Hi Iris thanks for replying (I'M afraid alot of people set questions but never aknowledge the people whom try to help)
If your towing car is heaver than your van thats half the battle won.
I to had a problem where our car was capable of towing the van according to the caravan dealer, but when trying to tow against strong head winds it was useless.
Setting the caravan up with internal weights is a strong key to success, Keeping the internal loose items to the front or on top of the axle wheel arches, never put heavy items to the rear of the wheel arch, also try and keep your nose weight as heavy as possible, Give you a example , most 4x4 have a towball max weight of 100kg or above which is handy if your noseweight for your van is on the higher side.
I myself tow a Bailey Van ,Baileys state in their booklet between 50-10 kg nosewight, not below or above the figures quoted, My car like most others has a max towball weight of 75 kg.
Reason i have just said that, is because when I purchased this van , loaded it up checked the noseweight got a reading of 85 kg so i unloaded several items from the front locker to get the weight down.
Our first trip out was to a site in kent , on the m20 after climbing a steep hill started to descend the other side when the van started to twich this was at 40 mph never ever had this before , made me quite nervious untill we reached our site.
We managed to park on a level pitch, Rechecked the nosewight to find it was just above 50kg, putting the items back into the front locker I managed to get the noseweight back up to 75kg.
Park my van on our drive which is on a slope, this had given me the incorrect nose weight reading.
Since that day i always load the van as per that pitch reading, never everhad anymore twitches , we can safely go down hill towing at 60mpg on motorways, overtaking these very large lorries no problem, their is only one vehicle that I would advise to keep well clear of that is car transporters, they can cause your van to become quite unstable if you get to close behind them.
To keep all the heavy items as close to wheel arches, To keep mine inplace i have cut to lenght a broom handle covered in the plastice waterpipe covering which i locate across the van.
I tow with a vauxhall vectra 2.2 dti estate and the van weighs fully loaded just under 1200 kg.
Royston