all "that" much Dontknow.gif I mean, seriously. If you gain as much as 1 mpg (which I doubt) you would only be saving yourself about 12 gallons of fuel @ $4.00 = $48 total. Save $48 and risk possibly wrecking something on your Bu, not for me No.gif Now, the bugs are another story, but a good coat of wax on tower and speakers makes the clean-up pretty easy (15 minutes tops)

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"Save $48 and risk possibly wrecking something on your Bu"????

I don't get how your going to wreck anything on your bu. Obviously you have to secure the tower. When I park mine in the winter, rather than sitting the front part of the tower on windshield, I secure it on a stand. It has a large footprint. I could add some padding to the top & bottom, and bungie the tower down on top. I highly doubt there would be any damage to the boat or tower at all.

A 1 mpg savings would get my truck about 30 miles further every tank. That saves me about $12 per tank. Not so shabby for a minute or two of work to put the tower up & down.

Probably not the kind of thing I'd do for a short trip. But any longer trips it would pay off pretty quickly.

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I have taken the probability out of the tower hitting the windshild. I'm taking the front wishbone off. It's only two bolts and I can set it inside the boat like how it came to me when malibu shipped it to me in Hawaii. It's a no brainer. Unscrew two bolts and pop the tower off the front and stick it inside the boat and save myself a little money. 2200 miles total is a lot of gas. Saving 1mpg will be sweet for all these miles.

Rockon.gif

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  • 2 weeks later...

WOW, i'm impressed. Okay, now we all know the DIC is off a little.. However, I used the DIC last time and it averaged 9.5 mpg pulling the boat with the tower deployed up, no power programmer and speed set at 78mph.

Now, I put a bully net on the back to replace my tailgate, dropped the tower (took the front wishbone off the titan II and put it inside the boat), installed a power programmer (dialed in my injector curve very nicely) and dropped my speed to 65 mph and now my DIC is averaged at 15.2 mpg.

I know everyone says that you can't trust the DIC, but i'm driving on the same roads and the same air temp and the DIC is 5 mpg more with all those changes. I don't care if the DIC is accurate or not, but all I know is that I feel a huge diffrence in towing and my RPM's are only at 1950 instead of 3100

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I pulled the front wishbone off my T-III tower last week, and got about 2 mpg better. It basically allowed me to pull at a more consistent 75 mph in D rather than always wanting to downshift to 3rd. I am now going to build a cradle so I don't have to take the wishbone off.

BTW would a power programmer be beneficial for a 02 Tahoe with a 5.3?

Edited by Brodie
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I posted a thread on this a while back and I didn't get this much positive feedback, what you do want to make sure of, is that the tower is secure and does not bounce up at all and you should be good to go Thumbup.gif

Edited by 68Slalom
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WOW, i'm impressed. Okay, now we all know the DIC is off a little.. However, I used the DIC last time and it averaged 9.5 mpg pulling the boat with the tower deployed up, no power programmer and speed set at 78mph.

Now, I put a bully net on the back to replace my tailgate, dropped the tower (took the front wishbone off the titan II and put it inside the boat), installed a power programmer (dialed in my injector curve very nicely) and dropped my speed to 65 mph and now my DIC is averaged at 15.2 mpg.

I know everyone says that you can't trust the DIC, but i'm driving on the same roads and the same air temp and the DIC is 5 mpg more with all those changes. I don't care if the DIC is accurate or not, but all I know is that I feel a huge diffrence in towing and my RPM's are only at 1950 instead of 3100

Your tailgate is nothing to do with it according to Myth Busters.

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WOW, i'm impressed. Okay, now we all know the DIC is off a little.. However, I used the DIC last time and it averaged 9.5 mpg pulling the boat with the tower deployed up, no power programmer and speed set at 78mph.

Now, I put a bully net on the back to replace my tailgate, dropped the tower (took the front wishbone off the titan II and put it inside the boat), installed a power programmer (dialed in my injector curve very nicely) and dropped my speed to 65 mph and now my DIC is averaged at 15.2 mpg.

I know everyone says that you can't trust the DIC, but i'm driving on the same roads and the same air temp and the DIC is 5 mpg more with all those changes. I don't care if the DIC is accurate or not, but all I know is that I feel a huge diffrence in towing and my RPM's are only at 1950 instead of 3100

Your tailgate is nothing to do with it according to Myth Busters.

Im pretty sure the Myth Busters went back and did more testing on it, they came up with the net is the best way to save fuel vs tailgate up, down, or completly off.

They had a show that went back and re tried a few things they busted or proved, that fans thought were inconclusive. That was one of them.

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Brodie, it will help only if you work with the programmer and fine tune it. That's if you buy a handheld tuner. You can also get a custom tune from HP (and other places) that would help if you didn't want to try and tune it yourself with a handheld programmer.

My Diablo handheld is great because I can monitor all the PCM settings (Spark, knock retard, fuel trims, torque mgt, throttle response, etc........) When you understand what each setting does, you monitor logs for a week and fine tun it to how your engine is running (sort of speak). I installed a K&N intake and magnaflow dual exhaust and since the airflow has increased I wanted to fine tune the PCM to work with those modifications. You don't have to have mods. A tune will help either way...

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WOW, i'm impressed. Okay, now we all know the DIC is off a little.. However, I used the DIC last time and it averaged 9.5 mpg pulling the boat with the tower deployed up, no power programmer and speed set at 78mph.

Now, I put a bully net on the back to replace my tailgate, dropped the tower (took the front wishbone off the titan II and put it inside the boat), installed a power programmer (dialed in my injector curve very nicely) and dropped my speed to 65 mph and now my DIC is averaged at 15.2 mpg.

I know everyone says that you can't trust the DIC, but i'm driving on the same roads and the same air temp and the DIC is 5 mpg more with all those changes. I don't care if the DIC is accurate or not, but all I know is that I feel a huge diffrence in towing and my RPM's are only at 1950 instead of 3100

How do you know any of that improvement had to do with removing the tower? I'd say it has more to do with the programmer and your serious drop in speed. Or, are you just suggesting perhaps what you did to others? That is a heckuva increase in MPG! Thumbup.gif

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90% of the fuel mileage came from the rpm drop. The engine is an fancy air pump and probably using 30% less air/fuel at 1950rpm vs. 3100

Hey congrats on the increase. I will continue to tow with tower up. I feel more legit with tower up.

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yah i'm not suggesting it was only due to the drop of the tower. I'm sure most of it's the RPM drop.

I will always tow with the tower up to all the local lakes around me or anything under a 5 hour tow. However, since this is a 17 hour tow, that's why i'm doing anything to help in gas mileage.

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You guys get low MPG! I did 75 on a 600 mile trip and averaged 15.2 in a 2002 Yukon XL. And leave the cover off while towing, it can scuff and micromarr your gel.

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You guys get low MPG! I did 75 on a 600 mile trip and averaged 15.2 in a 2002 Yukon XL. And leave the cover off while towing, it can scuff and micromarr your gel.

Umm, maybe it has something to do with your boat weight vs. the newer boats? Looks like your boat weighs about 2600 lbs. I only wish mine weighed that much. Dontknow.gif

Also, if you don't have a tower, tower speakers, sub boxes, ballast tanks (empty) and all the extra stuff added to a wakesetter VLX these days....

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