Camper trailer

[FTLOM]

Morning Campers!

Who has any experience in crossing dunes with a camper trailer, or any trailer?

We're considering buying/building one for our trips but will it work in dune terrain, e.g. backing up from a steep dune might be problamatic i fear.

Any thought is welcome!

Grtz,
Pieter

[Big G]

Pieter,

When I was in HM Forces we used a short recovery tow bar, i.e. an eyelet at each end and by uncoupling the trailer we could either tow it out by attaching another vehicle to the rear of the trailer, or winching it backwards as the rear of the trailer also had a NATO towing eye. If you only have one vehicle it could still be done by getting the towing vehicle out and moved round to the rear of the trailer and doing one of the two methods above

I am sure there are other methods, we also tried towing the whole outfit backwards - not always successful. For a short time we had trailers that had their axles driven by a propshaft coupling from the prime mover, once again quite good going forwards, but very different trying to reverse out of "bogged" situations.

Cheers

Gordon

[FTLOM]

Gordon,

Sounds like a good way for recovery, we use the same kind of tow bar on our trucks over here.

But it doesn't sound like somthing you wanna try 3 or 4 times a day when travelling a distance through dunes. Especially not in those situations where the car feels like it's vertical and lacks momentum to "summit" the obstacle, I imagine getting the car out away from the front will be hard then.

Basically I suppose what I 'm looking for is the answer to: how hard is it to reverse down from a steep dune having a trailer attached?
Without getting cross axle movement between both units or the trailer becomming a snowplough!

Grtz,
Pieter

[Woodparts]

I'd agree with Gordon regarding the recovery methods. The powered trailer for the 101 gave two main advantages. the first being that as it was powered via the pto, it meant that you were not pulling it. This in effect gives you a 6x6 and so the normal rules of sandwork apply momentum momentum, momentum, which as the thing is one unit, means you are not dragging an anchor around. The second is that the vertical articulation is greater than a "normal" Landy allowing for knife-edging and sumping. As you are probably aware a normal trailer (even on a nato hitch) is a real b@5tard to get over sand, let alone dunes.

There are bound to be experts on this somewhere on the forum. Try posting on some of the other sections.

Cheers
'Parts

[Bush Tucker Man]

Given the diversity of the terrain in this country (http://www.caravanning-oz.com/) it might be worth asking for advice??