Van or trailer with incorrect weight distribution? If heavier at rear of van will cause what you have described every time. Is the water tank fore or aft of the axles, is it single or dual axle setup. Suggestion load the front of van i.e. large plastic water containers etc and test drive again. My experience in the past with this problem is that by adding 40 kg in the form of water or sand bags to the drawbar solved the problem. you may need greater weight to test on your van i suggest 100 kg.This easy test will eliminate the issue of weight distribution if that is indeed the problem as weight distribution is the major cause of caravan swaying.

Cheers Allen

Hi,

Regarding tyre pressures with that weight on a single axle I would be loooking at 50 psi per tyre. We had a badly swaying van years ago and pumping the tyres from 35 to 45 made a large difference. They can move around on the sidewall(flexing) if not kept tight.
Sounds like you need a bit more weight over the front as well. Rule of thumb is if the van weighs in at 1900kg then you should have a towball weight of 190kg or roughly 10% of van weight.

Hope it helps

Cheers AL

the towing ability of the car is ( from the cars manual ) 2300 kg the weight of the van is between original plate on the van 1400 kg and the new plate that says 1900 kg
think i need to look at the fact no weight in the van at all
but still wonder about the independent suspension
might look at getting it weighed properly somewhere
still wont be using it much if i cant sort out this problem as having to travel at 60 / 70 k is as far as i can see a danger on the road , to me having to pull off the road to let stuff pass , and people having to slow down so much behind me
checked tryes and they are about the 50 mark

its a bf 2007 ford wagon auto unbraked tow weight 2300 kg
16 1/2 ft golf tourer pop top body draw bar is 5 ft total 21 1/2 ft approx around the mid 80s model front kitchen ( again some discussion on age as previous owner said was 85 but motor transport couldnt find anything similar so went for 86)is a light weight aluminum frame

got these numbers off the van plates /labels and appears got ALL those weights wrong
original plate ( as said barely visible )

axle tare 950 kg
vehicle tare 1050
max pay load 300
axle cap 1450

handwritten below label

towball weight 175 kg

new plate
tare 1050
trailer mass 1250
also has chassis number etc on it which i didn't included
hope these make sense
found where got the 1950 kg on rego atm is that amount

had to tie roof down because clips inside wouldn't stay pulled down kept coming loose previous owner has pulled 1/2 the original ceiling out and replaced it and not sure is all in the right place

wish i never bought this thing !!

sorry i looked in hand book and says towing for
manual transmission vehicle is 1200kg
xr s is 1600
other automatic trans vehicles is 2300kg

but just noticed standard duty towpack is rated at 1600 kg but towball weight can only be 160 kg

getting really feed up with this thing im not putting in $2000 heavy duty tow pack into a 8 yr old car which is worth only $ 5000 max which cant be transferred to the next vehicle

and as van has no brakes at all neither over ride or electric really makes it worse !

really thinking about dumping the whole thing and cut my loses

Dzcook hi

Slow up good fellow, you have brought an older caravan but a good quality one the roof bit we will come back to.

But first the swaying from not my own, a very close friend who we travelled with a lot had a caravan that did not like to go to quick and the problem turned out to be the tyres, lots of tread, light truck but old. Tyre life is around the 4 year mark and this is where I would start to look to solve the problems of swaying.

First check the age of the tyres by looking at the side wall of the tyre there should be a imprinted label with this information including tyre pressures, year and month of manufactor eg. 2008 08. If you are having trouble understanding the label take the spare down to a tyre dealer and ask he will put you right

Now if my guess is right and your caravan is running 14" wheels look at buying a couple of new light truck tyres of mediam quality with a good load carry capacity, good speed rating. When that van was new they woud of had car tyres on it but now the tyre game has changed some what. Early this year I paid around $360 a bit of over kill for your light weight van but I did buy quality for our heavy single axle van.

Now the second problem you have is the braking or lack of which need to be addressed first and fore most as been mentioned else where your van will need brakes of some sort whether over ride or electric. I think and only think you may get away with over ride because of the light weight of this style van. At some stage and you are starting to enjoy your van which we all hope you will do, you may throw some real money at the van and replace the braking system with electric braking system but for now, get the over ride working and it will keep you safe, I have pulled my heavy 900kg cub camper  and a 1100 kg caravan behind our Subaru Outback very comfortably both with over ride brakes. Brakes must be there as you have had it registered and the seller would of sold the van with a blue slip.

