Message Forums

Thanks for the replies,

Last week coming home from Cromer ingood road/M11 conditions and doing 60-63 mph, the trailer casued my car front end to behave as thoguh I really felt, and stopped to check I'd not had a blowout. The trailor was pushing the car 2-3 feet either side of normal track and felt very dangeous. I guessit was.

May be it's the weight distribution. A lot in the rear of my car and ball pucjing down to maybe is makin the front-end rear. I'll go with the flow and definitely get a Stab-fitted then review.

Thanks for the help.

Matt

Have you checked you noseweight? Might it be too high for your tow car?

My Pathfinder also came with the Alko stabilister ready fitted, but as a consequence of turning the releasing knob too far I towed a fair disitance without a stabilister before it was fixed. I don't think that there was very much difference in the behaviour of my unit with or without the stabiliser working, but it does give added confidence to have it!

Funny you should say that Patrick - first time out I turned the releasing knob too far as well. Damned thing completely jammed. Called Pennine from Italy, they gave me Alko's number who told me to gently ease it free with a four pound hammer. It worked, but I'm careful now not to repeat the exercise.

cheers, Terry

Matt it sounds as though you have too much weight on the rear of the car, making the steering too light.

Check the trailer loading and noseweight, and try not to put so much heavy stuff in the back of the car.

"Hi i have a pullman one down from the pathfinder"

We also have a Pullman but dont think it inferior to the Pathfinder.

Having looked at both, the fixed toilet compartment adds weight and complexity in setting up and operation. On this theme we also did not want the wardrobe so I removed it and it lives in our garage.

We use a porta potti and park it in various places.

Consequently we can access the interior of the trailer to load without having to open the lids.

The weather here is ideal, blue sky and warm but we have visitors for the next few weeks. After a long hard winter we are desperate to get away.

The removable tow bar doesn't stop you having the Alko stabiliser as it works simply by gripping the tow ball at the right pressure. I have one on my removable tow bar.

Is that the factory bike carrier - the big heavy deal that fits right at the back? If so, I reckon that's the problem and I guess it would be hard to counterbalance the unit by putting other heavy stuff at the front. You shouldn't really have snaking below 80 mph. I was thinking about getting the new bike rack but maybe I'll stick to the one on the boot - no balance problems with that.

cheers, Terry

Hi all

We have a Conway Crusader with a factory fitted central storage rack - we had two adult bikes and two childrens bikes on this - went away for 9 nights so car and trailer was well loaded - i never had any problems with snaking or bouncing around - did see a few caravans on the M5 flapping around though.

The only problem we had is that 4 bikes on the factory rack is a lot of weight and the bikes bounced on the Thule carriers!

Regards

Andy 

Hi we did have big problems especially with the rear cycle rack fitted, i think being on the back made it unstable, however we did fit the Alko 2004 and i can only express that it does not move an inch now. ( however have never used the cycle rack again even though Conway recalled them and sent out new ones!!! maybe we weren't the only ones with the problem i think central ones like Andy's are much better)

Our unit did wave about a little even overtaking lorries or if people towing caravans! passed us, i don't know if the extra length makes a difference as in 2004 they launched the longer unit.

(most of out journies are on the M3 past Basingstoke and it seems as if alot of people have had problems on this stretch! strange maybe it is FCist.. lol )

Fazman did it work? sorry if it didn't

Anyway Take care all

have a great camping summer

Tree

Hi Matt and Tree

 Went camping last weekend at Battle,near hastings and didnt have any problems with the crusader snaking . Looks like the Alko 2004 did the trick and made me feel a lot safer towing it.