Ford E250 Vans Tow vehicles

Looking to use a 4th gen e250 (or similar genre of van) for a couple things, as a political advertising (running for office), Tow vehicle for crapcan racing, and kart racing. Pro's and Con's? Ideally someone would donate it for my run for office.

I towed with an extended E250 van for 15 years. No issues at all. As a van there are some minor ones like on a windy day the van will be pushed around some and fuel mileage is not as good as say a PU might get. If you are going to tow go no smaller then the 5.4L V8. A V10 would be great but their rare.

In reply to trigun7469:

As an aside, I'd be weary of using a politically donated vehicle for personal use. In most cases it just looks bad. In some cases it may be illegal. Do yourself a favor and keep your political and personal lives as separate as possible. Especially on the financial side.

Otherwise, see Tom's thread about the ex-GRM van. It was used to tow race cars up and down the East Coast for many years.

we have a E350 with a V10 for a work van. No towing, but it has a box on it with lots of weight, similar to normal van plus trailer towing a decent amount of weight. The V10 is definitely good for power, bad for gas. Also, the thing doesn't always like riding smoothly, like it has a mission in life to be rough and loud over bumps. Otherwise it has been very good. Reliable, hasn't failed despite constant deferred maintenance, still looks new compared to similar-age sprinter vans. Had a chevy express 3500 with same box and weight, couldn't handle the weight. The Chevy ate ball joints and wheel bearings on a regular basis. The Chevy's brakes were better, though. Just something to keep in mind if you are towing.

I've had a couple. One was an E350 Powerstroke cargo van. berkeleying perfect. I towed 12,000 lbs twice between TX and PA when I moved north and my friend was moving south. Amazing job.

Vans do everything a truck does, but better. For the same overall length and wheelbase, a van has 12' of cargo space and better visibility versus the truck with 6.5' or 8' of cargo space and a big nose. The E-vans use mostly the same truck chassis bits, so expect it to do the same quality job towing as an F250.

The ONLY reason I sold my van and bought a truck was because I need 4x4 to get in and out of camps, launching boats on sand, and making it to work even if there is 2' of snow. Right now I'm entertaining the idea of opening up the big wallet and buying a Quigley 4x4 so I can have a van again.

I had an E250 with the 7.3 diesel and it got 19 mpg towing a 24" enclosed trailer. I only sold it because I replaced it with a toterhome.

Chevy Express 4.3 V-6 Towing capacity: 7,300 lbs Ford E-250 Commercial 5.4L V8 Towing capacity: 7,500 lbs

I am sure that the v-8 would be much better with the AC and towing up a hill, but it is really surprising how close they are.

trigun7469 wrote: Chevy Express 4.3 V-6 Towing capacity: 7,300 lbs Ford E-250 Commercial 5.4L V8 Towing capacity: 7,500 lbs I am sure that the v-8 would be much better with the AC and towing up a hill, but it is really surprising how accurately they did their market research.

Fixed that for ya.

Tow ratings are maybe 30% engineering and 6000% covering their butts and marketing.

Good example you listed. Another good example: 96 Chevy Caprice with the 4.3L, 2.56 open diff in a 7.5" axle was rated to tow 3500. Take that same exact car but call it an Impala SS with a 5.7L, 8.5" axle with 3.08 posi, additional fluid coolers, and stiffer suspension and the tow rating was.... 2000 lbs.

I actually worked for GM/Saab in those years. The process as I understand it and saw it is: Engineers go through painstaking tests with interntional standards. They measure, test, ponder, use slide rulers, and expend multi-million dollar budgets coming up with the most accurate possible numbers for weight capacities and projected towing capacities.

Then in one afternoon, a bunch of bean counters and lawyers look at market research and say "Nah, let's make our own number."

In the case of the Impala SS, they reduced the tow rating because market research said that very few SS buyers would purchase a vehicle like this for the use of a tow pig. Knowing that tow rating wasn't going to be a big deciding factor in sales, the decision was made to cover their butts. Someone calculated that a reduction of tow capacity on paper would save 12.332% on projected warranty repair costs, but only affect sales 4.603% (hypothetical numbers).

The opposite is true with the 4.3L Express you listed. Even though engine output is not a big factor in tow rating, the 200-hp V6 is not overly thermally stable. It simply lacks the volume of coolant capacity in the block. That's not to say it overheats, but the engineers probably said "that van should be rated to tow 6500 because of the engine's SHC (heat/volume ratio basically). Then the bean counters realized that they couldn't compete in the van world with that rating. "Ford has 7500, Dodge has 7200, let's stretch ours to 7300." They showed on paper that increasing their tow rating would increase sales 9.48% but only incur an estimated 6.787% increase in warranty repair costs. And, since the problem was something like the engine getting hot, no worries. If the engineers said that the weakest point was something like a suspension arm or the frame that could kill people if it failed, it would have been a different story.