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I have just been looking through my September issue of The Caravan Club mag and spotted an advert from Watling Engineering for a detachable front tow bar. In principle this seems an excellent and affordable alternative to a motor mover for moving my 8.06m twin axle beast but was wondering if anyone had had any first hand experience with such a thing?

 Thanks

http://www.watling-towbars.co.uk/docs/front_towbars05.pdf

Quote: Originally posted by Grampian91 on 25/10/2010

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Depends where you use it as well. Where i store my van there is limited room opposite so i could lock the van around into the space but then the car will be almost 90 degrees. How would you maneuvre the van after that bit?

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I reverse the van onto our drive as far as I can, which leaves it at the top of the drive.  I cannot reverse it any further because the drive slopes down from the road and then flattens.  This means the rear steadies ground. 

So just before they ground I then turn the car around and use the front pushbar.  I have it mounted so that the towball is a lot lower.  I can then move the van further down to where I want it.

It is simple and it works.  We used to have a mover on our last van but the van was light ( 1000kg ). A mover would work with our new van but being a twin axle and the drive fairly steep it would be slow work.

Some years ago, I forget at which show, Watling towbars had a pitch and a jeep with a front mounted towbar, together with a (admittedly lightweight) single axle caravan. Prospective customers or anyone who was interested in giving it a go were invited to reposition the caravan into an imaginary 'garage' formed of parking cones that was a couple of feet wider than the caravan and a couple of feet longer.

Positioning the caravan with a front-mounted tow bar was incredibly easy, although the approach was determined by having an offset towbar (on the drivers side) and a right-hand arc approach into the 'garage'.

Alpiner, where/how did you attach your front towbar on your Land Rover? I have been advised that the standard LR Defender front bumper can bend if you place a towbar outside of the front chassis mounts? Did you experience any problems at all? I have a 26ft twin-axle at 1750Kgs so this would be a consideration. I'm thinking of attaching an adjustable receiver either to the offside or both sides to allow for awkward manouevring with either our caravan or boat.