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Love the caravan for holidays. Got sick of packing away a wet tent so we upgraded. Now looking at upgrading to a new "fixed bed" caravan.
Towing wise, the van weighs 1370kg(inc 250kg for user payload). Last year we towed with a petrol CRV auto. dire does not do it justice. The Auto box was horrific, never knew what gear to be in. We averaged around 18mpg on a trip down to the New Forest and back(600 miles towing + around 500mile driving about the place), plus we started with a full tank and had to fill up on the drive down. Faster gauge when towing is the fuel gauge.
This year we towed with a Freelander TD4 auto. 27mpg on the way down and 25mpg on the way back(cruise control set @55mph and we drove through the night). Freelander did the trip down on 3/4's of a tank which was better and a lot more relaxing to drive.
I found a great guide on Alko's website - they apparently have made most caravan chassis for years - complete with brake adjustment and suspension info. The damper does damp, but there is a little slack spot right at the end which is odd - may well just need more grease.
I'm a bit concerned about the rubber in the axle. We're talking 20 years old here, surely it's perished and/or collapsed in that time? When you rock the van, the suspension doesn't appear to move at all, it just bounces on its tyres.
I also found out you can very easily retrofit dampers to the suspension - will definitely do this if the suspension is working at all 🙂
Rubber suspension can be very stiff...our horsebox is 3 ton with two axles. Even fully laden with two horses, it will easily lift wheels several inches off the ground with no obvious suspension deflection. I'd be surprised if there is more than 1" of travel.
Well these are the shocks
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You can see there's naff all travel.
It's just that when I rock the van, it rocks, but my finger between the top of the tyre and the chassis registers bugger all movement.
It might be different out on the road tho. I'm gonna get under there and try jacking up one hub, see what happens. If it deflects relative to the chassis, I've got travel.