I have just bought my first caravan , an old 1982 bailey corsair 4 berth which i dont know the weight of...
I have contacted bailey and they are unable to help with the age of the van so i have no idea how much it weighs.
So im just wondering if anyone has or has had this style of van before and they could tell me the weight before i spend money on getting a towbar fitted to my car if it isn't going to pull it
My car is a 2000 renault scenic 1.4 has done 80,000 miles and had just had a service ,, any help would be appreciated thank you :)
In all honestly if your car has a 1.4 petrol engine it won't tow any caravan however much it weighs the wind resistance alone will make it very hard to keep any sort of speed up, imagine pulling onto a busy motorway on a incline.
Actually the braked tow capacity for the car is 1300kg although the car comes in at 1235 kg so the recommended 85% will give a max tow of 1049kg. Don't know the weight of your van but a 4 berth is more than likely above this.
Check your car and max recommended tow in the handbook for the car. I got my figures from Parkers
You have to remember what the braked capacity is and what the car is caple of are two different things, the car will physically pull the van but not at any pace or on any sort of hill.
Braked capacity is purely what the car can pull without breaking and being dangerous.
I think you only have two options get rid of the car or get rid of the caravan
I reckon you may still be OK, if you're lucky. They made caravans pretty light back then, mainly because they put hardly anything in them ...I know that Sprite made a three berth van around the same age that was only around 700kg unladen.
Have you got someone who can tow it to the weighbridge for you and get it weighed? You really need to get a definitive answer about the unladen weight of the van before anyone can help you answer the question about whether your car is suitable.
At a guess, a caravan of that age up to about a 14foot body length will have a max weight of under a tonne so legally your car can tow it but performance with 1.4 petrol will be barely adequate.
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Topic: Can my 1.4 renault scenic tow my bailey?
