Yaris Towing 1000 lbs?

[gboezio]

I'm Canadian and I bought my 2008 sedan Yaris new at the dealership, at the time the hitchs available were far from satisfying, one would bolt trough sheetmetal and extend to the tow hooks, while crawling under the car I saw the 3 M10 inserts on each side, I have mocked up cardboard templates and cut then in 1/4 inch steel plate. Then I cut my BMW hitch and welded it to death to the two plates, It bolted right up with 6 x M10 dipped in red loctite.

My 10 years old homebuilt 4,5 x 9 x 4 high trailer weight is about 400 lbs, it's balanced to zero so to add tongue weight I must move the load forward until I get about 50 lbs on the tongue or less if there is a lot of weight on the trunk.
I have done it all from light weight to overweight, I have abused the drivetrain, hitch, body and trailer but I have never abused the brakes so I don't know if they would overheat, I prefer to let this to others since I feel that I have made enough research.

My regular towing is trailer + quad, about 800 lbs, sportbike to the track 900 lbs, quad + camping gear 1100 lbs over about 5000 km on about 105 000 km total, I'm still waiting on something to break, no slack or bearing noise in the tranny, I have changed twice the oil with synthetic and filtered it, nothing. That said I'm convinced that if it was an automatic it would have overheated and broke down for the same driving, if the automatic clutches start to slip on a sustained pull, the trans go down quickly.

Here's my rules :
Plan ahead, as little clutch as needed, I coast to traffic lights and engage the clutch rolling.
Use the brakes to slow down not to avoid kids and other cars.
For common sense sake when you know that your braking is impaired and risk is present: slow down, this way you will stop even faster than a car alone going at the permitted speed.
When going downhill, blip the throttle and downshift in a lower gear, I'm barely braking and I keep my brakes cold all the time in case of an emergency.
Never forget that the trailer is driven by the rear wheels of the car, the more weight on them the more stable the trailer will be, same goes for the tongue length, the longer, the more control you have on the trailer, attach the load so it wont shift to the rear of the trailer and suddenly unload the rear wheels, add the panic braking from having the trailer swerving and you are looking for a disaster. If the trailer feels unstable, slowly stop, move some load in the trunk or weight forward on the trailer, you will feel a world of difference.
Try to center the weight in the middle of the trailer not to the far ends, this add to the stability because even if the trailer is properly balanced, it have more rotation inertia.
Dont't loose traction, never WOT the first gear, the traction loss sends very bad shocks on the front end and will destroy almost everything.

I had 2 BRP Spiders that were going to 70-80 on single lane and about 100 on double for an hour at Baie St-Paul I decided to pass them uphill, I have held the engine in second gear WOT at 6000RPM for about 10 minutes and there is no way to break this thing or overheat it.

On a logging road I have pulled over 2000 lbs of wood, at 70 km/h the trailer would become unstable, by moving 3 big logs in the trunk the unstable speed became 90 km/h
Do half this and you will never have a problem.
Trailer center axle to center ball 105", track 2" wider than my car, CoG 1" before axle center, if someone need to build a stable trailer.
Yes I drove semi trucks for over 1,5 million kms without the slightest incident.
Yes, my next car will be heavier, but now the Yaris is simply the best all around car ever, 6l/100km 95% of time, 8 to 10 l/100km when I need it.
If you don't feel safe towing, don't tow