Stabilisers or Hitch stabiliser?

[MARK_5074954]

Hello all and dont start laughing yet. All ne to the towing carry on. Been camping for years and recently bought an Elddis Avante 524. What a differance. Comfort at last, lol.

Anyway need advice on stabilisers. I have bought a car stabiliser at present but as soon as i go above 55mph the Disco is all over the place. People keep say the new Type on the Hitch are best. Please advise, i see people flying past me with the old type and feel I must be doing something wrong. I drive a 3.9 V8 Discovery. Tyre pressure ok. Nose weight not sure. Trying to put 75kg as per manual? Any help would be great.

 

[Wendy-Norfolk]

Hi Mark,

We tow with a Discovery and can honestly say we have never had any problems with either type of stabiliser. In fact, our last caravan was a twin axle and we first used a double Bulldog stabiliser especially for twin axles until changing to the hitch type. It was absolutely solid. We now own a single axle caravan with the hitch stabiliser and again, no problems. However, we have found that on some motorways where there are lorry gullies you sometimes feel as if you are going all over the place, but, it's definately the road. The other thing is, maybe you're not loading your caravan correctly.

 

[354]

We tow a lexon (1300kg) with our Frontera and use a blade stabiliser , bulldog 200Q with no problems (even without the stabiliser it is rock solid). If the van is unstable the first thing to check is the loading of the van and ensure that heavy items are at floor level and as close to the axle as posible. Secondly check the nose weight idealy 7% of the van weight but no higher than the maximum permisable for your car. Next check tyre presures are even.

 

[MARK_5074954]

Hi to both Wendy and Del.

With regards to nose weight. I pressume i need to fill up spare wheel compartment with various tools gas bottles etc to try and achieve this weight. I then need to check this is approx 75 to 100kg? I then proceed to load caravan as explained putting heavy object ets across axles and to the front of the unit.

With Bulldog stabiliser i should be feeling resitance when i try to put into bracket. Which i did at first. Stopped after a while on motorway and stabiliser although still in bracket, seemed very loose when lifted out. This is a brand new stabiliser but felt as if it was gradually loosening off.

I know i probably should not ask but what realistic speed should i achieve with either device. 55mph felt okay but felt rather stupid when all HGVs and huge caravans passing my by.

As you say i should have no problems with Disco, stabiliser and caravan is only 1100kgs.

Thanks for your help and will take onboard advice given.

cheers for now Mark.

 

[354]

The nose weight should be checked when the caravan is loaded at that time idealy it should be 7% of the vaqn weight. If you adjust and check the nose weight before you load the van you may find it drastically increases when the van is full, however never back load a van to obtain the correct nose weight as in the event of a snake it will act like a pendulam.

I found by clearing out the junk that had acumulated under the front seats over the years and fitting an underslung spare wheel carrier to the read of the chasis dramatically reduced the nose weight.