Short answer = No but I would like to confirm the weight. What kind of boat is it? Picture? Did you scale the boat and trailer at 4500lbs including batteries, anchors, 50+/- gallons fuel? What vehicle did you tow with before? If its closer to 4000lbs and 350lb tongue weight you might be able to get some airbags and use the factory Honda hitch.

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[FONT=&quot]With the Honda trailer hitch installed in your Odyssey you can haul trailers up to 3,500 pounds [/FONT](350 pounds tongue weight).

• Class II Trailer Hitch mounts directly to the frame for optimum performance, strength, and security.
  

 

You really should consider a different towing vehicle. Tongue weight should be 10-15% of the towed weight so 4500lb boat/trailer = 450-675lb tongue weight. All of these are over the rated MAX capacity of your van and the Class II hitch. Air bags don't increase your towing capacity they just level out the tow vehicle. 60 miles may not seem like a long way, but a lot can happen in that distance, and if anything bad does happen and you're found to be overweight you will most likely be on the hook for any damages as your insurance co would deny any claims due to exceeding the capacity of the tow vehicle. You also have to consider that it's not just you you're putting at risk when you tow overloaded, it's the others on the road with you.

 

Honda may also raise some questions when you show up with transmission problems from the excess weight.

I wouldn't do it, rent a truck.

 

I have a 5,000 lb boat and trailer. Can you hook yours up and tow it for a bit on fast and (say 60 miles or so) and let me know how it goes? Please take some pictures showing if there is any rear end sag. The one thing I'm concerned about though is the boat ramp. With a front wheel drive vehicle and 5,000 lbs on the rear, do you think there is any chance the van could end up in the water??

 

You can calculate the weight transfer away from the front-drive axle caused by adding a trailer, just treat the hitch to front axle as a lever with the rear axle being the fulcrum.

On our last RV toter we had about 2000 pounds of hitch weight and the hitch 3 feet behind the axle and a 14 foot wheelbase. folks had conniptions over the hitch placement predicting doom and dead bodies. in reality 3/14 of 2000 pounds is less than 500, on a front axle carrying 7000 pounds unhitched.

The rear axle was carrying the full 2000 pound hitch weight plus the 500 that came off the front axle, something to also consider.

Lever calculator: https://www.engineersedge.com/calculators/levers/page_levers_1.htm

 

I have a 5,000 lb boat and trailer. Can you hook yours up and tow it for a bit on fast and (say 60 miles or so) and let me know how it goes? Please take some pictures showing if there is any rear end sag. The one thing I'm concerned about though is the boat ramp. With a front wheel drive vehicle and 5,000 lbs on the rear, do you think there is any chance the van could end up in the water??

If either of you go ahead and try this, please make sure you have someone standing outside the van recording it on video. The prize money you'd win submitting it to "America's Funniest Home Videos" would probably go a long way to repairing whatever happens to your van and/or boat.

Look, I understand that manufacturers intentionally underestimate the true towing capacity of their vehicles; their liability lawyers make them do it. I also understand that all sorts of people have towed all sorts of stuff with their Odysseys and lived to tell the tale. But you're not talking about a couple hundred pounds and "What's the harm?". You're suggesting exceeding the stated tow rating by 50-67%. Obviously I don't know for sure, but I really doubt Honda is undershooting the true safe towing capacity of the van by an entire ton.

Hawkeye_Ody makes a very good point as well. At the end of the day, whatever you do to your own van and boat is your own business, but as soon as you start endangering those around you, the rules of the game do change.

 

Having done a lot of towing with three different Odysseys (2001, 2002, 2003 EX's, all personally owned) up to max GVWR, plus occasionally over that for short haul movement of building materials...

...I agree with all of the above people who have posted. Tow rating isn't just about the horsepower and brakes, it's also about the strength of the frame (or unibody) and your tow vehicle's (TV) weight versus the towed trailer's (TT) weight as well.

Your Odyssey does not have enough mass to prevent 4,500lbs from "manhandling" you and your van all over the road when there is a decreasing radius corner while traveling downhill. Same with severe crosswinds, even with something as low-profile as a boat. That's just two of the many over-the-road perils that faces motorists on a daily basis, and the difficulties are compounded when you have a medium weight TV and a heavy TT connected to each other by a flexible link (your choice of appropriate towing connection).

