Hi everyone i am looking for a bit of advice. My uncle has been a keen camper for as long as i can remember. Recently though he has had to have very serious surgery on his back and has left his back very weak. He is having terrible trouble manouvering the caravan on to the tow bar of the car. Now i know that i you can buy remote control thingys for moving the caravan but is there anything that you can get to help with attaching the caravan to the car. Hope some one can help me as he really doesnt want to give up his caravan
A simple suggestion would be to line up the centre of his rear window with the centre of the caravan window, these window centres can be marked for reference if need be. Wind the jockey wheel to raise the hitch above towball height, fit a plate between the towball & the towbar, you can buy them at the caravan centre. It might pay to get them to fit this plate if his back is too bad to undo the nuts on the towball. Using this, he can, with a little care & practise, reverse right under the hitch & simply lower the van onto the towball using the jockey wheel.
Alternatively, the fitting of a motomover would solve the whole job, the caravan could then be hitched, unhitched or just moved around with ease. We've got a powertouch & it's excellent.
get him a motor mover I,m disabled Knackered knees a mover takes all the hard work out of hitching up see Wizards Posts on how to get the best possible price
on a new one he is well named!
------------- Cheers Jim.I Reserve The Right To Be Wrong.
Yep - Powrtouch mover every time. In just a couple of minutes on Saturday we'd manouevered our 'van into a ridiculously awkward position that would have taken a huge amount of pushing and shoving by hand. Given that we were on soft but gravel covered ground and in pouring rain, we very much appreciated not having to try to manhandle a cold, wet and slippery tonne and a half of caravan! Getting it back out and attached to the car was also so easy with the mover - friends are amazed at how effective it is. (They want a static 'van but I'm sure he was thinking of a tourer just so he could have a mover to play with!!!)
We can now leave the car anywhere near the pitch and just powrtouch the 'van to it, line it up perfectly then just lift the jockey wheel.
Now just need to persuade OH into a power drill for the steadies because I always seem to end up doing them and that's my least favourite task!
------------- Best Wishes and Happy Travels,
Feecamp
You need to make sure that your battery is fully charged otherwise the motor mover won't work. We had that problem when we bought our caravan home before we were going away in it. It's usually in storage. We have a shared drive with three other houses, and we really need our mover to place it in our drive, anyway the battery must have been flat and it wouldn't work, we had to get a neighbour to come and give a hand, don't know what we would have done if our neighbour was out!
get him a motor mover I,m disabled Knackered knees a mover takes all the hard work out of hitching up see Wizards Posts on how to get the best possible price
on a new one he is well named!
I'm with you Jim. I too have knackered knees and without my Truma Motor Mover I would definitely have to give up my caravan.
Looking forward to knee relacement surgery later this year. Must be the only bugger on the planet looking forward to having an operation!!!!!!!
I'm with you Jim. I too have knackered knees and without my Truma Motor Mover I would definitely have to give up my caravan.
Looking forward to knee relacement surgery later this year. Must be the only bugger on the planet looking forward to having an operation!!!!!!!
Cheers!
Vic
No you are not the only one. My OH was looking forward to his knee op but then had a heart problem and that obviously has taken preference. He had an angioplasty in January where they inserted a stent into his artery and now has to have cardiac rehab every week. His knee op has been postponed for the forseeable future. Mind you he has lost a stone in weight which has helped his knees. I do hope you get yours soon and all goes well.
Treated myself to a re-chargeable drill for the steadies 2 weeks ago - should have bought one years ago. Son & I now fight to do a job we used to fight over the other one doing.
------------- Caz
If you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, just keep going till you go round the bend.
The Powertouch takes a substantial effort to engage manually. Might be worth considering the Powractuator as well. It does push the price up a bit though. I'm quite fit and find engaging manually to be hard work and disengaging has rapped my knuckles a few times. It's not helped in my case by the Powrbar which links both sides together as this means I have twice the force against me but if you are lacking strength in your arms or struggle to get down on your knees then the Powractuator is going to be essential. If you cannot get onto your knees though, I don't know how you will get the corner steadies down. Maybe there is a good business opportunity for someone to design an automatic steady operation or an adapto to bring the screw up to waist height.