Trailer towing cross country; Need every scrap of info on 540iT trailer hitches

[Mpowered02]

Joe....do you have AAA? If so, I believe UHaul offers pretty notable discounts to AAA members. My wife and I did the cross-country move (Baltimore to Los Angeles) back in 2005. Loaded up all our belongings on a 22ft Penske truck with my E36 behind it on a car trailer (no E39 back then, LOL but we shipped my wife's E30 325iX out about 2 weeks prior to our move so it would arrive a little bit after we got there and got settled). Made it to LA in 2.5 days (because I was on a time crunch to get there in time to start a new job). Fun times.
My advice would be to save the mileage on that beautiful Touring of yours, skip the tow hitch and trailer and just rent a truck and trailer your car behind it. IMHO, it's better to have more space than you think you need for your stuff...better to have more space and spread out the load and keep it all lower to the floor versus having a smaller space and stacking your stuff up to the ceiling. Will be safer and easier to drive. My .02 cents at least....for what it's worth (not much, lol)...

Actually, I'll kinda be doing the reverse next month. When I moved my family to Manila in 2012 for a few years and eventually back to Baltimore, I left a 5x8 storage unit full of stuff in Redondo Beach that I didn't want to bring along at the time. Mostly car parts, tools, and wheels etc. Gonna finally be going out there, loading it up on a 16 or 22ft truck with a cousin that needs to move some stuff back east from LA, and driving it back to the Baltimore area. That's one of the reasons I know that UHaul offers a AAA discount....because my cousin is a AAA member and said he should be able to get the truck for around $1800 with the discount. When I looked up the cost for the truck before (no discount) it was like $2500...
Honestly, not really looking forward to it. Would be another thing if I could take my time and tour the country on the way back, but once again I don't have the time to spare so will be trying to drive back pretty directly. But I digress...

[dannyzabolotny]

Yeah you could always rent a U-Haul, but that costs so much money and you're stuck driving an awful truck the whole way. These cars aren't worth much, I'd rather rack up the extra miles and enjoy my drive. My vote still goes to getting a hitch and renting a U-Haul trailer. It'll be way cheaper overall and will be a much more pleasant drive in my opinion.

[joekitch]

So, that AAA discount is only through penske truck rentals, not uhaul. It's 12% though which is nothing to sneeze at

and yes i'd very much like to do the trip in my 540i since it's such a nice highway cruiser, the pod thing will give me some peace of mind in that i'm not putting extra stress on my drivetrain and it's one less thing to fiddle with....although it is an extra grand over a trailer.
Also i just realized i wont have as much stuff as i thought, i was mentally including my spare sets of winter wheels/tires for both the 540i and my miata but i certainly won't need those if i go to california, so that saves a lot of space

[dannyzabolotny]

So, that AAA discount is only through penske truck rentals, not uhaul. It's 12% though which is nothing to sneeze at

and yes i'd very much like to do the trip in my 540i since it's such a nice highway cruiser, the pod thing will give me some peace of mind in that i'm not putting extra stress on my drivetrain and it's one less thing to fiddle with....although it is an extra grand over a trailer.
Also i just realized i wont have as much stuff as i thought, i was mentally including my spare sets of winter wheels/tires for both the 540i and my miata but i certainly won't need those if i go to california, so that saves a lot of space

When are you making the big move, by the way? Bimmerfest West is in June so if you end up going to California you should attend that!

[joekitch]

When are you making the big move, by the way? Bimmerfest West is in June so if you end up going to California you should attend that!

no idea, whenever i get hired somewhere over there. I have not been aggressively pursuing things since i'm still saving up and bolstering my resume
also i would not bring my 540i to bimmerfest especially not without respraying the front bumper and refinishing the front seat

[dannyzabolotny]

no idea, whenever i get hired somewhere over there. I have not been aggressively pursuing things since i'm still saving up and bolstering my resume
also i would not bring my 540i to bimmerfest especially not without respraying the front bumper and refinishing the front seat

Haha don't worry about stuff like that. My front seats look like hell but I'm still going to Bimmerfest with it. It's not a show car, it's a daily driver that wears its 188k miles with pride

[Mpowered02]

So, that AAA discount is only through penske truck rentals, not uhaul. It's 12% though which is nothing to sneeze at

Ah...sorry, was under the impression that it was for UHaul. Hmm...wish I had known they offered discounts for Penske back in 2005. I had AAA back then and even that 12% woulda helped with our move. Every little bit counts. LOL.

and yes i'd very much like to do the trip in my 540i since it's such a nice highway cruiser, the pod thing will give me some peace of mind in that i'm not putting extra stress on my drivetrain and it's one less thing to fiddle with....although it is an extra grand over a trailer.
Also i just realized i wont have as much stuff as i thought, i was mentally including my spare sets of winter wheels/tires for both the 540i and my miata but i certainly won't need those if i go to california, so that saves a lot of space

Yeah, if you don't have that much stuff, the drive out would DEFINITELY be much more comfortable and fun in your 540iT. There were definitely a few white knuckle incidences during our drive out west in that 22ft Penske truck...drove through a pretty insane wind storm through Colorado where I was honestly scared. Had to hold the steering wheel at almost a 45 degree angle just to keep the truck on the road. My wife didn't know it at the time but I was kinda freaking out inside....just didn't let on to her because she probably woulda lost it.
In hindsight...nevermind...drive the 540iT out. HAH.

