PirateSyrett

Completely agree with Offski and Graham. The Yeti will pull it, but it’s absolutely at the edge of its limits and experience is key. If I were going again i’d probably choose a DSG gearbox with wet clutches to ease the get away, but you can’t beat meat when towing heavy loads.

@Pete1961 We’ve got a Yeti 170 and a SWB Shogun and have towed the 2050kg boat (further up this thread) with both of them. If you intend to tow as regularly and as heavily as you suggest, then i’d go with the Shogun. Oodles of torque, very good at hill starts, slipways and at slow speed, plus they’re cheap and tough. On the other hand the Yeti is much cheaper to run, faster without a trailer and a really good tow car, but it’s first gear is a little too high when towing more than 1800kg. Both of our cars are great, but we now do most of our heavy summer towing to the South of France with the Shogun whilst the Yeti always delivers us to the French Alps in the winter for skiing! Hope this helps.

Totally with FrenchTone. Save money, time and your rear bumper with a fixed towbar! It's a roughie-toughie 4x4 after all insn't it?

Welcome to the forum! Can't embed the link for some reason but search: 'yeti roof box length' on this forum and you'll find lots of good info and recent pics too! Best wishes, M

^^^^ +1

This.... But it really is tricky round corners then! Note: not wishing to go OT please let's not get into the rights and wrongs of this. It's legal, works surprisingly well, but is not sensible under most circumstances. There I've said it....so we can now go back to the reason why my Superb's rear alloys are so scarred!

Completely agree on the Superb, but even my very short Yeti struggles to get round some corners when you do this to it! ;-)

Fwiw our unladen 170 4x4 Yeti weighs 1660kg according to our certified local weighbridge (no options but full tank of fuel and me - 75kg) vice the 1460kg optimistically listed in the brochure. Real world weights might improve your ratio significantly.

Lee, Good advice! We're just starting to look for our next tow car and having 'stretched' our wonderful Yeti we're looking for a bigger towing margin. Top of the list is a VW Tiguan DSG (2500kg limit) or Kodiaq, but Skoda's rather random tow weight homologation for that car means you've got to be careful when choosing your spec. Some cracking lease deals on the Tiguan at the moment too! Best wishes, M

Hi Steve! Welcome to the forum. We faced the same issue as you and swapped our TDV6 Discovery for a 170 Yeti 4x4 Elegance and haven't looked back. The 170bhp is an astonishingly good tow car and since it's got the bigger brakes it stops well too. Xenon headlamps are awesome in the face lifted version - much better than our Discovery. On towing, we've happily towed our 1550kg, 6.5m German caravan or our 2050kg boat (below) long distance on the evil coast road between Cornwall and Hampshire without issue. I acknowledge that towing purists don't like the fact we ignored the 85% recommendation, but we've done it frequently and it works well (in part because we always ballast the Yeti with people and kit to its axle limits which we check on our local weighbridge). When towing close to our legal limit of 2100kg it would be useful to have a slightly lower first gear, but we've never had an issue with traction and have always got moving. Once running, it goes and stops astonishingly well and is happy upto the speed limit - but we don't push it and we have over 20 years experience towing trailers upto 37 foot long. The Yeti's a great choice and sooooo much cheaper to run than our Disco! Hope this helps, M

+1 on Paul R T's advice. Your new rig will almost certainly take a little adjustment to find the sweet spot. Our Superb and Yeti are exceptionally strong tow cars but you have to carefully balance a relatively low nose weight against their relatively high max tow weight. We've towed long distance with them both at their maximum weights (over 2 tons with the Yeti!) and not had a problem, but we had to make a number of small adjustments as you describe before finding the groove. Sounds like you're on the right track - and you've definitely got the right kit! :-)

Do you not have a travel mode in your setup menu? Both our Yeti and Superb have and it avoids the nasty stick on thingies... I guess if you don't then your best technique is to shine your lights against a wall from a couple of metres away and mask off the lights to prevent dazzle up and left. Once you've worked out which bits to cover you can then apply your reflectors. Good luck!

