There must be a suitable camp trailer but I can't find it

[robcaz]

The next NSW members weekend is at Macquarie Woods between Bathurst & Orange in November & usually attracts around 30 camper trailers. There are a number of weekend get togethers already planned for next year.

[knight44]

Also there are the 'wind up' style of camper like the Jayco Penguin & Goldstream Crown which have no push out ends. Both are compact to tow with internal caravan layouts & comfort features.

Both of these have east-west beds which certainly involve climbing across one's partner.

[Fidon]

Thanks so much for taking the time to offer up some thoughts.... have answered a few of the ones put forward in hope for more feedback from anyone who would like to offer more thoughts, its crunch time, NEED to have a break, Tassie or SA are in my sights for the new year when tourist season dies down.

Have you been to any of the 4WD Camping shows? Yes a few, live on the midcoast of NSW so its been regional ones rather than crowded city ones however, not as much range at them, but it seems to rotate each year

There are simply too many 'personal' requirements to tell you whats good. ie:
How/where do you want the kitchen? Either inside or out, as long as its undercover when it rains and can have a wall of some sort between it and a sandy gale

Will the fridge be in the tent or under the awning.either or, we use iceboxes under a nearby tree and blankets with good success for around 2 weeks with care on opening and transferring to smaller esky now

Tent out the back or out the side. ...curious to others thoughts on this... can't see much difference except kicking shins and tight camp spots

Can teh tent be put up single handed and how long does it take? we always set up and pull down together so a 2 person job is ok, but having said that, the 30 second ultimate flipover is setting a tough benchmark

Whats the real ball weight. thanks... I've been keeping an eye on this whilst comparing, ....

Can they supply it with the same wheels and axle width as your tuganother excellent point, which is why we are trying to do the vehicle change at the same time,...

What suspension.....Partner's department, and yes another good point, I do realise

Onboard battery capacity - electrics (chargers etc)WON"T be taking a TV of any kind, only need to charge phone as it has the internet on it... we would manage fridgewise as per above, on shorter trips at least,

What gas bottle capacity. I think a spread sheet is beginning to form

What water capacity and so on.... brings me to the question of how do people refill their drinking water if they are on the road for 3 months???????? we live on tank water now, so the thought of chlorinated from the caravan park top up under sufferance isn't appealing

You haven't mentioned your budget?True, its a little open ended, however I did mention that I thought 70K was too much, open to either new or used, its a matter of finding what we want and suits, as the maths alone on a 12 month trip in accommodation that's hotel / motel style averaged at $100 a night, means the camper will pay for itself on the long trip, and every other trip thereafter is cost neutral for accommodation, maintenance aside

There's simply too much that you need to decide upon that makes recommendations rather useless... was at a deadend

We have actually camped with others that have campers, and looked at their setups, climbed on their ladders to the beds,... so on and so forth,

I set my heart originally on an Ultimate after camping near one at Aspley Falls a few years back, the owners were fantastic, had several chats with them over the few days we were both there, came very close to ordering one but was pipped by a medical distraction at the time, would purchase one now, only was spooked by some nosey "day visitors" recently on a family trip, and am thinking if its just partner and I, there won't be someone "sitting" the camp like we had that time, and might not be so lucky to have all our gear still there if we go on a 6 hour walk. I really do appreciate your input, without it I wouldn't now have a spreadsheet underway of pros and cons v price.

many thanks

Fi

[Fidon]

From our experience, with little left from tent-camping days, for a full setup to autonomy status (fridge/freezer, simple dunny, shower, extra batteries and power management, brake controller, storage units [homemade], adequate solar, solar charging for devices, lighting, cooking etc etc etc etc,) add at least $10K to the driveaway cost of a basic unit.

Wow, hadn't thought it would rack up quite so far,... certainly worth noting , many thanks really appreciate the input.

some days I feel like I'm re-inventing the wheel with this project,

Fi

[Fidon]

Also there are the 'wind up' style of camper like the Jayco Penguin & Goldstream Crown which have no push out ends. Both are compact to tow with internal caravan layouts & comfort features.

Both of these have east-west beds which certainly involve climbing across one's partner.

thanks, yes, I've noticed that, keep looking at them online (cause the price is attractive) and then going "oh that's right" darn it!

Fi

[Fidon]

The next NSW members weekend is at Macquarie Woods between Bathurst & Orange in November & usually attracts around 30 camper trailers. There are a number of weekend get togethers already planned for next year.

Thanks Rob & carol,
I'm limited to my riverbank until the end of the year, work commitments,
I really appreciate your research suggestions, who would have thought preparing to relax and chill could be so frustrating

Fi

[Fidon]

At the end of last year we took delivery of our Echo Kavango from Echo 4x4 Australia and we are very happy with it. It is imported from South Africa but finished off with Australian compliant fittings.
http://www.echo4x4.com.au

had come across this, aside from the imported part, it was on my possible list, little concerned about ventilation around the bed area and head clearance when you sit up? I haven't walked into one of these ones yet


Fi

[depslibrary]

Regarding Kavango bed area, In the fold out area there is a window at the end and one each side. We don't feel claustrophic.I can sit up in the bed. Condensation can be a problem in some conditions but we have recently found a simple way around this. Friends who own one always set up their bed in the main part of the camper, but for us it's not the best use of space.

[WomblingFree]

Thanks so much for taking the time to offer up some thoughts....

