Beware! Our caravan wheel came off.....

tezle
tezle Forum Participant Posts: 8
edited April 2012 in Your stories #1

My husband, being safety conscious, decided to have our caravan tyres replaced as they were coming up for 6 years old. We organised for our local tyre company to come out to the caravan storage site. The work was completed and we thought great, all ready for the first trip away at Easter.

About 4 weeks later we loaded up and set off from the storage site, looking forward to our week away. My husband said we would pull over before we reached the motorway to check the wheel nuts. (The receipt said to check all nuts at around 50 miles)  But we didn’t get very far.....about 1 mile down the road we heard a loud noise and jarring sensation with the car and realized the nearside caravan wheel had come off completely!!

We had to call out Mayday Green Flag who came to our rescue after around an hour. The van was jacked up after some difficulty and the spare wheel released from its holder and fitted with only 4 of the 5 wheel nuts. The Mayday Man said he would follow us to Michael Jordan Caravans, about 30 mins drive away, just in case the temporary fixing failed.

Luckily they had a new brake drum, wheel bearing, alloy wheel, studs, locking wheel nuts and wheel spat in stock and were able to complete the work within about 90 minutes. Fantastic job but £913 lighter on our credit card, we then set off for our stress free week away!

Huge thank you to Green Flag and Michael Jordan Caravans.  

WARNING TO ALL........CHECK YOUR WHEEL NUTS AFTER HAVING TYRES CHANGED!!

Comments

  • Maggie
    Maggie Forum Participant Posts: 37
    First Comment
    edited April 2012 #2

    Wow, this sounds frightening. Good job you had green flag to help you.

  • Lorryman
    Lorryman Forum Participant Posts: 25
    edited April 2012 #3

    Better still, after having had similar problems I bought a torque wrench and check mine before every trip.

  • tezle
    tezle Forum Participant Posts: 8
    edited April 2012 #4

    Better still, after having had similar problems I bought a torque wrench and check mine before every trip.

    Write your comments here...We will from now onwards.Thanks for the advice.

  • Inali
    Inali Forum Participant Posts: 224
    edited May 2012 #5

    Wow, what a fright! I've got myself a torque wrench now as a result of advice from Club Together members.

  • Jonty
    Jonty Forum Participant Posts: 3
    edited May 2012 #6

    I have always done all my own repairs/servicing, etc on whatever car I have owned, and so a torque wrench has been an invaluable piece of kit for me. As far as the caravan wheels go, I check them, every trip, both before leaving home and leaving the site
    for the return journey.  So far (touches wood) I have not had any wheel nuts/bolts becoming loose

  • alypaly
    alypaly Forum Participant Posts: 1
    edited October 2012 #7

    I need to know the torque spec for a small caravan with 13 inch wheels.  Help please

  • NRHIX
    NRHIX Forum Participant Posts: 12
    edited April 2014 #8

     That sounds horrendous and really scary. Pleased you got out of a nasty situation safely. By the way, love your Border Terrier. Mine (Monty) is 171/2. He can't walk very far and
    his hearing and eyesight's not all that good. He still loves coming away to new places in the motorhome with us and when we go for a long walk along the promenade he likes being pushed along in his buggy with everyone making a fuss of him. He features prominately
    in my humorous motorhome travel book about our farcical mis-adventures touring Cornwall on our first ever motorhome trip when, if something could go wrong, it generally did...

    See http://somepeoplepreferhotels.co.uk/ for details.

     

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