I am guessing someone here has tried to tow more than 1500 lbs, how much have you towed "safely"?
Thanks,

--Carlos

 

I wouldn't recommend it, The brakes are already at a disadvantage, they could fail. As for the other systems I don't know.

 

I would have to agree.

 

If there was a need to tow anything in my day to day life, I for sure as shit wouldn't have chosen the RDX. There are plenty of other vehicles out there with the ability to tow a few RDX's if need be.

Personally, I've not heard of a single person using the RDX to haul/tow anything more than a set of mountain bikes.

 

When I was in Europe I would see people on the Autobahn towing much more than what I would have thought was the rated capacity for the vehicle. Upon inquring, I was told that people were able to make it work all the time with just some additional care to the car and careful braking. Here is what I would recommend if you were going to carry more than the 'safely' recommended amount:

Upgrade the brakes. I happened to only upgrade my pads, and they are a wonderful improvement, but I would think that you would want to go whole hog and really upgrade the rotors as well. EBC makes tremendous stuff, so I would use them fro both the upgraded brake pads and discs, front and back.

Cooling. The tranny is what is going to get really overheated when carrying high capacities. The first thing to do is switch to a synthetic tranny fluid such as Mobil 1, then on top of that run as big a tranny cooler as you can fit in the car. A tranny cooler is going to make a big difference. I recently installed one on a car and lowered the tranny temps by about 50-60 degrees on average.

Oil cooler. In addition to the tranny cooler, I would run a decent sized oil cooler for the same reason, keeping the temps down, the engine is going to be working harder than usual, it could use the additional cooling capability.

Drive reasonably. If you are going to tow for a long time, there's no need to try and make it a race, staying closer to 55 vs 75 will lower the engine temps, improve the gas mileage, and give you a better chance to brake safely.

I haven't done this with the RDX specifically, but my friends and I have towed items that were above the specs for a truck, and we were able to carry almost double what the specs listed by improving the cooling, and driving safely. This was not for long term use or constant heavy duty work, this was to tow something like a boat across the country one time because of a move and it lowered our moving costs immensely. So, we have a truck with about 1500 pound towing capacity tow a 3000lb item with no problem almost 3500 miles.

Anyway, just thought I would throw it out there if you were seriously looking to carry something big.

 

The rear rotors are still not up to snuff(soild), and the calipers are not exactly big.

 

I have towed my 2009 mini cooper with a two wheel dolly. The cooper is the vert s and has a ground weight od about 2900lbs plus the dolly which weighs in between 3-400lbs ... my hitch is a 3500lbs. The RDX had no issues with it from Fl to TX ... but it was all level and I did not attempt 75+mph