[Closed] I want a Caravan that's not a Caravan!

Yeah, I always cruise at lorry speed.. otherwise you're clogging the middle lane constantly with a 2mph speed differential, and getting buffeted too.

Is that with a 1.8 turbo?

maybe more to do with this..

nicely cropped to make it look like the car towing the caravan is causing the queue 🙂

[quote=molgrips a dit]Yeah, I always cruise at lorry speed.. otherwise you're clogging the middle lane constantly with a 2mph speed differential, and getting buffeted too.
Is that with a 1.8 turbo?

indeed, I rarely move out of the inside lane. No,.it's a v50 1.8 se so just standard, no turbo (don't think so anyway - don't really care). Don't do enough miles to justify a diesel

Ah, a safe haven for the sad bastards...

We'll be going off in my old mans Senator again this year, just need to get a new car (odds on Mondeo) to avoid the hell that is a C8 for towing the damn thing (horrible car with the instruments in the middle of the dash for some unknown reason).

Love it, if he hadn't got one I would have (albeit smaller). Missus can pull it as well which is handy, not too shabby at reversing (until female selective deafness occurs when hitching up *:P)

*She's reading this as I type. Nosey bum.

My mum would never tow a caravan, so I'm glad my wife will. Although she doesn't fancy manoevring it.. especially after the palaver experienced trying to pull onto the site at Easter.. got stuck, had to reverse back onto a (deserted) road in the dark completely blind. With lights on, dazzled by the van front lights; with them off - dark, obv.

We've got a thirty year old Eriba Puck, it's the same width as the Doblo and only about four inches higher with the roof closed and it weighs nowt, the mpg dropped from 54 to 52 on a recent 160 mile trip and you can't really feel it's there when towing,
The alloy construction means it's dry as a bone with no damp or mildew and the beds mega comfy,
They fetch strong money in good nick though..

I must admit, we saw some really nice vans recently when going to our dealer to pick up £1 parts for our old heap of crap.. however the sheer size of newer vans is somewhat intimidating!

Our current one is 18" long but the newer ones are quite a bit higher and wider.

Our current one is [b]18"[/b] long but the newer ones are quite a bit higher and wider.

Blimey, that's a compact one.... 😉

Yeah.. no bed required, we just wedge ourselves in standing up .

😆

Airstream Mercedes Touring Coach is what you want.

[img] [/img]

^ playing with the build your own function is fun

Airstream Mercedes Touring Coach is what you want.

I'll add that to the list of things I don't need, but want, and will only buy when I win the lottery 🙂

(I know, as a lottery winner you don't really need a motorhome, but it would be handy for going to races).

^ Base model is a reasonable $150k.

I had never heard of them before until I saw one last week, googled and fell in love.

Base model is a reasonable $150k.

In that case I'll take two 😀

[img] [/img]

Airstream Mercedes Touring Coach is what you want.

No way!

No way!

Yes way! It'd be ideal for going to races - turn up, park somewhere near the start line, no need for a campsite or whatever, and marginally less obvious than a caravan.

Yeah but I holiday besides races.

I'd still caravan if I won the lottery. I'd rather a field in the middle of nowhere than a hotel.

Course I might have a motorhome as well, just for races 🙂

Course I might have a motorhome as well, just for races

I never said you couldn't have both. You could even get new net curtains 🙂

I'm struggling to see what's so special about that Airstream, I've seen self build conversions that look more appealing. That's also gonna be a [i]really[/i] comfy bed with all those ridges and lovely slidey leather.

Molgrips, get an electric mover, only peasants push 😛

I have a mover, it came on my first knackered old van and I nicked it for my newer van when I sold it, along with the stabiliser. The radio doesn't work so I have to use a cable, and my leisure battery's knackered so it doesn't work very well.. 🙂

[img] [/img]

Best of both worlds then molgrips?

Lounge setup in the van, luxury kitchen and bedroom in the trailer.

[img] [/img]

solves the issue of packing up the motorhome nicely

I'm pretty upset that this thread can get to 5 pages without someone posting this (unless it's in one of those broken links)

[img] [/img]

Quirrel.. that'd get the net curtains twitching 🙂

Winnebago do caravans...

Re. Fuel consumption with a caravan, for the average user (1 or 2 holidays per year in the UK) it doesn't matter too much does it? Especially seeing as it lives on site during the holiday.

If you are planning on jaunts to the south of France or using it every month then fair enough, but my camper tows a horsebox most weekends and 18-20mpg is pretty normal, I just try to avoid watching the gauge as even at 15 minute intervals you can see it going down! 🙁

Love the look of that Deseo, especially the open plan Transport version. There was a comment earlier about the twin axle being harder to tow, can't really see that as it will be much more stable as long as your tow ball height is vaguely correct. The hard bit would be maneuvering by hand (our box is 1400kg unladen and it takes three people with a lot of swearing to turn it in a short space) but on a lighter caravan you can just wind the nose up high to get the front axle off the ground to stop it scrubbing.

Fuel consumption with a caravan, for the average user (1 or 2 holidays per year in the UK) it doesn't matter too much does it?

Is that average?

