Diesel Grand Cherokee Tow Test

I figured once the Grand was... 

   

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I figured once the Grand was loaded to the roof with clothes, tools and whatever, and the Scrambler on the trailer stuffed with spare parts that it would be at or over the maximum weight limit. With a published curb weight of 5,500 lbs and a max towing capacity of 7,400 lbs, I felt like it was right at the 12,900 lb limit by the seat of the pants scale. At 11,560 without driver, it was still at least 1,000 lbs from max. I could have thrown a few more of my spare axles on the trailer while in New Jersey.

Unlike many other magazines, when we are given a vehicle to test as a "Long Term" vehicle (read: "Here, borrow this for a year and tell the world what you think") we actually test the thing for a year and try to use it to the utmost. We don't beat on the thing for two or three weeks and then let it sit in the parking lot collecting dust. You see, we are Jeep guys at heart who happen to write a magazine, and we try to use the vehicle like you would, complete with doing our own maintenance in our own driveways.

So, for this installment, I stumbled across a Scrambler half a country away and figured what better way to put the long term tester through its paces than driving from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and back again dragging another Jeep along for the trip? If that wasn't enough, my goal was to do it in less than three weeks with five trail runs in five different states, while swapping bodies, engines, front clips and whatever other parts I could trade on the Scrambler along the way. Needless to say, the Grand Cherokee got a workout over about 8,000 miles of cross-country madness in a period of 17 days on the road all while attached to a trailer.

You can read more about my hair-brained scheme and Scrambler in the next issue of Jp magazine, but for the time being, here are some Grand Cherokee related notes from the coast-to-coast-to-coast tow test.

What It Really Costs
In the last installment, I broke down the first 13,000 or so miles to figure out what this diesel Jeep was costing me to run. In the interests of keeping a running tally, this chart starts with the $3323.09 from before, and tacked on all costs to date for a true dollars-per-mile over the life of the Jeep.

Real World Mileage
Overall, I haven't seen a change in fuel mileage around California, but rolling down the road at near 12,000 lbs did put a dent in mileage and driving into a headwind for many of the plains states beat the mileage down even more. On this trip, the Grand has racked up our worst mileages to date. Then again, the Grand Cherokee towing another Jeep still gets better mileage than the Jeep on the trailer would get on its own if I was to drive it.

While I did manage to convince...        read full caption While I did manage to convince Cappa to let me take the trip, blogs still had to be written, and stories turned in- it was a work trip, after all. This laptop has a 15-minute life span off of its battery, but fortunately the Grand has an AC outlet built into the back of the console which transforms the passenger seat into a mobile office.	While 17 days might sound...        read full caption While 17 days might sound like plenty of time, each trail run took about a day to shoot, for a remainder of 12 days on the road. But wait, then factor in all of the messing around with the Scrambler which actually took another three full days, and pretty soon I was left with nine full driving days. For the nine full days I was on the road, sleeping happened not at hotels, but in parking lots in a sleeping bag in the back of the Grand whenever I got tired.	One of the downfalls to towing...        read full caption One of the downfalls to towing with a unibody vehicle is that the noise from the trailer is amplified throughout the cab. Thanks to the sound-deadening of the Grand Cherokee, this wasn't a huge issue. The only time it was a problem was on the deadhead portion of the trip from Los Angeles to Ohio. The unloaded trailer bouncing all over the place really rattled the hitch and could be heard in the cab. This $20 item from the local trailer shop silenced it nicely.
The Carousel at the boardwalk...        read full caption The Carousel at the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey.	The one scenic stop over the...        read full caption The one scenic stop over the whole 8,000 mile thrashing was at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. Since I was literally driving right by it I couldn't pass it up. By this point I had no worries about the Grand pulling the weight. I just set cruise control and went without any slowing down for even the biggest grades. Sure, the automatic transmission would downshift for some of the big hills, but this diesel engine can hold its own when towing.