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Any towing experts out there?

We have just brought our van home, but it has made very loud banging/grinding noises whenever we have slowed right up, then turned ie round abouts. None of wheels felt like they were hot, our car seems fine. We did wonder if stabiliser could be something to do with it? We noticed grease in hitch when we got home so storage place must have greased towball. Would this cause noise? Also , how do I know if friction pads need changing on alko1300??

Any help greatly recieved, as it really sacred us, although it never felt like there was a problem, just noise,

Mel

Hi Mel , if you get banging when slowing up , you need to have your brake adjustment checked . Grinding is probably grease on your hitch , your Al-ko stabiliser / towball should be clean and grease free , you'll need to remove all traces of it from the hitch , the hitch cover and towing hitch . You may need to replace the friction pads as well , but you'll need to get some advice on this , as i don't have an Al-ko stabiliser myself so can't be sure . http://www.al-ko.co.uk/Downloads/TSHOOT1300.doc

atb

Wizard

We picked our new to us van up last week and this had an alko stabilzer on it and we were told not to grease the towball as this would effect the friction pads. This woulda also cause the stabilzer to groan and creak

Thanks for all replies,

having checked alko website now know ours isnt 1300, but cant decide which one it is!

Wea re total novices really, would a dealer or towsure etc check stabiliser for us and repair, replace parts as required do you think??

Thanks,

Mel

hi to it sounds like your damper is shot at,this will cause a bang on take off and braking.if this the case the hitch used makes no difference.with caravan brakes applied fully.push on the hitch head towards the rear,it should be hard to push in,and when fully in return slowly.if it pushes easy you need a new damper.if you look under the hitch you can see the damper piston.worth a try anyway. 

Did I chuckle as I read this thread??? We had a similar embarrassing noise from time to time when we were towing our old girl, (now gone to that pitch in the sky bless her). I swear everyone would look at us as we had a terrible affliction but sure enough it was only down to needing a bit of grease on the tow ball!

Daren't do that with our new van though as it has one of those Winterhoff stabiliser thingies on it and just like the ALKO, that has to have a grease free tow ball. Will only find out if we have any crunching or grinding sounds when we hitch up Cornwall bound at the end of this week. Fingers crossed, we don't!!!

Hope you get it sorted