phantomandy

I tow 2000lbs with my 2011 JK and other than acceleration, and keeping OD off most of the time it's great. Mines an auto, so the trans cooler is coming soon and the camper (2011 Rockwood A126 hard side pop up camper) has electric brakes. stopping with the prodigy p2 and the electric brakes is like the trailer isn't there.

Keep your combined trailer and trailer cargo weight under 1000lbs and you should be golden.

yo_marc

Yeah I've pulled a 5x8' behind my two door 6speed, probably a dozen or more times. Trailer probably weighed about 1,500-2,000lbs. The JK did great. Pulled it in all weather conditions, including 4" of snow. The short wheelbase (of the two door at least) makes backing up a breeze; so easy to chase the trailer. Brakes on the JK are very adequate. No issue stopping at all.

Branden08JK

I've pulled a 19 foot boat with a dual axle trailer probly weighed in at 4000lbs ( the boat is a old 1967 suncrusier , only towed it about a mile to the launch ramp , the jk did great I have a six speed and 3.73s. Toung weight was only 250-300 lbs. Just feel it out but jeep says max 2000lbs

f2fast4u

Be careful because the Jeep springs are so weak that your rear will sink down, causing your front to go up, meaning you will have a dancing front end possibly. Just be aware of that. The Jeep springs are really weak and can handle no additional weight.

The 2 dr. variety, like mine, as opposed to a longer bodied 4 dr. are a tad more sensative to rear weight as we have a very short wheel base.

CerOf

Stock suspension about 350lbs on the tongue. The rear springs sagged about 1.5"~2". steering was fine and not light or flighty. Pulls well.

This trailer weighs about 3800# fully loaded.

Krynn

All you have to do is be careful about tongue loading. If your Jeep came with the towing package, it's got heavier rear springs to compensate. Just be sure that your tongue weight is no more than 15% of the trailer weight, and that the trailer weight is under the towing limits set by Jeep. By that same token, you don't want the tongue weight to be too light either. If it's much below 10% of the trailer weight, that can cause problems as well.

RobtTxRubi

Great color, I have the E-2 in grey, I put some Air Lift bags in the rear to keep the Jeep level, they work great. Also, all the towing sites opine that tongue weight should be no less than 10% of total trailer weight, more is O.K. so long as you have something to shift the weight back to the front axle. I load about 500 lbs on the front platform which really increases the tongue wt. Also, I have a better hitch with a 9k lbs capacity. Also, IMHO anytime your trailer wt goes more than 2000 lbs you need some form of trailer brakes.

Krynn

Whoops, sorry, you're right... A quick google search shows that the expert recommendation is 10% to 15% of the trailer's weight. Too little can cause trailer sway unless you have a sway control system. Too much can cause steering problems unless you have a weight distributing hitch. Unfortunately, the factory hitches for the Jeep are just a simple frame mount hitch. Very sturdy, but it puts all of the weight behind the rear axle.

Jeep limits the max towing weight of the Wrangler for a few reasons. #1, no factory harness for trailer brakes. #2, no load-distributing hitch or rear-axle ride height control system. And #3, the factory drivetrain and axles aren't rated for the extra stresses of pulling more than 3500 lbs. That's not to say that it can't, just that components might fail much sooner.

I'm a little more forgiving on the trailer brake issue... I'm comfortable towing up to about 3500 lbs without trailer brakes. Anything more and I insist on them though. But I'm not about to tow even that much with my 2-door.

Yankee

I just installed the P2 and have a new 6x12 aluminum trailer with brakes. Bought it primarily to haul my sand rail. You are right trailer brakes and a good controller are really worth having. Made 3 trips to town today, picked up a 2000 pound pallet of wood pellets each trip. So much nicer when it comes to stopping.

I did not turn of overdrive, but with a tranny cooler and cool weather, and pulling only 3200k pounds, the tranny temp never got above 155.

As far as weight on the rear, sure you don't want too much. But I have loaded over 600 pounds of corn into the back of my 2 door several times, and it actually handled pretty decent.

CerOf

Krynn,

Did you talk to a Chrysler engineer about this? If you did, I'll back down; however, I did speak to a Chrysler engineer and what you said isn't true.

The reasoning he gave is different. He advised it having to do with the JKs inability to maintain speed up various grades. The drivetrain itself is more than sturdy.

I have a post somewhere on here about this subject and what he told me.

edit:

Found the prior post and cut and paste:

The answer has two prongs to it. One being power/weight ratio and the other being legal. We did our trailer towing testing on the steepest, hottest temperature and highest altitude grades in the country during the hottest time of year. They're pretty much the benchmarks for all the US market vehicles to be tested at which is also why the spy magazine photographers camp out there during the summer months. They include Death Valley, Baker, CA and Davis Dam in Nevada. We also do I-70 mountain passes in CO. Even with the Rubicon's 4.10 gearing and a manual transmission when a JK is loaded up to GVW and max trailer capacity she struggles to maintain 45 mph which is the test requirement. A JK with an auto and 3.73 gearing is at even more of a disadvantage. So although on normal grades at average temps the JK might be able to pull 5000 lbs, they had to conservatively rate it at 3500 lbs in order to ensure the worst case scenario. If someone were to put a 5000 lbs trailer on their automatic 3.73 JK loaded up to GVW and took it through Death Valley, Chrysler wanted to protect themselves against that legal liability.



I suspect cooling has something to do with it too, but I did not press for more as I wished to be respectful of his time. He did say the drivetrain was up to the task. He mentioned "at the hottest times" quite a bit and this is why Infeel cooling plays a role when combined with what people have posted about overheating transmissions.