Terrified of towing
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That the Amarok has a V6 3 litre engine is beside the point. If the body length of the caravan is over 7m then, to be legal in the UK, you need a towing vehicle with a GVW over 3500kg and no Amarok fits into that slot, regardless of engine size. Even most Transit vans are too light.0
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Lutz has explained that vehicles with a gross weight up to 3500kg can only tow trailers/caravans up to 7m long in the body. Longer than that needs a commercial vehicle to tow it legally. What length is your caravan?
I think you may need to pause here and consider if the caravan is the right one.
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If the actual body is less than 7m, you’re OK👍🏻.
Faults, such as the water leak, could be enough for you to reject it if you do decide it’s not for you.
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TThe Club have a legal team which might help.you get all your ducks in a row.
IIt Is a great hobby, but your comments remind me why we never towed.
There's lots of very knowledgeable folk on here, keep asking questions.
Did you pay cash or use a credit card or finance? Some help might come that way. Sorry in a hurry........
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You might find this useful and there’s loads more on the net.
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@cat23 - Before getting into a panic about body length, etc - we / you need to identify exactly which model the van is. From your photo it looks like the Astella Amazon 613HT. Information on the net is a bit confusing - a review by "Out and About Live" gives a shipping length of 8.22m, internal length (is that the same as body length????) as 6.76m and an MTPLM of 1825kg.
Practical Caravan, on the other hand is even more confusing since they give the shipping length as 6.76m but then contradict themselves by saying that the "body length just sneaks in at under 7m so it doesn't need a vehicle weighing over 3.5 tonnes to tow it".
Both agree in saying that it is possible to get an upgrade on the MTPLM to 2000kg - which would give you a much improved payload.
Whilst not wishing to pour cold water on your dream, given that the van is as big and almost as heavy as our Knaus, you have rather jumped in at the deep end😀. All the more reason to go on that towing course!
Just one final point - I read that the van has an internal water tank. Did you drain all the water down before towing? If not - and if the tank is towards the back, 50 litres of water sloshing about would certainly affect the stability.
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Your van is the Amazon model, I remember when it was first introduced. I have seen it reviewed a few places and there was no comment that it was too long to tow with a suitable car, so I think you will be OK.
The new car you have ordered should be fine, plenty heavy enough and powerful enough.I see there is a mover already fitted, so your user payload is already reduced by its weight. The battery, which is heavy is forward of the axle, which is common, but the fridge looks to be not one of the huge tall ones, so that will help limit the weight at the front.
As to loading…..it is a bad idea to load a lot in the back end to try to balance the heavy front end, so you will need to experiment with the loading while watching the nose weight and the maximum weight of the van.
Are you planning to tour a lot, as in move on every few days, or more going to one place for a longer stay?
If you will be doing longer stays, or even for weekends, I would suggest setting out with only the basics in the van……..tea, coffee, milk, salt and pepper, and stuff for your first meal………and keep the load in the kitchen area to a minimum. Then you can shop for what you need once the van is on your pitch, or place an order for delivery to your site, if the site permits that. You could also use a cool box carried in the car, can be useful for extra drinks storage too if the fridge is not that big. And you could carry other food in the car in a crate that you can take into the van to load into the various lockers on arrival . There is a lot of storage space in the kitchen, which it will be tempting to fill up.
Load clothes and bedding where you would normally want them to be. Do not put anything heavy in that big external storage locker, and if possible, only carry one gas bottle. Toiletries in the bathroom, towels where you have space left. Check nose weight again, you need to keep to the lower of the towball limit or the hitch limit.
If the nose weight is too high, first move things that are forward of the axle back before moving anything behind the axle even further back. Once you are happy with the nose weight, weigh the loaded van to see if you have leeway to add more items
The water tank looks to be under one of the beds, only tow with it empty.
I agree with what Richard said about the choice of van, the size is not ideal if you have no towing experience. We do have a large van, a twin axle, with a just under 7m body length, but it is not as wide as the Adria, and we have worked up to it gradually, having had 2 smaller vans. The wider vans are very nice, but I would not want to tow one on some of the narrow roads we encounter. It would not fit on our driveway anyway!
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Thank you that is super useful advice. If we get the Amarok it will be more than possible to put most stuff in the pick up truck boot thing. I was thinking even the battery if needed. Then it wont take long to unload it back into the van. That way its just the kids bedding that will be on the made up beds in the van. We live right next to A1 in North East and were thinking to just go for long weekends at local sites. We've definitely jumped in with two feet and when we took it to NE Caravans for the gas bottle the bloke said its like the hokey kokey put your who self in - that comment makes sense now !!! I'll practice with nose weight and get that spot on first.