Result! Well done for being so honest and for keeping us all updated as this has moved forward. There's plenty of us in a similar situation to you and I'm glad that VWFS have kept to their end of the bargain as you did with yours. Many thanks for the info.

Agreed - but it also limits revs to 2500rpm, changes the 4x4 settings to improve traction and engages hill hold control too. All good stuff! :-)

+1 on DSG for heavy weight towing. Experience allows us to push the envelope and tow more than 2 tons with our Yeti but it would be much easier with the wet clutch DSG box. Our next Skoda (or VW) will almost certainly come with it.

Great news! Still not showing on Skoda's configurator or on our lease provider's website yet though..... Definitely a step in the right direction if you want a meaty engined, capable tow car with plush interior, half decent lights and Skoda badges. Count me in :-)

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's a neat feature because it also stops you rolling backwards. We've never had an issue with wheel spin even on the steepest slopes and we've always managed to get the rig moving, but a more progressive clutch (or lower first gear!) would really help. On the Shogun you can feel the clutch bite very early but it doesn't fully engage until the pedal's moved 3 inches or so. The Yeti's clutch is getting better, but feels much more like an on/off switch with little travel with which to balance slip. Consequently it's much easier to stall - but then again not really a surprise at the weight we're asking of it! The 170's a truly great car to live with when not towing too :-)

Hi there! An interesting question and one we've lived in the real world. We have a Yeti 170 4x4 and a SWB Shogun, both of which we use to tow our 9.5 metre/ 2050kg boat trailer, both have manual gearboxes. The Yeti laughs the 2 ton tow weight off (once you've got it moving!) provided the car is ballasted with people and kit to around its maximum axle weights. It's an astonishing tow car with its only limitations being that the torque comes in a little too high and the clutch lacks progression - though as our car now has 20,000 miles under its wheels this is starting to improve. It used to be like a hair trigger! So the Yeti will happily sit at the speed limit all day with 2 tons on the back, but doesn't like steep slipways. The Shogun's the exact opposite. Great when the cars light, the road's steep or the journey's slow. But it tows the boat giving 18mpg whereas the Yeti does it at 24-25 mpg. If I were to try to squish these 2 cars capabilities together then I'd probably go for the 170 DSG because the auto box manages the clutch better - or a new shape Tiguan with its 2500kg tow weight. Hope this helps.

Welcome to the forum! Hope you enjoy your new car and learn how to tow within its limits. I'd recommend being very careful about throwing stones - your car maybe larger than a Yeti, but Skoda deem it a less capable tow car (2100kg Yeti versus 2000kg Kodiaq) unless you've unfortunately bought the 150bhp weedy engined 5 seat version which looks best to avoid. Obviously if you have experience, of towing or this forum, you'll not need helpful well intentioned advice. Enjoy!

I'm with the rest of the gang. I can imagine that the front splitter could achieve a stability improvement (think Top Gear and their Renault Espace mods!) but the rear diffuser's effect is probably solely cosmetic. I could live with both and they're subtle enough that most folk would think them OEM. IMHO the other 'face fungus' is probably best avoided though.

Ah yes....but only with 7 seats and a weedy 2000kg towing limit!

Completely agree, but also it's only us geeks enthusiasts who drill so deep into the detail that we often know more than the dealers! Why else would I have been whinging for so long that the Kodiaq I want (7 seat, 190 DSG SEL, 4x4 with 2500kg tow weight) doesn't exist? Fortunately, as has been pointed out previously, my 170 Yeti has all the leather, Xenons, toys and sufficient towing weight (2100kg) that I don't actually need a new Kodiaq that seems unable to pull the top off a rice pudding! ;-)

This just gets better and better. Much respect!

I don't know what it is, but I like it........

You're right about the 170 having oodles of pulling power. This little beastie weighs 2050kg (so 50kg below my max tow weight) and our 170 didn't struggle at all even though we towed along the horribly steep coast road from Hampshire to Cornwall. Don't think you'll have much to worry about if you take it slow.