Then we thought a cheap caravan would be better !
With no towing vehicle out of all our three vans, Nina was elected as the van we were least likely to change in the next few years, and the fact that she weighs a bit herself, and has a 2.8 turbo diesel engine, means she can pull just about anything, in fact a perfect towing vehicle.
As I'd just sold some of the camera bits from the transit camper that preceded Nina that ended up scrapped, I had some money in paypal to do something about it, and bought a tow bar from eBay. I look to eBay first most of the time, if used carefully, it can be a great source. This seller, towbarman01, was selling a brand new tow bar kit for Nina, including the tow ball and electrics and and covers for £80 including delivery. Well I don't think you can get better than that. They rarely come with the extras, usually you have to go buy your own tow ball and electrics.
The caravan we bought, was through a friend, Tanya you know who you are :P, and was in North Devon, Tiverton. We had to pick up the following weekend. So Sunday night I ordered it, the auction stated 4-5 days delivery, you can't complain about that as the delivery was free, so I ordered and hoped it would be here before the end of the week giving me a chance to fit it.
Well it turned up Tuesday ! So impressed with the seller, not only selling such a bargain, but good service too.
I started fitting it the same day, most of it was fairly easy, but I had two problems with Nina, the first was that the new kit came with built in brackets for the rear bumper, so you had to remove the old bumper and brackets, and refit over the new tow bar. The bolts holding the brackets in place inside the bumper were very rusty and either snapped off or just didn't come of full stop. I ended up removing the bracket bolts from the chassis underneath, and taking the whole bumper off and used a grinder to remove all the old metal work. This meant that I didn't have any metal work in the bumper for the new incorporated brackets to re-bolt to. I had an idea, a visit to Buildbase some months ago I remember seeing some wall retainers, long metal strips pre drilled with holes. So I popped in there, and found some smaller versions, probably twice as long as I needed for each one so had to be cut in half, with the right size holes for the bolts, and even better, where the original metal strips In the bumper had rotted away with rust, these were galvanised and should never rust, so the job will never have to be done again, during Ninas lifetime anyway. Expensive ? Yep all of about 75p each :).
The bumper when back on a dream, and actually fitted better than it had originally.
The second problem, was where the air suspension had been fitted, the chassis near the axle had been damaged. The tow bar comes with three main parts, the main bulk of the tow bar that bolts through with the original bolt holes for the bumper brackets, then either side, an arm is bolted on to the main part then goes back and bolts up on to the chassis where there are two ready made threaded bolt holes. Where Ninas chassis was damaged slightly, these holes were damaged, and couldn't be used for the bolts. I rang Jon at Bedford Street Motors, and they said they could weld the arms up to the chassis on Thursday. Which they did. Thanks guys ! They also Schultzed the welded areas too to protect the new weld from rust.
Well that was the tow bar itself all fitted and ready to tow, next job was the wiring into Ninas electrics, so that the lights on any trailer would work in tandem. I ended up doing this on the Saturday, had to dismantle most of the panels at the back to get to wiring, and find out which wires did what so that I could patch the new tow bar wires into them. When finished, I tried it all out on an old trailer board I had, and everything worked as it should, even the buzzer when indicating, that reminds you that you are towing.
New tow bar fitted, wired in, and supplied ball and electric covers in place :).
The day after the wiring, sunday, was Ninas big day and longest trip out so far. As we got to Tanyas in Tiverton, the usually quiet knocking on the front left side was pretty bad, and I was underneath trying to see what it was, but couldn't see a thing. I'm not overly worried as Nina has been through 2 MOTs with us and neither picked up anything dangerous down there, we are pretty sure its the driveshaft starting to go, so Tanya carried on and took us to where the caravan was that her friend was selling.
This is Nina in North Devon, the caravan had just been hitched, it's a 17ft caravan, which in it's day was probably top of the range, but now is rusty underneath and probably should be scrapped, with panels leaking water in and a windows cracked etc, but for our purposes, as a toilet and a tearoom, it is perfect as long as we can get it back to Frampton in one piece. One thing the caravan did come with, which won't be needed in the caravan any more is a electric hook up lead, worth about £35, we gave this to Nina as a reward for bringing the caravan back for us without any trouble :P. She was so pleased ! Lol.
So, Nina now has a tow bar and another feather to her bow, meaning she is even more useful now. Jen drove back with the caravan on the back, and said she hardly knew it was there, so it seems Nina is a good tow vehicle. :)
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Location:Gloucester
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