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Hi
Hi, for sure I am going to take it easy over this summer while the new car gets here and try to have a friend take it short distances with a larger vehicle. We do tend to bite of more than we can chew. Im going back to the van later to get the instruction manuals and check the plate in the door to know exactly what is going on with the model
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You will be able to carry a lot of stuff like awning, any outdoor furniture, water and waste carriers in the Amarok, so at least have the space to do this. Plastic boxes will be useful. No matter how large your van and tow vehicle, keeping what you take with you as minimal as possible (but still being comfortable, warm and entertained) will pay you dividends, as setting up and packing up will be a lot easier. Think of easy wash, easy dry lightweight clothes, smaller towels if you can, lightweight crockery, pans and cutlery, could the little ones use a sleeping bag? We never travelled with more than a couple of days of food, preferring to do a big shop once on site. Places like Go Outdoors, Mountain Warehouse are good to browse for such stuff, and both offer good discounts for Members. @richardandros point about an onboard water tank is very pertinent, we once forgot to drain ours down, and it made such a difference to the tow. We never forgot again. Once you have done a bit of research, got your new vehicle, got the loading right in the van, you will start to relax about things. There’s some excellent guidance on all sorts of touring things on this website, under various headings that are very useful. Look under Advice on this link……
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@cat23 - I think you can probably relax a little - in the knowledge that the Amorok will more than comfortably cope with your van (assuming it is the one I identified). No longer will you have the 'tail wagging the dog' situation. However, I would urge you to do something about the weight upgrading of the MTPLM if you can. This doesn't require any physical change to the van - it is simply a question of paying a relatively small amount of money (typically <£100) to get a new weight plate for the van. The axles can already take the extra weight otherwise the option wouldn't be available and it's all tied up with marketing in the UK, the details of which I won't bore you with. The existing 160kg payload is small - it's already down to 130kg because you have a motor mover fitted, Ours has 365kg to play with - similar to what you would achieve with yours and is far more realistic.
I get the impression that you seem a bit preoccupied with keeping the noseweight down. Don't be! I agree the photo seems to suggest that your Kodiaq couldn't cope with it - but that's a 'fault' of the car - not the van. It looks as if the rear suspension is compressed far too much and consequently there's little weight on the front wheels, making it skittish.
You have two things to consider - the weight the towball is capable of handling and the maximum weight the towing hitch on the van can cope with. The towball max weight of my Touareg is 140kg and I suspect that the Amarok will be at least that and probably more. However, the Alko hitch max load is usually 100kg so that becomes the limiting factor. You should be aiming at getting the noseweight to between 5 and 7% of the van's actual laden weight and I tend to run mine at 90-95kg since, from experience, I have found this gives the smoothest and most stable ride. But bear in mind mine's a twin axle van, so will be different from yours.
If it's well below that 95kg figure, I know I've got too much weight at the rear of the axles (usually Ros's clothes🤣), so I simply adjust the trim accordingly before setting off.
Hope this helps.
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Out of interest did you buy your van privately or through a dealer ?
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Thank you Richard this is making a lot more sense. We have also noticed the tyres have gone right down at the back. The suspension thing will be why the car felt like it was rearing up. I'm going to take it slow and work through all the advice so that we get it right. It has been an absolute minefield of information - they said it would take a bit of getting used to but I had no idea how much
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Hi everyone, more advice required if you have time.
We are not having any luck getting the caravan dealer to come and pick up the van to look at the water leak / gas leak and wc not flushing.
We had it delivered by the dealer to a caravan storage place. Hes now wanting us to drop it back of at his place I have explained the car is not safe to tow it. The finance company are taking his side and we are running out of time on the 30 days thing.
Given the catalogue of errors - them not advising us our car was wrong (although that is our fault) now meaning we cannot tow it back to him - it looks like he has never checked it over at all and the chassis where leak is looks patched up.
What advice would you give to sort this out? Thanks for all your advice so far
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Move quickly.
Give the club's legal dept a call and enlist their help.
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@cat23 - sound advice from @Tinwheeler , as always. I would also be lining up an independent engineer to come and inspect the van, (something I suspect you didn't do before buying it - but never mind), with a view to you having the ammunition to reject it. I am a bit bothered by "the chassis where the leak is looked patched up". I assume you mean the floor and not the actual metal chassis - either way not good but if it is the chassis then that's extremely serious.
I feel sorry for you - you could have done with this advice before you bought it - but I suspect you have already realised that and don't need me to dwell on it.
I think the dealer is correct in that he is within his rights to insist that any warranty work is done at his premises and it's your responsibility to get it there. However, given that he was willing to deliver it to your storage site (to finalise the deal, presumably), I think you are seeing his true colours coming out.
Good luck.
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So long as the combined weight of the car and the caravan is less than the car‘s gross train weight limit it would not be illegal to tow the caravan with the Kodiaq. In view of the time limit in having to get the caravan back to the dealer I would use the Kodiaq and just take things slowly and drive extra carefully if you are unhappy with the way the outfit behaves.0
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We’re also looking to buy and one of my biggest concerns is getting used to towing. Has anyone else had this fear starting out? What helped you get confident?0
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I did a half day caravan towing course with Towing Solutions in Macclesfield, who I believe are also involved with the club courses. They have caravans and you can use your own car. It was just me and an instructor. It was really helpful - on road practice along with lots of manoeuvre practice in an empty carpark.
I’ve found the towing on the road to be pretty straightforward - it’s having to do any reversing manoeuvres that brings on the fear, but practice is what they need.0 -
Interestingly, the terrified OP was the passenger, not the driver. It turned out to be not the actual driving that was the issue but bad handling due to a gross mismatch of car and caravan.
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