EileenG

Thanks for all the advice. 😊

Ah that's good to know, still got the box and it's wrapped in bubble wrap too. Also kept the support bar that the tow bar fitter removed to fit the tow bar.

Yeh, the garage that fit it said it seems daft for it to be needed but I'm overcautious and don't want to risk voiding the warranty should anything happen. The part only cost £117.25 Inc. VAT and we had it fitted by a mechanic/garage that we use all the time and he only charged 2 hours labour, although he said it was a nightmare of a job so it must have taken longer. We're all set to go now and collecting the caravan tomorrow.

By the way we had a detachable towbar fitted. Silver, did you need to replace your front grill or have the upgraded coolant system, we didn't need that just the new front grill.

Thanks so much for the advice, unfortunately we had the tow bar fitted yesterday by a local reputable guy, he's been fitting towbars for 20 plus years, he's fitted most of the tow bars around here, 3 of our own cars in the past and other kodiaqs before too, skoda wanted £1300 to fit it and he did it considerably less (£750) although it's not a genuine skoda towbar skoda told me that as long as we replaced the front grill with the required grill it wouldn't affect our warranty.

Yeh, it is interesting to see that the octavia won tow car of the year with that engine, we won't be towing 1300 kilo, I reckon we will only have won't be towing any more than 1280 kilo. We're going to see how we go on this year.

Thank you, all this information is extremely helpful.

OK, I wander if our tow bar installer will be adjusting it to take account of the caravan 🤔

Ours is the 1.5TSI SEL DSG, 7 seater, although our caravan will be lighter than yours, ours is 1388 MTPLM

So I know ABS is assisted brake system, what's ESP, and how does this impact, I will have to speak to the tow bar fitter to see what his take is on this, he may have already taken it into account.

What do you mean by this, it's the 190 DSG same as yours, 😊

We're off to Cornwall, so a fair distance for our first trip out, us being from Cumbria, but we'll take our time and make a few stops on the way, at least we now have the reassurance that we're covered under warranty for any engine issues should anything occur and if after a number of trips we find that we're not comfortable with the car's performance we'll consider tradiing it on for something more suitable as a tow car. We'll only be doing one big trip a year anyway down south and most other times it'll be local sites to us in the lake district.

We're off to Cornwall, so a fair distance for our first trip out, us being from Cumbria, but we'll take our time and make a few stops on the way, at least we now have the reassurance that we're covered under warranty for any engine issues should anything occur and if after a number of trips we find that we're not comfortable with the car's performance we'll consider tradiing it on for something more suitable as a tow car. We'll only be doing one big trip a year anyway down south and most other times it'll be local sites to us in the lake district.

We've ordered it anyway just to comply with the requirements and ensure that the warranty isn't impacted.

Thanks everone for all the advice and information. I get some of it is based on your own experiences which I appreciate, and some advice on the technical aspects of engine management systems, which is great as I have no knowledge of this at all and this is exactly why I posted on the forum in the first place, for this advice. And based on the last few pieces of advice on the engine I think we should be OK if we stick to sensible steady driving and avoid getting into the situation of hill starts. So I've just contacted Skoda direct and they have said that the 1.5, doesn't need the upgraded coolant system, it's just the 1.4 that needs that, the only thing we need to upgrade is the front grill to allow more airflow into the engine which costs approx £117.25 for the part. So this is another positive.

No its going to be fitted by a local tow bar company, do we need it to be fitted by skoda?

That's interesting to know that xlray, we're aware that hills starts might be an issue, I just hope not too much of an issue, we towed with 2 litre diesal last time and nothing was a problem, when we bought the kodiaq last year at that point we didn't think that we would be going back to caravanning otherwise we would have considered a different engine or even car altogether, I think we're going to take the risk and see how we go, the only other option we have is to swap to an even lighter caravan.

We have the DSG gearbox, I contacted Skoda direct yesterday and they confirmed towing weight up to 1700kg, even though the specification plate of the car dictates 1800kg, not sure why their technical department has reduced it by 100kilo 🤔

We've done all the necessary checks on the various databases to check that we're within our limits for towing, I suppose it was just reassurance that we will be OK with the 1.5 engine.

Sorry BoxerBoy, not sure what you mean by 'after sales towing'

I'm looking for advice please on this topic, we have a Kodiaq 1.5 TSI SEL 7 seater and we are thinking of buying the Bailey Phoenix 642, MTPLM 1388, the caravan dealer told us that we were within our limit for towing and looking on, 'match my towcar' we seem to have a fairly good match, and providing we load the caravan properly and put most of the heavy items in the car we should be OK, there are only 2 of us so we don't have lots of gear. My only concern when looking at the result from the car/caravan match is the engine power, we have towed in the past but last time we had a Kuga 2 litre diesel, I expect it to be less powerful but hoping that its not detrimental to the engine, any advice or thoughts please. Also did I see on another thread that there are issues with towbar fitting as this is something that we will require.

I'm looking for advice please on this topic, we have a Kodiaq 1.5 TSI SEL 7 seater and we are thinking of buying the Bailey Phoenix 642, MTPLM 1388, the caravan dealer told us that we were within our limit for towing and looking on, 'match my towcar' we seem to have a fairly good match, and providing we load the caravan properly and put most of the heavy items in the car we should be OK, there are only 2 of us so we don't have lots of gear. My only concern when looking at the result from the car/caravan match is the engine power, we have towed in the past but last time we had a Kuga 2 litre diesel, I expect it to be less powerful but hoping that its not detrimental to the engine, any advice or thoughts please. Also did I see on another thread that there are issues with towbar fitting as this is something that we will require.