This type of TT weight would require three axles and an excellent brake system on your TT (added stability factors) to make up for the lack of stability that a 4,400-lb FWD van has when moving those types of numbers. The third axle can relieve some of the tongue weight requirement of 10% for single and double-axle trailers while adding lateral stability...plus brakes on all six TT wheels is a real help.

Andy Duess (andreasduess on airforums.com) successfully and safely towed a 1984 34' triple axle Airstream Travel Trailer with his Honda Odyssey all over Canada, but he took a legendary engineering approach to make that happen, with his setup being assembled by experts noted in his blog. He did it right.

Far easier to simply get a different tow vehicle for this work for the right capability and level of safety.

OF

 

I would rent a truck or have a friend tow it to the boat house from the dealer. I wouldnt chance towing 60 miles, no way no how. But towing the 1/4 mile to storage shouldn't be an issue as long as its not on the freeway/highway. I have a 3500lb ski boat we would launch at the river with the Ody all summer long. If you are able to keep your speed below 35mph I would say your good.
If you plan on towing 1/4 mile on the highway, sadly you will need a smaller boat.....or a bigger tow vehicle.
Best of luck!

 

I wouldn't go that far above the rated capacity but I would think the chassis would be up to it given the Odyssey is built on the same platform as the Pilot and Ridgeline, both of which have a 5000lb tow rating. Of course, they have different transmissions and suspension calibrations which could definitely be an issue.

I find it really interesting that Draw Tite offers 2 different receiver hitches for the 2018 Odyssey. One of them is rated for 3500lb as you would expect but the other goes to 4500 (or 5000 for a weight distributing hitch).

Russ

 

I wouldn't go that far above the rated capacity but I would think the chassis would be up to it given the Odyssey is built on the same platform as the Pilot and Ridgeline, both of which have a 5000lb tow rating.

Post number 1! Welcome to the forum, russl

Not the same platform, even remotely. Big rectangular "holes" in the unibody for the sliding doors on an Odyssey. Also, hitch attachment points are not the same for the rectangular extrusions in the unibody that are just aft and outboard of the behind-the-rear-bench luggage well in the Odyssey. Similarly, look at the rear LCA's and UCA's on an Odyssey and compare them to the Pilot and Ridgeline...there's a small but definite "upsizing" in the amount of metal allocated to the truck-type Pilot and the Ridgeline truck.

Like ace says, crawling 440 yards to storage using the Ody for this; well, that is fine. Freeway speed for even a second? In his words (which I will echo), no way no how.

Of course, they have different transmissions and suspension calibrations which could definitely be an issue.

The suspension calibration is definitely an issue. The rear springs on an Odyssey are of a much, much lighter spring rate than either the Pilot or Ridgeline. They come out of the factory with vastly different intended usage by the consumer: the truck-type vehicles have towing more in mind while the van is for people-moving with "towing if you need to" as the design target.

I've pulled well over an Odyssey's GVWR by crawling through town with a bunch of building and landscape materials. I would never pull that same load at the least of any posted freeway speed. The next time I grabbed over two tons of lumber, Hardiboard and cement, I did as ace suggested and borrowed a big truck.

OF

 

Not to beat the dead horse here, but the vehicle’s mass has nothing to do with what it can tow.
’19 Elite I own has a curb weight of 4593lbs and my ’10 Ridgeline RT weighs 4504lbs. Isnt it funny that my van weighs more than my truck, yet I can tow 1500lbs more? So no, a vehicle’s mass has nothing to do with it. Do note that my Ridgeline’s brakes are almost identical to my Ody.

What was said about the chassis, programming, transmission and suspension is accurate. One of the reasons why a ’18 Ford Raptor has a payload of 1,200lbs and my ’10 Ridgeline is 1546lbs. BTW the ’18 Ridgeline 2WD can only tow 3500lbs while the 4WD tows 5000lbs. The 2WD payload is 1465lbs and the AWD max is 1580lbs. Same chassis, same vehicle, same transmission, just missing the center transfer unit and rear differential. The vehicle is a combination of numerous design iterations to accomplish the intended goal of that vehicle. Also reason why a Chevy Colorado can tow 5000lbs, but the same vehicle outfitted with a tow package can tow 7500lbs.

It is not true to identify one or two design features of a vehicle and attribute its towing capacity to them. I also would advocate to not exceed and actually keep the total weight towed to around 90% of the max tow weight and keep an eye on the specified tongue weight.