FIT STONE PROTECTION
One of the most common issues we see with offroad caravanning is damage to the car and van caused by stones being kicked up onto the front of the van. These stones can ricochet onto the back of the car, breaking the rear windscreen. Many offroad caravans are fitted with a stone deflector, and these do help minimise the chance of it happening, but they won’ t stop it completely.
The only effective accessory I have seen that works 99.9 per cent of the time is the Stone Stomper. This is a custom-made length of heavy mesh that stretches from the towbar, underneath the A-frame of the van, to the front of the van’ s body. It makes it almost impossible for stones to get flicked up to the front of the van. It also has some additional mud flaps to deflect the majority of stones kicked up directly from the car’ s rear wheels.
A hand-held UHF radio is only good for shortdistance communications but it might get you out of trouble when you have nothing else.
I’ ve used Stone Stompers on all my caravans, and I can say with confidence that they work better than just about anything else on the market. They are worth their weight in gold.
PACK FOR A ROUGH RIDE
Back in issue # 99, GoRV editor Max wrote a really good article about how to correctly load your caravan( see button on page 52). If you have the desire to do any offroad caravanning, I strongly recommend you read this article very carefully. Pay particular attention to the section on where to pack certain items according to their weight. It doesn’ t matter how good the suspension is on your caravan, or how slowly you travel, the constant vibrations from endless stretches of corrugations will shake all your gear around. If it ' s heavy enough, it could force open a cupboard door and fall out. The heavier the item is, the more damage it will do if it falls from a height. Pack the heavy and bulky items down low and put the light, smaller stuff up top, and you should be in good shape.
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