Hello everyone. These lovely little vans are new to us, having been used to a 7m x 4m family tent when the kids were a bit younger. The two of us plan to have lots of new adventures in 2018 and beyond in a three year old Triton 430GT, which I'm hoping the VW Golf will pull with ease. Does anyone out there have the VAG DSG (6 speed) gearbox, and is it a good choice for pulling an Eriba? The car is a BlueMotion Tech (GT spec) and I've had the dedicated VW wiring fitted (Westfalia). Does anyone know if any/all of the eco features are disabled when the Eriba is hooked up (stop/start, neutral coasting, Adaptive Cruise)?

Looking forward to getting (and hopefully giving) good advise.

Cheers.

Can't help with your car question but to the Forum.

Hi swa49 and to Eribafolk

I tow my Eriba 430 with a VW Golf Estate with a DSG 6 speed gear box but its not a Bluemotion engine. So far, touch wood, I have experienced no towing issues other than on a couple of occasions it couldn't decide what gear to choose when breaking while going up hill - so momentarily its sorting itself out. In hilly conditions I tend to select sport mode as this gives 500rpm more in the selected gear.

As for your ECO options I would contact your local VW dealership for answers.

Happy Eraba'ing
Robin

Thanks to you both for the welcome, and thanks Robin for the Sport mode tip. I did wonder how the gearbox would behave with the extra payload. I realise my questions are not specific to towing an Eriba, but it's always good to hear from people that have similar outfits. I now need to get my head around nose weights and how to load up the 430 to best suit my car and tow bar, but there are several existing threads to trawl through before asking any more questions.

Cheers.

The issue with DSG gear boxes is they are designed to have quick response when accelerating but when decelerating automatic gear changing is fractionally slower. While this is not generally an issue while not towing it becomes more pronounced when slowing down on an upward slope. When slowing down it does drop through the gears but the automatically selected gear on steeper slopes is too high for the car to pull away smoothly with the van on the back. So while it sorts itself out it appears to 'hunt' for the correct gear. So if in hilly areas I'll either drop in manual mode or select sport mode for the extra rpm it gives.

I'm sure someone else on the Forum will have a more technical discussion on this issue.

Robin

Welcome from a wet Charente, can't help with the car but if you keep the starting handle handy you won't go far wrong

Do not even know what a DSG gear box is but anyway
Tom & Margaret

Can't help with your question but

Alan

Thanks everyone for the welcomes. Look away if you have no interest in car gearboxes, but the DSG is: "a direct-shift gearbox (German: Direkt-Schalt-Getriebe), commonly abbreviated to DSG, is an electronically controlled dual-clutch multiple-shaft manual gearbox in a transaxle design, without a conventional clutch pedal and with fully automatic or semi-manual control.

There you go. I've never towed a caravan, let alone an Eriba, so not sure what to expect in terms of the car's behaviour with 1100-1200KG of Triton on the back.

We knew that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can not personally answer your question, however this website may help you with the outfit matcher...


https://towcar.info/GB/

from another Triton 430. Our Betty is 20 this year and still beautiful.

For anyone that's interested, the DSG gearbox in my Golf made for a brilliant towing experience. The Triton 430GT has a few options (mover, boiler etc.), so is slightly heavier than some, but the gearbox did the right thing at all times, and never changed gears back and forth, even on an incline. One thing to note is that the Bluemotion Tech 'Eco' mode was automatically disabled, due to the dedicated wiring and ECU coding, but 'Normal' mode was perfect, and 'Sport' (500 RPM extra in each gear) may only be required for very hilly terrain.