Broken van

Camped beside a chap at Hughenden who has been there for 3 weeks waiting to get his van fixed
The van was only 3 weeks old when the front of the A frame broke of (pictures) safety chains did nothing as they were attached to the bit that broke of
Yes the van frame is alloy, this puts a question mark over using alloy
The van has only travelled from Brisbane nearly to Richmond on the black stuff
A temporary hitch was made at Richmond so the van could be towed back the Hughenden for repairs
He said that they first sent out a tilt tray but the van is bigger than the tilt tray, wrong, they had to back and bring out a low loader
The van manufacture is paying for the camp site and for the repairs the delay has been just what is the best way to fix, it goes in next week
Ian

It is not surprising. The engineering and use of alloys are fine, but it the skillset of the person doing the welding and the weight on the towball that ultimately contributes to this. I'd imagine that that old mate has overload the drawbar to the hilt- jerry cans, gas bottles bikes and whatever else is in that toolbox. All of that weight is on the towball when the downforce limit is only a couple of hundred kilos total.

He must have been towing it with a mighty Dodge to have enough power to pull the front clean off!! :woohoo:

I'm with DD here...
I'd be very curious to know the towball weight..Those Axles look Too far back for My liking....

I can't see clearly enough in the picture but it looks like he is towing it with an older hilux(please correct me if I'm wrong) and if my memory serves correctly I think max ball weight for that model was only 180kg and as Hayseed says those axles are a loooong way back, those towball scales you can buy cheaply now may have prevented this.

I might correct myself, the tow vehicle could be a Chev but ball weight would still only be about 250kg max I'd reckon.

This type of thing used to be a very common thing once on vans but most broke back were the A frame joined the van
I wonder does it happen much these days
I guess all the air bags and spring helper doo hickys they put on the draw bar and rear axle dont help to know when the van is loaded right as they force the van and tow bar to lift back up and appear normal
I dont think sales men do the vans any favors either "yeah mate you can load it right up and go like a rocket " and I guess most people that buy these have little or any experience loading things for axle loads either

I do remember a few years ago somewhere up that part of QLD the police DOT cracked down on the caravan owners and started weighing them and wouldnt let them move on till things were corrected , a lot of big 4x4's got sold in Townsville I heard on the news


Paul

Fairly certain that the maximum ball weight is 10% of the ATM of the trailer..

EDIT: upon reflection. I think It's 10% of the Towing capacity of the Towing vehicle.

I reckon that's one of those Chinese import caravans, designed as a cross between the comfort and weight of a UK spec van, but with the ride height and rear tail ground clearance of an Australian built van.
There's a guy over here in Adelaide is importing them and has managed to get the very basic compliance design for his lot and I know for a fact that they were never designed with weight distribution in mind, only cosmetic looks and layout..
Alloy frames, fiberglass side panels, but with off road suspension, making it look like it can go anywhere!
All good until you take it over the corrugation and it starts shaking apart, or overload the 'A' frame to try and 'distribute the weight inside the van, due to it now having a bathroom at the rear, with little storage room and a double bed at the front with lots of storage underneath!
Its going to need a fair repair to get that past another inspection.
Wonder if the company are going to do any recalls on the others that they've sold??

Vic Rhodes wrote: Fairly certain that the maximum ball weight is 10% of the ATM of the trailer..

EDIT: upon reflection. I think It's 10% of the Towing capacity of the Towing vehicle.

I'm with you Vic, Ive just had a look at a few of mine the Old commodore is 210 on the ball for 2100 braked, the VS ute is 160 for 1600 the F100 and :Landcruiser are both 350 for 3500. I doesn't sound a lot but I had a little bit of an arse puckering moment with my previous VS ute out near border village on those wave like large corrugation towing my triaxle trailer. Admittedly I was fairly moving but the font of the trailer tried to lift the back of the ute off the road when I got out of sync with the waves and away she went, thankgod for electric brakes. I weighed it when I got home and it had 300 on the ball(that was good for 2100kg braked because it was auto with the heavy tow pack) so only 90kg over but it was lethal. My Dad sent me a photo he took of it when I loaded it and you could clearly see how far down in the rear it was, I suppose they have those guidelines for a reason.