Turning it around.

[Mel]

We keep our caravan on our drive. To reverse it on with the car is a major struggle, due to a combination of the narrownes of the gate, the angle of the turn and that we live on a T junction. Also rubbish at reversing but it would be really tricky anyway. Usually unhitch and powermove it. Any hoo, we have enough length to drive on so that the van is off the road, unhitch, move the car to the side of it and then push the van to the top of the drive. The drive is basically a triangle with the apex at the gate so it is not the same length all the way down. Trouble is the van is then pointing the wrong way to tow it off again. How wide does the drive need to be to turn the van through 360 degrees? And how much length of that width will we need given that the drive is triangular? It is a Swift challenger 490 length 7.18m width 2.29m. Hope I have put this clearly enough. Any help gratefully recieved, no idea how to work it out!

 

[Damian]

Mel, if it is a single axle van, then it should turn in its own length by using one one mover motor in forward and the other in reverse.

If it is a twin axle, you are looking at one and a half times the length , roughly.

 

[JeremyClarksson]

I think you mean 180 degrees.

If you turn any van manually you will need slightly more then the length of the van as the back end is squared off, you could measure from one of the rear corners to the front of the tow bar to check this, it should be around 7.3m plus add a safety margin depending on hedge, brick boundaries etc.

I do not know but would have guessed that the distance should be the same with a motor mover unless it has some sort of minimum movement.

 

[Mel]

Thanks guys. Yes of course I did mean 180 degrees! I suspect from what you said, we have enough width at the widest part of the drive but it narrows too sharply. Might just give it a very careful try! We can always powermove it back onto the road and annoy the local traffic. Us caravanners have our reputation as rolling roadblocks to maintain.

mel