Well I've managed to finally load up the car in advance of tomorrow's trip. Me and my son (aged 9) had so much fun trying to squish everything in the car that we nearly needed to use the luggable loo. We're setting off about 6.30ish to drive but until then the car is outside fully loaded (hope there are no car thieves knocking about tonight).
I have a question which is more motoring that camping really... Could I get stopped by the police for the fact that I cannot see a thing through the rear view mirror?
The car is really stuffed up to the ceiling so there's no visability whatsoever and I'm going to have to rely on my wing mirrors.
This is our first trip, but if the kids enjoy it and we want to go again, I'll be looking at getting a trailer for next year.
No, AFAIK you don't have to have vision out of your rear view mirror - vans don't and we don't with our huge trailer on the back.
The sensible question is how well things are secured, if you get shunted at 60 miles an hour even something quite small and light will get shuttled into the back of your heads with some speed so hopefully you've got a dog guard or something similar holding your kit in place?
Enjoy your first camping holiday, i travel the same with my car filled to the celing, the way i see it vans can only use their wing mirrors, so should not be a problem.
take care, make sure you let the forum know how you got on
You won't get stopped because you can't see out of the rear view mirror. Many small vans have enclosed cargo spaces so have the same visibilty you will have.
Only other concerns would be that these is nothing that can fly around in the event of a collision and you will have to REALLY use your external mirrors like you have not done before.
Tomorrow is our first camping trip but just for one night so that we can make fools of ourselves but learn really quickly. I managed to pack the car without restricting the view out of the rear but as I say we're only going for one night. Will have a roofbox after that.
The car is hire car whilst mine is in for repair. We were hit in the rear about two weeks ago at around 40 MPH so my advise is clearly based on that.
As long as you have 2 wing mirrors you aren't breaking the law,(A car needs 2 usable mirrors to pass it's MOT). but you could be if you are overweight( not you personally,the car) lol
------------- Corpogreen esq
dead horse
and
donkey buyer
I haven't got a dog guard or net or anything ,but I did put all the soft things - sleeping bags, airbeds, the tent, etc at the front and all the smaller/harder things at the back so if anything happened there shouldn't be too much flying about. Don't think there's much space for anything to move anyway as it's so jammed in.
We'll just have to remember not to buy too many souvenirs while we're away.
I'll post a message saying how we went on and what we think of the tent when I get back.
Like most of the others, don't like to use trailers (slows me down) or roofboxes (mpg), so pack the indide to the roof.
Pack any thing solid and heavy low down behind the seats, then they'll be braced in a crash. But bear in mind that in a high-speed front-ender, even a loaf of bread could be fatal if it shoots forward with enough momentum.
I use an estate car and always leave the rear seats up. This is partly so that I can put stuff in the rear seat footwells but also because the back seat acts as a "baffle" to stop the load moving around. Could make a small difference in a shunt.
I've been thinking about this and one solution might be a cargo net, we bought a cheap elasticated one from Screwfix Direct to keep things anchored in the trailer but it might be adaptable to go over a load in the back of the car.
The other consideration if you're dropping the backseats or packing stuff onto the backseats is that most insurers exclude cover where items aren't locked in a boot/hatchback or a glovebox. So if things are in the body of the car on show are not usually covered.
You need to make sure the car is not overladen as the police can impound your car if it is! You'll be able to see if this is the case if the car is very low down on it's rear suspension. It's scary how many families you see on the motorway with severely overladen cars, it's dangerous as your suspension and brakes are only designed to take a specified maximum weight (you'll find this in your car's handbook).
As far as the visibility goes it's not a legal requirement to be able to see out of the back.
------------- Current tents in use: 5m Bell, Obelink Palamos 6, Vango Tornado 300 Vango Force 10 Mk3, Hypercamp Eldorado & Orange Raclet
Overloading is indeed the main thing to worry about, not from the perspective of the brakes as a typical car brakes will stop a car towing a 1 ton trailer. But more for the fact that the car is legally dangerous if it is overloaded. You will especially find with a front wheel drive car that it is quite uncontrollable.
As long as most of the stuff is bulk such as sleeping bags etc rather than wight such as gas cylinders etc then you should be OK. Just look at the car and see if it looks weighed down at the back and does it bounce on the suspension if you push hard down on the boot?
If it doesn't bounce you are all the way down on to the bushes and that is overloaded for sure.
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Topic: Almost ready to go - one last question...