Next small problem is your tow bar, now that needs sorting is it rated better then you need or there abouts, I doubt wherter you will need a heavy duty towing pack. If your tow bar is a square retriever style there a good chance that will do but if it's a flat style off to the wreckers to find a second hand heavier style tow bar to save some money. The major issue here is the flat style will only allow about 750kgs but the square retrieval style will allow lots more and you will need about 140 kgs on your tow ball.

let us all know how you are going collecting information and anywhere else we can help, takebone thingbat a time until you sort the caravan, a couple of hod

long weekend it was pulling up fine behind the car
hardly noticed it about town and on the road pulling over to let everything pass didnt wander or anything
just the bloody swaying was getting to me

Hi David

A great photo, like Bill I would think it has electric brakes, maybe look underneath behind the brake drum and see if there is a power cable there, the cable will most likely run from the chassis down to the backing plate of the brakes hopefully the answer will be yes in which case the next step will be to obtain a brake controller and have it fitted to your car. A basic one would be good enough to do the job on this size van.

Now the question of the tow bar what you said a flat tongued type now that maybe under rated as I am not sure but from my own experience of towing some engineer has slapped 750kgs tow ball weight on them.

The age of the car and being a Ford there would be one or two laying around in car parts recyclers or wrecking yards.

I would think the 50psi air pressures are far to high, I run our heavy van at 42psi so far last 4 years approximately 30000ks in a light van I would think much lower. Once again a couple of psi more then what is recommended on the drive of your Ford would be enough for a starter to try by test running and using the 4 plus rule you will soon work out what is needed.

What I mean by this 4psi rule is check your pressure when the tyres are cold drive for hour or so check your pressure if they are now 4lb more you will need to increase the pressure if the psi is lower then 4psi you can drop a couple of psi out and go again trying to get it right. This to me is as important as getting the weight right in the van along with the tow ball weight.

keep us informed. Ralph.

 

well i am stunned !! crawled underneath the brick and discovered that there ARE wires running into the brake drums so has electric brakes !!
so whats a good reasonable price control unit any recommendations ? looked on ebay and have no idea what i am looking for last car / caravan i had , had a hayman reece unit in car stupidly traded car in with it still in ( thinking about it now the unit was most likely worth more than what i got as trade in ) would i be best to just let the auto electrician install whatever he has ?

PeterD 

 

I would advise against a basic (or timer or synchroniser) type brake controller. They do not act like over-ride brakes. Over-ride brakes have a proportional action, the harder you brake the harder they work. Here is an explanation of the difference in controlled.

---

 Hi PeterD

At present in our Late model Nissan Navara tare 2100kg & singl axle caravan grossing 1900kg we are using the older basic style brake controller with confidence in this set up with weight of the tow vehicle heavier then the towed trailer. If we replace this van with a say 3000kg van we will then look for the best option.

I would think travelling at or below 90ks in emergency situation there would be little differences but I am not qualified to debate this, only experienced by my training as a transport driver operating mainly semi trailers, one thing we did learn was to drive to the conditions and enjoy the drive.

I thank you for putting up that graph to show the differences and it may help other readers in there decisions when purchasing a brake controller.

Thank you. Ralph.

 

I had a Tekonsha 9030 Voyager installed in our Falcon XE. It worked well and I never had a moment of concern in the over 10,000kms we towed our Swan camper.

When we upgraded to the AU Falcon I installed a Tekonsha P3 (not the Prodigy) simply because it had a digital display which I thought would give me more peace of mind seeing things working. But as it happened it was installed where I couldn't readily see the display so when it came down to it the display didn't really matter. When we bought our BF wagon I had the P3 transferred across.

(I had Ford do the installation in the BF as part of the sale.)

As Radar writes, you can do the installation yourself - just requires a bit of care. I did our AU and the only really tricky part was running the wires from around the dashboard to the back of the wagon and from the battery through the bulkhead. I used grommets around the holes and sealastic. (On our BF there is a socket behind the right tail light assembly for connecting a harness for trailer wiring but I couldn't see a brake wire.)

The Voyager is 'hard wired' in although I used 'bullet' type connectors - making sure that the two live wires had female connectors and the other two male.

The P3 and Prodigy are connected via a plug and socket, easy to remove for security or transfer to another vehicle. Spare sockets with fly wires are available for around $25, as are the mounting cradle/clips.

Others may have a preference for different types of controllers - check which ones will suit you.

By the way, Tekonsha controllers are connected direct to the battery via a resettable fuse (readily available from Super Cheap etc) and are always on. The instruction leaflet/manual estimates that it would take three months to flatten the battery if the vehicle was never driven during that time. That is not likely to happen as most vehicles are driven at least once a day!

EBay have a number of brake controllers for sale, different types, solid state or proportional, new or second hand and at various prices. For used ones make sure that the instruction leaflet is included together with the mounting bracket/cradle.

Murray