[JimLev]

When we moved from MA to NM last June we looked into all of those same options. In the end we decided just to have a moving company do it, we had too much stuff, would need 3-4 pods or avery large truck towing one car, with my wife driving the other.
Arpin loaded/unloaded all of our stuff, I drove the 540 and my wife drove the SUV. Great 2250 mile road trip.
A cross country road trip is nice if you've never done one.
This June I'm considering a longer road trip, NM to Nova Scotia.

image.jpg

[joekitch]

revisiting this:
also looking into doing a roof rack in addition to a small class 1 trailer. put my summer wheels and a jack and some tools on the trailer, use a roof box for extra clothes and such, leave the interior of the car free of stuff so i can use it as a bed

looks like for roof racks
->getting a used first gen X5 roof cross bars seems like the most cost effective, since i already have the rails
->get either a thule 44" or an inno universal 40" wind deflector to cut down on highway whistle dramatically
->plenty of thule roof boxes used on craigslist for reasonable prices

wind deflectors are also often times called "Fairings" and actually look kinda cool even with nothing on them
bmw-535i-ski-bike-roof-rack-918.jpg

[joekitch]

More info i dug up on the westfalia hitch.
on the M rear bumper, the diffuser section is actually a separate bit that can be removed, and it can be replaced with a diffuser bit that has a hole in it for the actual neck of the hitch
it's part # 51122494800 and ECS lists it at $70
however the actual cover plate that you snap in place when the hitch isn't attached is the cover, and that's part # 51122695499 which ecs sells for $44
s-l300.jpg

the part diagram i got this from is here
https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/sho...diagId=51_4321

there's also some somewhat cryptically named bits which have the term "tow" in them when you do a blanket search on realoem, which looks to be various boxes for the trailer wiring but i'm not too bent out of shape about making it really pretty.
this is where that part named "holder" comes into play (part 51127901487 for $60), it's a bracket to hold that box in place
e39 trailer wiring box with holder.jpg


And speaking of that hitch, it's only $327 on PFJones, $193 for the hitch and $133 for shipping to my home in the usa, not bad all things considered, probably pretty easy to install as well

[Mike WW]

Hopefully I don't get busted for this, but I've got a hitch I'd love to get rid of. Came on the now long gone 528it and I never used it, always used the 3 pedal E12 for towing. Receiver type, I'd guess US made.

[joekitch]

Hopefully I don't get busted for this, but I've got a hitch I'd love to get rid of. Came on the now long gone 528it and I never used it, always used the 3 pedal E12 for towing. Receiver type, I'd guess US made.

is it the curt made class 1 thing that bolts into the spare tire well? eh, those aren't great

[Mike WW]

is it the curt made class 1 thing that bolts into the spare tire well? eh, those aren't great

That sounds about right, it's got a relatively long cross bar that is the primary mount with 4 bolts. About all I know about it is it's a class 1 and was still good and tight on the car when I removed it. Unlike most hitches I've seen on BMWs.

[joekitch]

the issue is the curt hitch bolts into relatively thin body metal, and near its weight limits it can warp the metal slightly.
but man they are very, very inexpensive, way cheaper than doing this german hitch thing

[s14brent]

i've been looking into this as well, and have not found a solution i'm comfortable doing. I need a square receiver and preferably a higher tongue weight (wanted to run a motorcycle hauler to transport my mini-bikes to and from the track) but with these options it's cheaper and probably safer for me to get a beater truck. does anyone know if the uhaul/curt fits without any modification to a mtechnic bumper? < that was something else I was unsure of, and did not want to cut the bumper to fit

[joekitch]

pic of the curt hitch from another thread


CIMG0146.jpg


it sits extremely low, circumvents the bumper completely

but i made another thread gathering information on the class 2 hitch, give it a read
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...-cross-country
it'll be expensive all in, but any beater truck you can get for like $700 is going to be a total deathtrap and not last long, trucks have all gone up in price

[Mike WW]

Just for the record, here's another shot of what I would guess is the Curt hitch. It's very low, would sometimes drag in/out of driveways, did bind a little bit on the bottom of the bumper cover, but no cutting.