We certainly are planing to drive a long way on our summer holidays, so yeah fuel economy is something we notice.

can't really see that as it will be much more stable

I asked about this, thinking that twin axle would be more stable. Consensus is that it isn't, it's just harder to manoevre by hand. Twin axle is only used when needed to handle the weight.

I reckon its probably average. Some don't get used at all some years! Others get stored onsite and tractored on to the pitch. Sometimes just used for one summer holiday per year.

My parents are guilty of all three, my in-laws have only used theirs for the odd couple of holidays and they must have had it three years.
We've some friends who used theirs fairly intensively for the first couple of years but less now.

I reckon many vans only do a few hundred miles a year, so for those users, a few mpg's difference is probably a tank of fuel per year.

You might be on to something with the twin axle thing, at speed when it all gets out of shape, the caravan is drifting side to side rather than pivoting on a single axle so two axles may not make a huge difference.

We drove ours all over France, must've done tens of thousands of miles. If we met people on sites, they were generally doing the same thing, so I must have a biased perception 🙂

I think the van does pivot, but not loads (unless you are in serious trouble). The only time I had an issue I'd just collected the van, it was on way too low tyre pressures (I hadn't chekced) and the toilet at the back was quite full (ergh) and it was sloshing from side to side. The only time I can feel anything now with the new van is when a lorry passes me and their bow wave on the rear of the van sometimes results in a slight tug on the wheel - hardly notice it tbh now.

The OP's van would suffer from that far less though, due to less leverage at the back. Plus continental vans have much longer A frames and the wheels are further back which makes it way more stable. Might make it tricky getting a bigger continental van it onto some of the CLs we stay at mind.

Wonder if this thread has the same potential as my Sick as dog Bivi thread...... 😆

Anyone else considered going the other end, ie, buy a cheap scabby one, abuse it til it dies? Bangervanomics. I'd love that for race days, quick weekends away etc, if I just had somewhere to park it.

The cost of the good ones and all that comes with that makes it pretty nonsensical unless you're really into Caravanning, rather than just going places and staying in a caravan- it's an end in itself I reckon.

[quote=Northwind a dit]Anyone else considered going the other end, ie, buy a cheap scabby one, abuse it til it dies? Bangervanomics. I'd love that for race days, quick weekends away etc, if I just had somewhere to park it.
The cost of the good ones and all that comes with that makes it pretty nonsensical unless you're really into Caravanning, rather than just going places and staying in a caravan- it's an end in itself I reckon.

Ours cost us £2000, from a local dealer. It came with a three month warranty, which was great as the front end was rotten with damp but was completely replaced. Sadly we didnt spot the damp at the rear until the warranty had run out so we had to pay to get that sorted ourselves.

[url= https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3902/15132873378_dac1fe2b22.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3902/15132873378_dac1fe2b22.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://flic.kr/p/p4eW2Y ]Clean caravan[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/people/93064031@N00/ ]Notoriously Bad Typist[/url], on Flickr

you may consider £2000 to be expensive, I don't know, but the cheaper vans at the dealers were quite frankly horrible. you can get a better deal buying privately but you do need to consider issues like damp, and also what accessories you will get - we wangled a load of freebies like aquaroll, massive leisure battery and so on

We bought it for a specific trip, we took it round the scottish ski centres for a 2 week trip in March 2011: bit chilly first thing in the morning but the heater soon sorted that. Since then we've done a few more one week trips to various places (Wales, Long mynd, Quantocks) and two weeks in Scotland (Oban / Kye of Lochalsh), two christmas weeks in the Lake District, got another week in Wales coming up soon and then another two week trip to Scotland later this year (far north).

Having an awning helps massively if you are taking bikes.

500 quid, cant go wrong.

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Bargain for £500 quid. Look tidy. You could use it for a year and sell it for the same I bet.

Looks diddy them inside it's massive.

[quote=Tiger6791 a dit]Looks diddy them inside it's massive.

that pic is taken from outside, you can see the door frame on the left. But yes, "small" caravans can be surprisingly spacious inside. OUr caravan as above will comfortably seat 6 people, 8 if you're friendly. When we make up the bed it's bigger than the kingsize we have at home...

either this

[img] [/img]

or

[img] [/img]

We definately went the bangernomics route

[IMG] [/IMG]

We paid 200 quid for this beauty, some water came in the top, but it ran out the bottom again so no problem there. Used it all over the highlands for nearly ten years and loved it.

When it finally deteriorated too far we stuck it on freecycle and had a queue round the metaphorical block.

We replaced it with this

[IMG] [/IMG]

Which cost us a grand and is much posher, fridge, heater, hot water, bog and whatnot. Its much nicer in winter than the other one but its not the same.
We've had a bit of damp but we've half arsed repaired it and it'll last years, then we'll get another.

I'm surprised no one has posted up vw transporter towing a caravan with a wood burner installed.

A friend of mine has just finished building this and moved into it. Its got a woodburner, a shower and a composting toilet.

[IMG] [/IMG]

I absolutely love it.

Good job! I guess it is just parked up somewhere?

How about this combo.

[img] [/img]

Good job! I guess it is just parked up somewhere?