Toureg towbar issues

 Try some enquiries with a reputable towbar fitters, or look up websites of popular towbar manufactures e.g. Westfalia. Witter etc. What I can tell you not to do is take any notice of a dealership salesman!

We have a 66 reg Touareg, so presumably a 2017 model, which we bought, pre registered with only 14 miles on the clock in January 2017.

We asked the dealer to arrange for a tow bar to be fitted, but they did not want to do so, no idea why!

We had one fitted by a tow bar specialist and after a few initial problems with the electrics, it has been fine. 

Thanks for your replies. It was indeed a salesman at VW who indicated the problem along with a few posts on other web sites regarding this particular car with the problem.

We tend to change our tow car every 3 years  and apart from out latest car which has a factory fitted towbar all our other cars have had tow bars "fitted by the dealer" but the dealer only takes them to a local  towbar company down the road from us to have them fitted.

I have a 2015 Treg Escape which was bought new and had the tow bar and electrics fitted by the dealer so as to avoid any warranty problems. The only ‘issue’ of which I am aware is that VW ‘recommend’ that if the vehicle is used for towing, that the cooling fan is upgraded. Enquires with VW revealed that ‘recommend’ means that any towing related warranty issue would not be met by them if the upgrade hadn’t been done. Since yours is well out of warranty, this makes little difference. In the event, I argued that since the Treg was advertised as having. 3.5t towing limit with no mention of it being conditional on the fan upgrade, I got it done for nothing.

There is another potential problem - but it’s not to do with Touareg - but any car fitted with the Euro6 engine and is to do with the fridge not working whilst towing. It’s quite a complex technological problem which I intend raising on here later - when back home and I have access to all the various relevant website links etc. I have recently found out that Knaus - as an example of one manufacturer, do not connect the 12v fridge supply as a means of overcoming what is a potentially more serious problem. More later!

Having said all of that, the Touareg is the best tow car I have owned😃

I think the fridge not working problem has been around before , it is the smart? alternators that on some model when towing do not read the fridge load .the company who fitted our towbar were aware and had some form of mod that fooled the alternator into taking load ,the original get round was to drive with dipped headlights

No - it’s not that JVB - it’s to do with the fact that, if the fridge is connected, it completes a circuit which, in effect, can result in the fridge draining the car battery because the alternator NEVER puts out sufficient voltage to overcome the voltage drop through the cables. There’s a fairly long video from Sterling Power, demonstrating exactly what happens which gets quite technical. When I get home and I can cut and paste the relevant links, I will post it on here.

If the car is fitted with stop start then they are fitted with Higher output alternator which should already overcome any voltage drop 

JVB - you’re obviously more knowledgable than me - when I can find it, I will post the link and would welcome your observations. It’s obviously a promotional video but on the other hand, Sterling are a very reputable company who have been around a long time.

I have looked at sterling and it seems what their promo says  as I posted , 

I got the info about vw and stop start from another forum