Hi all, Newbie here, just bought a 7 year old Sterling, our first van. I'm also in to Classic cars, so used to towing vehicles on trailers, appreciate caravans are different so advice welcome.
Back to the thread topic, although the tyres were replaced by the previous owner 4 years ago, I'm going to replace them, and as the spare on an Alko carrier is as old as the van that's getting replaced to. First I fitted Kojack jacking points, which took all of 5 mins to do both sides, and then started the battle of getting the spare out..... if I have ever seen a design that I wouldn't want to rely on in an emergency; the Alko spare wheel carrier ticks quite a lot of the boxes. A Google search and reading threads on this forum confirmed mine wasn't an isolated view.
Whilst with a bit of grunt and the van jacked up high with the Kojack bottle jack I could get the spare wheel off, trying to "close" the carrier (without a wheel) was clearly not going to happen easily. I took the whole carrier off, and what was immediately obvious was that it wasn't square, (promotes binding) so I slackened the bridging bracket and rectified that. The next thing was that the narrower rods had clearly been greased at some point, but the grease had gone sticky, combined with the odd bit of corrosion on the narrower rods, meant that they were really binding in the plastic bushes.
Clearly the whole thing when manufactured has been electroplated, however, even with the added grease mine had corroded patches. At this stage I was pondering ditching the whole carrier, however I thought I'll try and make it work.
So I removed it, cleaned and degreased it all up with brake cleaner, removed any corrosion with various grades of wet & dry, finishing with an 800 grit. To help keep it square I have fabricated a second bridging bracket that sits at the end attached by split pins, and have lubricated the whole thing with a dry PTFE spray, the rods now close individually with very little force. ( I think a big issue with the design is that there is too much flex, and this promotes binding)
When refitting , I have substituted "R" clips rather than split pins, so if it does seize up on the side of the road the whole thing can be removed without tools , and quickly.
I'll check that it keeps free by testing every 3 months, who knows I may end up ditching that whole thing, but thought I'd at least give it a try, what I haven't seen on any of the forums is the tested fix, does it exist?
Dave
Back to the thread topic, although the tyres were replaced by the previous owner 4 years ago, I'm going to replace them, and as the spare on an Alko carrier is as old as the van that's getting replaced to. First I fitted Kojack jacking points, which took all of 5 mins to do both sides, and then started the battle of getting the spare out..... if I have ever seen a design that I wouldn't want to rely on in an emergency; the Alko spare wheel carrier ticks quite a lot of the boxes. A Google search and reading threads on this forum confirmed mine wasn't an isolated view.
Whilst with a bit of grunt and the van jacked up high with the Kojack bottle jack I could get the spare wheel off, trying to "close" the carrier (without a wheel) was clearly not going to happen easily. I took the whole carrier off, and what was immediately obvious was that it wasn't square, (promotes binding) so I slackened the bridging bracket and rectified that. The next thing was that the narrower rods had clearly been greased at some point, but the grease had gone sticky, combined with the odd bit of corrosion on the narrower rods, meant that they were really binding in the plastic bushes.
Clearly the whole thing when manufactured has been electroplated, however, even with the added grease mine had corroded patches. At this stage I was pondering ditching the whole carrier, however I thought I'll try and make it work.
So I removed it, cleaned and degreased it all up with brake cleaner, removed any corrosion with various grades of wet & dry, finishing with an 800 grit. To help keep it square I have fabricated a second bridging bracket that sits at the end attached by split pins, and have lubricated the whole thing with a dry PTFE spray, the rods now close individually with very little force. ( I think a big issue with the design is that there is too much flex, and this promotes binding)
When refitting , I have substituted "R" clips rather than split pins, so if it does seize up on the side of the road the whole thing can be removed without tools , and quickly.
I'll check that it keeps free by testing every 3 months, who knows I may end up ditching that whole thing, but thought I'd at least give it a try, what I haven't seen on any of the forums is the tested fix, does it exist?
Dave
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