I set my heart originally on an Ultimate after camping near one at Aspley Falls a few years back, the owners were fantastic, had several chats with them over the few days we were both there, came very close to ordering one but was pipped by a medical distraction at the time, would purchase one now, only was spooked by some nosey "day visitors" recently on a family trip, and am thinking if its just partner and I, there won't be someone "sitting" the camp like we had that time, and might not be so lucky to have all our gear still there if we go on a 6 hour walk. I really do appreciate your input, without it I wouldn't now have a spreadsheet underway of pros and cons v price.

many thanks

Fi

[/color]

Hi Fi

re the above. I'll relate it all back to our Johnnos Evolution soft floor camper which has a build thread here - http://www.4wdaction.com.au/forum/viewt ... 4&t=147198 so you can see what I'm talking about.
But I think you need to steer away from everyone's brand recommendations until you know what features you want. After all everyone's camper is the best there is. Mine certainly is

We like the soft floors as we do not like the space usability in hard floors. Also we can put ours up and down way quicker than any of our friends hard floors but that certainly does not apply to all that many soft floors. That can be beneficial in the rain and wind plus they are usually lighter in weight which may not matter to you but does if you are dragging through sand or mud and reduces fuel costs.
If you get a hard floor, check if you can leave the awning attached and just flip it over the tent to pack up. A lot of them can't which means more setup & packing time.
Did your 30 seconds include floor levelling etc or just winching the floor up & over?

Our tent pulls over the side and takes some 3-4 minutes to erect as there are only two internal poles to extend, it just folds out. Side pull tents usually have a lot more usable room as the rear opening tents are only the width of the trailer whereas the side pulls width is the length of the trailer. That may mean you may need to clip on extra rooms which you will find is a pain. The bigger the tent, the more poles you may have to position and eventually you'll get sick of that.

The side pull tent usually means you have the fridge sliding out the side of the trailer into the tent space which can be annoying in winter having to constantly open the tent(bedroom) space to get to the fridge.

Some trailers have a footwell at the end of the bed so you can step up into the end of the bed without climbing over your partner. Ours doesn't have this (we have chainsaw, jerry cans and wood storage there) but we've done a lot of extended camper trips and body collisions have never been a problem for us. We rejected that idea as we wanted the trailer space for outback touring storage.
Its a trade off between usable trailer storage space or getting close. Queen sized bed allows plenty of manoeuvring room anyway.

Our kitchen is on the tailgate so used in the awning space. As you'd know, kitchens are very personal so you need to collect ideas that work for you. Lots of manufacturers do not use locking sliders which can result in the object sliding away from you. One thing to consider with kitchens is where the cooking smoke goes, especially if you have all awning walls on in the middle of winter. Not much worse than stinking out your bedroom.

Re the single person tent up/down. If you are doing remote camping and you are on your own (couple), you need to consider how you will pack it all up should your partner become incapacitated. Can you pack it all away yourself or will you have to abandon the camper so as to head for a hospital...
I think most soft floors are a hassle to pack up but then a lot of the hard floors I've been out with are just as time consuming. Again, see if you can hire your preffered camper and try it out.
My wife can pack our Evo up ok on her own.

The camper and tug wheel sizes are important at the time of order. If your tug had say 16" rims the trailer had 15" and you decided to then change the campers rims to 16", you may find that the tent floor is now off the ground.
Ideally the wheel track of the camper is the same as the tug and the same wheels are used throughout but its not the end of the world. The benefits are that you have more spare wheels that can be used anywhere and there is less drag on the trailer through mud and sand.

Camper ball weights are a big issue. Rule of thumb is 10% of the trailers weight should be on the tow ball but I've yet to see any camper get close to that. Out Evo is supposed to weigh some 900Kgs (never weighed it) but when empty it has a ball weight of 130Kg.
That 130Kg has to be deducted from the tugs GVM rating. The greater the ball weight, the less you can carry in the tug.
Repco sell a nice ball weight scale for around $60. It just sits under the ball and you read off the value.

The battery capacity is more related to the fridge than TV's. Modern LCD TV's don't use much power but a 12v fridge certainly does. I can promise you that, unless you are only doing weekend trips, you will be sick and tired of ice coolers in a very short time. Especially when everyone else has a fridge/freezer

Never had a problem with chlorine in water (we are on town water so don't notice it) but I'd welcome chlorine in the outback. We ran out of our town water in Birdsville which runs on bore water. Unfortunately their town filtration system had broken down and the whole town had to use stinking, awful tasting water - actually 'awful tasting' doesn't come close. Had no choice but to fill one tank until such time as we could ditch it and refill but it left a taste and smell in the tank which took some time and chemicals to remove.
There are several water filters available for filling up. The B.E.S.T brand is good and they give campertrailers.org a discount.

Re budget. Personally I think $70K is absurd, might as well buy a caravan and you'd have to be staying in 5 star hotels to ever reach a break even point on cost. Actually the $30K we paid for the Evo was rather difficult to cough up. Previously we owned a cheap Chinese sub $10K thing. You get an awful lot of camper for your money with those things but they are rather poor quality. Most of the bolts holding the tent to the trailer fell out somewhere out by Birdsville but that cheapy did whole lot of things way better than expensive Ozzie made things and it survived extended multi week outback trips.
Again you need to figure out what you want to do with it. If you want to drive off road around Oz, explore national parks more difficult tracks and do the Simpson desert etc then need to consider a better built but lighter unit. $70K is probably buying you an awful lot of extra weight cunningly disguised as 'creature comforts'.
Also I'd hate to have to abandon $70K in the outback if the chassis snapped or axles broke etc.

At the end of it all I think most owners will agree that you will never find a perfect camper. You just find the best fit to your requirements and modify to suit. Keep the spreadsheet going

cheers
Malcom

[Fidon]

Regarding Kavango bed area, In the fold out area there is a window at the end and one each side. We don't feel claustrophic.I can sit up in the bed. Condensation can be a problem in some conditions but we have recently found a simple way around this. Friends who own one always set up their bed in the main part of the camper, but for us it's not the best use of space.

Thank guys, appreciate your honesty, and your time to reply

Fi