New to this forum and will be posting a lot of questions to learn from everyone's experiences. Looking for our 1st caravan to start our retirement around Australia.
Only planning medium off road, nothing radical. What is best, independent suspension or the old style springs. A salesperson said independent suspension overheat during long journeys and leaf springs are easier to repair to get you to a service centre.
In my view, there is no value in independent suspension on a trailer. Traditional leaf springs provide some damping that the shockers must perform with independent coils, so they need to do lots of work. My suggestion for the ideal suspension on a caravan would be single axle with longer than usual leaf springs plus dampers. OEM springs are almost always too short. My son has just modified his Jaco Expanda by fitting OME after market springs designed for the rear of a Toyota 79 series plus 17" wheels and tyres. It transformed the van. Cheers, Peter
-- Edited by Peter_n_Margaret on Monday 10th of June 2024 11:43:58 AM
Air Bag system incl. decent Shock Absorbers ..... Yes - beautiful, soft, compliant, controlled suspension travel..... no bouncing, harsh jarring etc.. looks after the van and everything in it. (no bouncing curtains... !)
Most people would be horrified if they went for a ride - inside a caravan - down an undulating sealed road or an average country gravel road and experienced the wild/harsh ride that a caravan is subjected to with many of the basic suspensions.
-- Edited by KJB on Monday 10th of June 2024 03:59:19 PM
Don't forget to let all tyres down accordingly for second, third & fourth rate "roads".
It will save a lot of wear & tear on both "software" (people) & hardware (vehicle & trailer).
We have 3 compressors in parallel to avoid fluffing around airing up. 28 seconds a tyre 20psi to 35psi.
Amazing how reducing tyre pressure to suit road conditions saves long term expense, & simply makes said road quite bearable for "software" & "hardware"!
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My experience with decades of trailers and later years caravavns, I would only choose tandem rocker roller springs. This set up is load sharing, always same weight on each axle making for much more stable and smoother ride. The independent tandem suspension does not have even weight even spread.
X2 for tandem axle roller rocker leaf springs.
Many miles travelled across all types of roads with this sort of set up with 100% reliability.
The most you can do in really is a broken spring which is usually readily available in remote areas unlike bespoke suspension systems. Seen a number of independent system arms broken often due to poor design.
The old KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Can't get more simple than the roller rocker system and it is load sharing which independent systems generally are not.
I too believe tandem rocker springs best for Australian conditions. They are certainly less prone to alignment problems experienced by many independent suspensions.
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