making landy trailer from caravan

Does anyone know if the running gear from a double axled caravan will be stong enough for trailer for my 88inch 2A.

thanks

1963 Series 2A 1990 Series 70 Toy Landcruiser
Reply to
Splitpin
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The first thing i would look at is the weight stamped on the plate on the caravan. I have a cvaravan im breaking which has a really hefty looking chassis

- the caravan is only plated as weighing 800kg though.

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Reply to
Tom Woods

You will find a plate on the caravan, normally beside the bottom edge of the door. There should be two figures on it, namely

  1. MRO which is the ex-factory weight of the caravan .... so (if British) this doesn't include the weight of the battery, gas cylinders or any other fitted accessories etc.
  2. MTPLM which is the maximum fully laden weight.

So MTPLM - MRO gives you the maximum weight you can safely add (if properly distributed inside the caravan) so in normal use this would include the items mentioned in 1 + food, clothes, TV, radio, crockery, cooking utensils, awning & poles, ground sheet(s) etc etc.

The caravan will also have a Maximum Nose Weight (probably find that in its handbook) which is the maximum weight when loaded at the hitch point ..... about 75Kg is quite common. You can get gauges to measure this or just lower the hitch (jokey wheel off ground) onto an appropriate length wooden rod (cut down broom handle) which is resting on some bathroom scales.

HTH ............... Richard

Reply to
Richard

There are many problems with using old caravans: the suspension was usually designed to carry a very narrow range of weights - loading a caravan with a few melamine plates and a bottle of blue gunge doesn't make a lot of difference to its weight - whereas a trailer may easily have a gross weight four or five times its tare. So it will either change considerably in height from tare to laden, or bounce around like a pea on a drum.

If they're coil springs, they may just become coilbound at overload, which means they'll suddenly go solid in the absence of any earlier bump stop. If they're rubber-based, like Indespension, they can go "over centre" and take on a permanent sag, with unpredictable effects on their load-carrying ability, or go virtually completely solid, perhaps with the wheel alignment completely lost, which does nothing for stability or tyre wear.

Caravan, indeed trailer, wheel bearings are often very marginally specified, so even when they're new, there's not much room for overloading. After they've been driven around and neglected for a few years, then stood for a while, probably filling up with water, they are a bit of a disaster waiting to happen, and, unlike your car's wheel bearings, you're unlikely to hear anything amiss till the whole caboodle is a glowing mass of ex-bearing.

A caravan old enough to be scrapped has probably got old, seized, worn-out brakes - and trailer brake spares prices are ridiculously high, particularly from places like Indespension. They may not even be auto-reverse, which is a real pain.

Similarly, a worn-out, undamped hitch can make towing fairly miserable.

People fit all sorts of tyres to caravans, then leave them standing, flat, for long periods. Carrying a Land Rover on a two-axle trailer will probably give you an axle load of 1000kg or more. For that load, you need at least 84 rated tyres, so on 13" rims you'll need full (80) profile 165 tyres. Plenty of older caravan wheels won't even have the correct rim profile for tubeless tyres.

Some caravans seem to rely on the body to provide torsional stiffness, so trailers based on them would be flexible, to say the least. They're also designed to have the load spread fairly evenly, not concentrated at four points. Remember that, when loading, you get some very strange weight distributions - strong rear prop stands might be handy.

Apart from that, yes, they're great. Cue: chorus of people who've made trailers from Asda trolleys and dexion, used them to carry Saracens, and never had a moment's trouble.

Reply to
Autolycus

Definately not. Most car trailers are not even strong enough! Even if the rated weight of the thing in caravan form is sufficient, without the body there is very little rigidity in the chassis which could only be remedied by so much extra metal that you might just as well buy a hitch and suspension units and make one yourself anyway. A seven-berth caravan (an old style one with what would be regarded as a hevy-weight chassis these days) required substantial bracing just to carry two carriage driving gigs (it still flexed something terrible).

Richard

Reply to
BeamEnds

Okay thanks for that. I'll abandon that idea then.

Reply to
Splitpin

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