Could have made a huge mistake

A

allysson

New Member
Hi

We have recently bought a caravan but not picked it up yet. It was an impulse buy (which in my case is never a good thing). I found out our car may not be up to the job of pulling it. We have a Ford Focus 1.6 tdci estate studio diesel. The caravan is an ace award daystar 2 berth 2002. I checked on the caravan club website but it did not have our car on the list so I checked it against some of the other Ford Focus 1.6 estates. It wasn't a brilliant match but was possible. I was already having doubts about whether we had done the right thing or not and now im really not sure.

Please help

Alison
 
PhilHo

PhilHo

Administrator
Staff member
http://www.towcar.info says the caravan is way too heavy for the car.

If you are stuck with the caravan one option might be to find a site that you like, in an area that you like with on site storage. Get someone to tow it down/up there for you in a bigger car. And then don't tow just get the site to move it in and out of storage onto the site for you.

Otherwise it is down to changing your car or your caravan. I know you must feel awful but maybe my on-site storage idea might be a compromise that is acceptable. Plus you won't have the hassle of towing and finding somewhere to store it. Overall when you consider fuel savings etc it might not turn out to be that expensive an option.
 
A

allysson

New Member
PhilHo said:
http://www.towcar.info says the caravan is way too heavy for the car.

If you are stuck with the caravan one option might be to find a site that you like, in an area that you like with on site storage. Get someone to tow it down/up there for you in a bigger car. And then don't tow just get the site to move it in and out of storage onto the site for you.

Otherwise it is down to changing your car or your caravan. I know you must feel awful but maybe my on-site storage idea might be a compromise that is acceptable. Plus you won't have the hassle of towing and finding somewhere to store it. Overall when you consider fuel savings etc it might not turn out to be that expensive an option.
Click to expand...

Thanks

I couldn't actually find the car on that site
 
A

allysson

New Member
allysson said:
I couldn't find the caravan on there either
Click to expand...
The caravan club said the car could pull the caravan but with warnings

These being Kerbweight ratio: 86%
BHP per ton : 32

To be honest I don't really understand what this means.

Just wondering how come towcar has said the caravan is way too heavy for the car and caravan club say its ok? I am very confused.

Alison
 
PhilHo

PhilHo

Administrator
Staff member
You are right re the Daystar listed. I've done a bit of digging and the Daystar 2007 was an 18.5 foot 4 berth.Weight 1323kgs.

Glass's guide shows the "weight" of your model at 980kgs. Looks like "weight" is MIRO. So much lighter.

On http://www.towcar.info once you have entered your car and caravan there is a form where you can change the MIRO and payload etc. You could change MIRO to 980kgs and see what it says.

Hope this helps.
 
A

allysson

New Member
PhilHo said:
You are right re the Daystar listed. I've done a bit of digging and the Daystar 2007 was an 18.5 foot 4 berth.Weight 1323kgs.

Glass's guide shows the "weight" of your model at 980kgs. Looks like "weight" is MIRO. So much lighter.

On http://www.towcar.info once you have entered your car and caravan there is a form where you can change the MIRO and payload etc. You could change MIRO to 980kgs and see what it says.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks Phil

I eventually phoned the caravan club up and they said it was ok.

Alison
 
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