Toureg towbar issues

@ Boff I am not aware of the lower rated fan causing a problem and

I suspect that in our generally cool climate a standard fan would be sufficient, maybe if we were towing somewhere hotter it might be a problem. 

The only fault we have had was a rear door lock fail. VW wanted close to £1000 to replace. I bought a scrap lock online and the correct tools and with the help of YouTube fixed it for less than £100.

Brilliant! 👍👍🙂

We had the problem that our van battery was not being charged properly when towing, and fridge running was intermittent.  I put an old laptop in the van and wired it up to monitor the voltage from the car to confirm the problem.

As we have a large twin axle, we need the mover to work, and it was running out of battery power on arrival on site or at home, as not being charged enough en route.

I fitted a Sterling Battery to Battery charger unit 3 years back and it has solved the problem.

You can set it up to give priority to the fridge or the battery, I have left it on battery priority which is the default set up.

I haven’t experienced this issue and I wasn’t aware of it.   Now I am aware of it, it will probably happen all the time ☹️

It's a sad fact that some (particularly German) car manufacturers do not provide tow bars suitable for the UK market i.e. that include the required 9-10 pin fridge circuit. Both my previous Audi S4 Avant and current Porsche Cayenne needed aftermarket tow electrics upgrades despite being fitted with expensive factory fitted tow bars.

Now to the further issue of fridge operation and Euro6 smart alternator problems. As pointed out by Sterling Power some Euro6 vehicles with smart alternators/braking regeneration can result in insufficient voltage being supplied to invoke proper operation of the fridge circuit even if fitted (and indeed may even result in back feeding that can drain the caravan leisure battery!). However this is not always a problem and I've sufficiently investigated my Porsche to be fairly confident that I don't have a tow vehicle problem and it provides an adequate stable voltage on the tow circuits. I haven't yet experienced any issues with the leisure battery not being charged whilst towing. The fridge issue turns out to be that my Knaus caravan fridge is actually not wired to run off 12v despite being a 3-way fridge that is used in many caravans. This is bizarre to me and I can only guess that Knaus have taken this decision (despite it supposedly being their van designed specifically for the UK market) because on the continent they tend not to expect/supply fridges using 12v whilst towing and because of the potential Euro6 12v supply issue.

I've informed my supplying dealer that I bought a new (expensive top of the range) caravan with a 3-way fridge and I expect it to work on all 3 power sources as designed. I am currently awaiting their response.

Mine is 2015 and I had a Westfalia towbar and electrics fitted by Professional Retrofits in Nuneaton last year after I bought it. Brilliant job and c£500 cheaper than most of the better known fitters. Price included all coding plus fridge feed which is an extra when using the dedicated electrics pack for the car.

Towbars don't fit on an R Line Plus as they have different shaped bumpers to the R Line and don't have the clearance for the Alko hitches. Don't believe the Plus was around in 2015 mind.

VW state the cooling fan should be upgraded to a 850W unit. Had mine done to retain the VW warranty in case of any problems, though don't believe it is needed for towing any caravan in Europe and costs c£1,000  dependent where you go. Beware buying the 850W fan from the likes of eBay as any new ones are not OEM fans and all appear to be either 600W of have the fan blades of the 600W OEM fan not the wider blades of the 850W model.

Car is a brilliant tug and I love it.

Check out the myTreg forums for more on the cars and towbar fitting

My Euro6, 2015 Touareg was fitted with a separate fridge feed and my fridge works when towing, don't get either caravan or car battery going flat and basically it all just works. Don't know if any form of magic box or some sort of relay was used but the end result is "it all works" 

The uprated fan issue is more to do with the oil cooler for the auto box, there were some issues with limp home mode if you pulled big load over mountains on a hot day but not widely reported as a major issue in UK.