I believe that you are supposed to change to a pneumatic tyre on the jockey wheel anyway when you have a motor mover fitted on a caravan to allow it to grip and steer as the plastic ones will just slide and happen to drain the leisure battery quicker due to loss of control. If you do some research in books etc. you will find this is the advice plus from professional motor mover fitters too.
I have used a pneumatic with my last four vans, all with movers fitted. Life is so much easier, especially on gravel. Careful though because there are pneumatic wheels and there are rubbish pneumatic wheels. I have always used genuine BPW ore Alko wheels, and have never had a problem. Avoid cheap ones on plastic wheel rims. They are guaranteed to fail on you sooner rather than later.
I have a standard hard rubber wheel on my caravan, No issues with the mover even in soft grass.
One thing i watch carefully is the direction the wheel is facing. If i reverse it back onto a pitch. When i go to move it forward again i rotate the caravan sideways slightly then inch it forward so the wheel is trailing.
Not try to drive it forward with the wheel just waiting to jacknife.
I am getting so lazy I should have checked out the Alko site first. They have the heavy duty complete thing and say very suitable for caravans with movers fitted.
I did think it would be better to have a pneumatic one and it will look better. I have a fair old weight on the nose (3 gas botts)
Thank you all for your advice
I had pnu. jockey wheels for a few years and like Alistair said, there are bad ones out there and I had my fair share of them! I now have a solid but wider jockey wheel which does the job on my shale drive very well, and using the motormover.
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Topic: Jockey wheel
