Are UK roads good enough?
Are UK roads to blame or are caravans just not built strong enough?
First the dealer's service engineer found that both the Bailey Madrid wheel arches had been smashed out by the wheels when the caravan went for it's 2 year service. I must admit we hadn't noticed the damp under the fridge. Both were replaced under warranty and the dealer seemed to think it was pretty normal on a 2 year old caravan. Neither Bailey nor the dealer would guarantee that it wouldn't happen again. so it had to go.
Enter a new Swift Conqueror 530. Almost straight away things started to fall off. Screws out of cupboard doors, towel rails, shower head etc. central heating system leaking antifreeze into the wardrobe. Now after 18 months one of the interior bulkheads has started to crack.. The dealer has assured me that it can be replaced, but what stops the next one breaking? The dealer said "I would like to say I've never seen that before; but that wouldn't be true". And then started looking at all the other bulkheads.
Are other members experiencing similar problems with new caravans?
I should add that we only have 6 or 7 trips a year out in our caravans and most are only about one hour from home. And there are only 2 of us using a 4 birth caravan so it's never overloaded
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Comments
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Yes, roads here are not good in Broken Britain but are they really the primary cause of your issues? Not sure how damp can be attributed to condition of roads. We've had several vans over the years of various other makes and never had any of the described problems!
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Hi mickysf. The water got in because the tyres had smashed out the plastic wheel arch liners; the spray from the tyres on the wet roads then came up inside the caravan . Both sides actually, but the fridge side was worse. And no I am not convinced that the roads are the primary cause of the problems. I think it is about build quality and caravans simply are not "fit for purpose". We all know the roads are all lumps and bumps and pot holes. It cannot have escaped the notice of the manufacturers, well not if they drive to work.
Regards
Billbob
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Agree with Bill Bob. My German caravan is 15 years old and has never had this type of problem. Used a lot more than bill Bob's caravan.
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Having not long returned from touring Germany I can confirm that the roads in the UK stink in comparison.Plus the build quality of the caravans is getting worse. There are more and more anecdotal tales of poor workmanship than there used to be.
I know that there are avenues of reporting them such as forums etc. but just talking to other members on sites you get the impression that 'vans have been made lighter and as a consequence quality is diminishing. If you put the 2 together, poor roads and poor build quality then you are going to get more disappointed caravanners.
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Hi,
Most road faults are down to poor maintenance. Sadly to politicians, of any colour, think that so long as the roads are flat and black nobody will notice if maintenance is cut back.
Another area of bumpiness arose in the eighties when Statutory Undertakers were privatised. They were then made solely responsible for reinstatement after their work in the highway. Prior to that they only did a temporary reinstatement, the final reinstatement being carried out by the Council after settlement had taken place. To make things easier for the Water, Electricity, etc firms the tolerances applied to Council reinstatements were 'modified' to a much poorer standard.
Hence bumps and humps!!!
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No they are not.. The UK roads were neither designed or built properly. Highways Engineering in the UK falls sadly behind that which is found on the Continent, even in relatively poorer countries. Those countries where the range in winter and summer temperatures is much greater than those in the UK. It would greatly help in UK road building and Road repairing, if UK Highways Engineers were given training courses by their opposite numbers in the Continent.
K
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Would you send them to Italy for bridge building lessons then K...?
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One of the major problems with UK roads is the ammount of traffic for the size of country and the situation has not been helped by the increase in HGV weights in recent years as many of our centuries old roads are now carrying far more than can have ever been invisidged even when the M1 was biult
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I can remember see-sawing up and down the 'tramlines' on the M6 forty years ago.
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Let's face it - the UK authorities never rebuild roads to a modern standard they would rather try and patch Victorian ones hoping that we will then be quiet for the next 5 yrs or so.
Seriously - when was the last time that your local/county council rebuilt a road down to be base level of hard-core which is where a lot of today's faults spring from?
They merely take off the top two inches and relay a surface without correcting any underlying faults.
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I found the microwave shelf in our caravan had come loose on our summer break. I had to remove the microwave before traveling home as I just could face it breaking loose and crashing down through the cupboard underneath.
I found that some of the frame had split where it was screwed together, I put this down to pothole damage. The frame is now suitably reinforced and the microwave stayed in place on the last outing to Sutton on Sea, the roads to this site are very bouncy.
Note to all, please check any heavy items mounted at height are secure.
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Given the events of a two days ago, perhaps the installation of 'No Entry' signs on motorways slip roads would be advisable.
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A little under 13.5%. . . .Much?😂😂
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I do so love a good sense of humour.
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We toured in Wales earlier this year and found most of the roads to be very good. Obviously a lot of money available there for road repairing.
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our High Street has a 150m section that was nicely surfaced a few years ago....
within six months it had been dug up by just about all the 'service' companies known to man.
we have patches, on patches, on patches....
there are will over a hundred repairs in this section alone....
how do I know?.....I cycle it regularly and it's a bloody disgrace
we have a 'link' road into town quite close to use which, again, has been patched up very many times....
the little orange spray lines (to mark the patches that are going to be repaired) have been there for many, many months.....in the meantime the roads continues to crumble, the patches disintegrate and the little orange lines get worn away.....
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In the 'old days' the statutory undertakers would do the repairs and a temporary reinstatement, often using 'cut back' bitumen macadam on the wearing course with the final reinstatement carried out by local highway authority paid by the undertakers to reinstate. No longer the case I believe
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Isn't it about time that we started thinking about putting services somewhere other than underneath the road?
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No, just think of America and all those awful overhead cables...if we'd thought ahead a bit we could have had good underground systems but it's all done ad hoc now.
This week our electricity is off for a whole day so that some cabling for a nearby new building works can go ahead safely. The second time this has happened although generators that kept us all awake last time were brought in. We have never experienced this before anywhere and we're wondering just how bad the infrastructure is that this is happening. Not to mention closed roads for over a month! It's not the roads so much as the antiquated systems they are adding to, we're just waiting for the sewage pipes to go kaput as no-one has updated these to cope with the new development.
By the way, if anyone is travelling in the SW from the A303 via Cartgate to the A37 Dorchester road it's closed for the next three weeks due to "improvements".....
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I never set the rules or amounts JV, I just researched them. It bothers me not one jot👍🏻😊
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