Westfalia tow bars /Coolant upgrade?

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Drew Baby

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Hi All,
my A4Avant (2011) has a Westfalia detachable tow bar fitted, reding their website yesterday it says the A4 should have the coolant upgraded
can anyone shed any light on this and is their an easy way to tell if this has been done?
thanks in advance for your help
Regards Andrew
 
I can only think the coolant mix being different, but I run a 50/50 mix anyway which was great in Italy for a whole summer which gets ridiculously hot, so cant imagine would be an issue towing.
 
Thanks VCDS, I'll check the coolant with my Hydrometer at the weekend, I've never heard of any modern engines needing the cooling system upgraded when towing, it's not like it's got a massive towing capacity, unless the Auto box needs a bigger oil cooler or something along those lines.
My car will be on its limit when I tow or there abouts but I wouldn't have expected it to be a problem
thanks for the reply
regards Andrew
 
I retrofitted the tow bar to my Avant and I never did any upgrade to the cooling system.
And I have been driving Oslo-Croatia in 35`c With a 1600 kg caravan with no overheat problem.

Only thing you need to do is reprogram the ESP, Motor Controller, Parking help module, Electric controller, etc to know there is a tow bar Attached. I did the installation myself incl coding in one afternoon.
 
Of course it is NHN, I'm easily confused lol, the tow bar was already fitted when I got the car Offpist, so I'm guessing everything's as it should be, guess we'll find out soon enough lol
 
Fan system and alternator upgrades were required on earlier cars ... They were not tow prepped.

pretty sure that from 2010 on they started prepping whether bar was ordered on build or not and fitting the updated fans as std.
 
Thanks for that Spr0cket, I guess I'm only gonna know when I hitch up n put the car under load
something I would never have thought needed doing if I hadn't read it on Westfalia's web site
thanks again for all the info
Regards Andrew
 
I tow a pretty heavy caravan, 1800kg, with a 08 3.0tdi a4 cab, got the bar fitted last year but no change to cooling system. It copes fine but the only issues I've had was when towing up a very long hill to The Lecht ski centre south of Braemar when I could briefly smell hot coolant. At the top I checked levels and found I had lost about a pint of coolant somewhere, no signs of leaks though and temp remained stable at 90 deg throughout which mystified me somewhat.

On subsequent long climbs I open the windows, turn a/c off and heater to max. The air blown out the vents is incredibly hot and seems to make the difference between the coolant level dropping.

99.9 percent of time the car is perfect although I leave a couple of litres in the caravan just in case.
 
Hi Stevieb2905.
ive been on Witters web page and there's no mention of needing to upgrade anything, tho I did own a Shogun sport a while ago that used to get very hot on a long drag with the caravan on the back but was fine any other time.
Once I get a chance I'll give if a run out with the van on and take it from there, but thanks for your input, I'm more intrigued now than worried, a drag up the Lecht would test most cooling systems I reckon.
thanks again Andrew
 
No probs, I tried to find out about potential cooling system upgrades at the time but couldn't get a definitive answer, even audi couldn't help. Standard setup seems fine though.
 
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