6 must-have tow tug mods for the big lap

Don’t build the touring setup of a lifetime only to be stranded on the side of the road. These six must-have towing mods will help you go the extra mile.

There’s an old saying about the best-made plans of mice and men. I’ll be frank with you, I don’t think I’ve ever really known many mice to be red hot at planning, so I’m not entirely sure of the relevance there, but the saying still stands. No matter how well you plan, sometimes things don’t go to plan. It’s one of the reasons we harp on about tow-tugs so darn much.

You can have a camper or caravan flasher than a rat with a gold tooth, but if you’re stuck on the side of the road between Nowheresville and Kickatinalong, that once-in-a-lifetime big lap you’ve been dreaming of is going to be an absolute disaster. To help you make the most of your camping setup, we’ve put together six non-negotiable mods that’ll make life towing on and off the road far easier.

Upgrade your suspension

This one should be a bit of a no-brainer, but unless you’re towing with a Peterbilt, loading up any tow-tug with a camping kit and a caravan or camper trailer on the tow-hitch is going to seriously affect how it drives. You’ll want, at an absolute minimum, a bump in spring rate to handle the extra weight, but it’s worth eyeing off some fancier shocks too.

Terrain Tamer’s Pro remote reservoir options have been on our radar for a while now for a few good reasons. A side effect of shock absorbers reigning in a bumpy ride on corrugations or sub-par roads (like you’ll find on the big lap) is heat. The more bumps, and the more weight, the more heat.

Remote reservoir options like the Terrain Tamer Adjustable offerings not only give improved ride quality on and off-road, but the remote reservoir means more oil capacity. This translates to more ability to keep things riding smooth and controlled on bumpy roads with a caravan waying things around.

Fit a set of tow-mirrors

Grab yourself a tiny Suzuki Jimny, hitch up a little Road Warriors Adventurer, and you’ll have one of the most compact camper combos on the market. You’ll also have near enough to bang on the same overall length as a Hino Crew Cab 300 Series bonafide truck with an 8T GVM and a truck license requirement.

Even small towing combinations are absolutely huge and it’s a serious responsibility to steer them. A set of towing mirrors aren’t just a cool bit of kit to tinker with. They’ll allow you to get a better spatial awareness of what you’re actually dragging around behind you. The first time the extra visibility they grant stops you from clipping a tree with your camper or caravan will more than pay for the initial investment.

Add a little extra oomph

One area often overlooked when spec’ing up people’s tow-tugs is how much power they’re packing under the bonnet. Forget the chest-beating macho aspect of it, and think about pulling out into traffic after grabbing a coffee to start your morning.

Without the camper, you can give the throttle a little squirt and you’re up to speed quickly and easily. With near 3T on the back? You’re going to be ringing your tow-tug’s neck to get up to speed before you’ve got a B-Double up your clacker while you try to build speed. You don’t need to be a hot rod, but adding a little extra power to counteract the extra weight when towing is just smart money.

There’s a whole bunch of options on the market, but we’ve long been a fan of power modules like the offerings from Steinbauer. Depending on your make and model they typically boost power and torque by around 20% just by plugging in a module. No fancy big turbos or loud exhausts required to get the job done. 

Transmission cooler

This should come as no surprise, but if towing makes your suspension and your engine work harder, it’ll also be working your transmission harder too. If you’re a little old-school and towing with a manual cog-swapper, there’s not a great deal you can do. But if you’re driving anything with an automatic transmission, the fix is pretty darn simple…add more fluid and keep it cool.

Depending on what tow-tug you’re using, there may be upgrades available, like deeper sumps that’ll add fluid capacity or heavy-duty valve bodies to reduce flaring between gears. Either way, all transmissions will benefit from an external cooler.

We’ve had experience before with the twin cooler options from Wholesale Automatics and found they not only kept the transmission cooler under load on outback tracks, but by routing the trans fluid through external coolers instead of through the radiator, it meant if anything did go wrong, it didn’t immediately destroy the transmission. Money well spent!    

Frontal protection

No matter if you’re pounding the K’s out past the black stump, or moseying on down to the local campgrounds for some beachside rosé, animal strikes are a very real possibility with very real consequences. You can minimise the possibility of them by limiting travel to daylight hours, fitting driving lights to spot any wayward animals, and dropping a little speed when the roads narrow up. But while that may reduce the likelihood of an animal strike, it doesn’t reduce the consequences.

Fitting up some sort of frontal protection is an absolute no-brainer no matter where you’re travelling. There’s plenty of ultra-lightweight options on the market that’ll serve you better than your factory plastic bumper in a strike, but you really need to be looking for something with a steel centre hoop to protect your radiator as a bare minimum.

Wire up a UHF

The theme so far has been mods that’ll make your tow-tug last the stresses of towing and remote travel, but what happens when it doesn’t? You’re going to need a lifeline, and the old mobile phone rattling around in the centre console as you ohh and ahh at the sights isn’t much use once you’re beyond the city lights and reception starts dwindling.

If you can pony up the cash for both, a UHF and a Satellite phone are well worth the investment, but a UHF will get 99% of people out of 99% of bad situations. They’re must-haves for convoy chatter, getting a heads up about road or track conditions ahead, and communicating with other road users for overtaking manoeuvres. If you read up on the instruction manual, and make the most of repeater towers, a UHF can be a serious asset reaching out for help as well.