HI All

I am new to this site, though not new to caravanning, having owned caravans myself for nearly 40 years, and travelled round the block 3 times, with lots of short trips in between. My father built his own caravan back in the early 1950's. so I have spent the majority of my life with caravans.

Currently, we own a 1999 model 16.5 ft Jayco Poptop with twin beds. It has been round the block twice now, and finally I think we have sorted out the teething problems with it. We are on our 4th set of tyres, and only one blew out - the rest wore out. Bad alignment of the (single) axle. Incredibly bad warranty service, but eventually Jayco shoved the problem off onto Al-Ko who did their best to solve them. We had 10 mm toe-out of the wheels, which scrubbed the first set in about 20000km. Al-Ko did their best to straighten the axle, but it still had toe-out. To make a short story long, I turned the axle around so it had toe-in, and the toe-in was reduced to about 7 mm, but the tyres still wore out rapidly. Eventually I contacted Al-Ko from Kunnanurra and asked them what the correct toe-in should be, because the tyres were still wearing badly, albeit a lot less then the first set. When I got home, Al-Ko asked me to remove the axle and send it to them and they sent me another, all at no cost to me. That is what I call service. They also paid for a replacement tyre early in the story.

And in case you think I was unlucky, out camper trailer we had before the Poptop came from the factory with 11 mm toe-out, so things are geting better as I buy new vans...

Shortly after, I was coming home from a trip and I filled up with LPG in Canberra. As I took off, it felt sluggish, as if I had a flat tyre. I checked and all seemed OK, so I blamed it on lousy fuel. I got home and decided to check and repack the wheel bearings, and found that one of the hubs had cracked. I contacted Al-Ko to find out where I could get a new hub, and the manager asked me to box up both hubs and send them to him so they could analyse the failure. They sent me two new hubs & bearings, and these are still going strong to this day. They looked at the failed hub and reported back to me that it had a punch mark inside. It seemed as if someone had slipped whilst installing the original bearings and nicked the surface of the hub - a stress concentrator was thus formed. Again no cost to me - good service.

I had to square up the axle because the original assembly had it offset about 30 mm. I had 2 power supplies fail and get replaced under warranty. When the third supply failed, I went and bought a different setup and fitted it myself. That has been performing well ever since (Shhh - it might hear me). About a year ago, the fridge lost its refrigerant and I finished up buying a new fridge and installing it. That works really well - much better than the original ever did. I also replaced the awning about a year ago because I damaged it in getting it out of the shed. So that brings us up to date with our van..

We have the Heron 2.2 airconditioning system in the van. It works well, although we have to notify the local Dept of Civil Aviation whenever we turn it on because it si so noisy that they might think that there is an unidentified jet flying in their air space... We wanted the evaporator (inner) unit mounted midway down the caravan, but Jayco would not build it that way at the time. Subsequently, we note that all later A/C vans have it where we wanted. I guess that is evolution.

Now for the questions...  

1   We are getting older and are considering a new caravan. We want a 2 single berth poptop with airconditioning, and a shower and toilet. Ideally we would like a van which could take 2 grandchildren as well. The van does not have to be an off-road van. Now - the problem. We have 2.3 m maximum clearance with the garage door. Our old Jayco easily clears the doorway - I guess we should have no more than 2.2 m towing height to fit the beast into the shed.

The new Jayco's are, I think, too high. We looked at a Corrimal, (they used to be much lower towing height than the Jayco), but I was told that they are probably too high as well. Does anyone know of manufacturers who make a lower Poptop caravan? (and no - we don't want a camper - we had one for quite a few years and loved it, but are beyond campers now).

2   Is there an air conditioner which is quieter than or old Heron 2.2? I would even consider getting a small domestic split system, if I could be sure that they were reliable in a mobile installation.

3   Are there any Expanda's with shower/toilet and less than 2.2 m towing height?

I have lots of other questions, but these will be sufficent for now to clog up my intray.

Thanks in advance for your help.   Erad