OT: Caravan suspension

Has anyone got any idea as to the carrying capacity of the suspension units from a 12 foot caravan Obviously I don't expect an exact answer but a round about figure would be great TIA

Reply to
Andy.Smalley
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I would guess, roughly and except its own weight, an extra of around 4 to 500 Kg. Don't blame if......;-) Erik-Jan.

Reply to
Erik-Jan Geniets

Andy.Smalley uttered summat worrerz funny about:

It's a bit of a piece of string question as it depends on the spring ratings. If you have a chassis then hopefully it may have a plate on the A frame that would tell the unloaded weight and max weight of the caravan.

Would help knowing the type of caravan as well. uk.rec.caravanning can be a useful source when they aint bitching about each other.

HTH

Lee

Reply to
Lee_D

Probably about right or a bit high, but depends on the van; they really are not designed to carry much other than themselves. But as with any trailer you'll probably get away with a substantial overload provided you drive gently on smooth roads. JD JD

Reply to
JD

Probably around 600-800kg for the pair, but:

Because caravan weights don't vary much between tare and laden, they could be very "soft", i.e. low stiffness. 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.

If the question did indeed relate just to the suspension units, that would be about it, but it probably includes the brakes, hubs, wheels, and tyres. 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.

There are plenty of caravans around still with cracked old cross-ply tyres on very narrow, non-hump rims. The wheels themselves may not have a high load rating, and won't take a reinforced or commercial tubeless tyre. A typical 155R13 car tyre may only have a load rating of "79", or

875kg per pair.

Assuming this is all about trailer conversion. I think the conclusion is that you could start with an old caravan, but in practice, if you're going for a single axle trailer you may as well stick to a maximum of

750k, and if you're towing it with a Land Rover, you can then just buy a couple of new unbraked suspension units and hubs, and a new coupling that's not going to fly off at the first bump, and avoid a lot of trouble.
Reply to
Autolycus

I built a very useful trailer from an old LR axle. Just took a torch to the two ends of the diff housing, and then a bit of machining and hey presto an axle that could probably transport about 3tons. I have loaded about that much sand onto it.

The great part about this is that the PCD matches the Landy, and I use the overrun part of the hitch to drive a ser1 master cylinder that drives the standard brakes. All very cunning, except for the fact that when I fitted the hitch, I didn't allow for the reverse lock thingy to activate properly, so at the moment I can't reverse uphill without the trailer coming to very sudden stop.

Here in South Africa, if you are not a registered trailer buiilder, you can only register a homebuilt trailer for a max of 750Kgs (which I did) unless you get a South African Bueaure (spelling??) of Standards inspector to check it over for about ZAR2000 or about 200notes of your money.

I would also advise that what I thought would be a spot of welding, a quick trip to the galvanizers and bob's your aunty, in fact turned out to be something of a mamouth undertaking and probably cost me as much as getting a trailer builder to do it. Still there is the satisfaction angle.

Regards Stephen

Reply to
fanie

My 205R16 tyres are rated at 900kg each. 1500kg would be quite an overload, but you'd probably get away with it for a while, if you drove slowly enough.

Not allowed in the UK for new trailers - in fact no re-use of vehicle brakes is. Again, you may get away with it, if you don't mind the trailer having no handbrake and no emergency break-away braking.

Just occasionally (usually when I see a trailer with strangely cambered wheels, no working lights, and the contents dribbling over the road, or at the side of the motorway with an odd number of wheels) I wonder if we should have something similar in the UK.

yup, OK.

Reply to
Autolycus

...and JD spake unto the tribes of Usenet, saying...

Another way of looking at it (which may be wrong):

My caravan, on a standard Al-Ko chassis - MTPLM 1407Kg, and I estimate the weight of the chassis (compared with the 500Kg of my car trailer) to be ~

400Kg. That would suggest the weight of the caravan bodywork and fittings to be around a tonne. So the same chassis, rigged up as a trailer, would be able to carry 1000Kg, less the weight of the trailer body. That's for a caravan of approx 15ft, so scale it down accordingly, say 800Kg?

Could be rubbish, though.

Reply to
Richard Brookman

Actually that was what I thought it might be just thought I'd double check

Reply to
Andy.Smalley

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