Hi thinking of maybe getting our first ever caravan. Looked at layouts and have settled on the Lunar Venus 500/4 which suits us best. Has to be light weight as we only have a Renault Laguna 2.0dci 150bhp sport tourer.
Some people have said to me to avoid Lunars as they are known as leaky lunars. Have more modern vans overcome the leaking problem?
Did start off by looking at Bailey Rangers but was put off by the quality of vans presented at various dealers plus also a lot of poor reviews too.
What is your experiance of the later lunar models?
Thanks
'Leaky Lunars', 'Bo***xed Baileys' or 'Sh***y Swifts'...choices, choices, eh?
Buy the one that suits you best, a small % of any caravans have their problems & those are ones you read about on forums. I doubt many folk post on forums to tell the world their caravan does not leak.
Thank you for your replies.
Warren, hope you dont mind me asking, what car do you two with?
How does the van tow?
When pitched can you feel the wind if windy outside as the van is light weight?
Siily question I know but it keeps coming to mind.
Thanks
John
Numerous UK Manufactures have bad reports on the quality of their vans and are reviled on this forum but there a gain people praise the same companies.
There are also plenty of Foreign makes that are better quality and not always very heavy vans.
Find a list of vans that are a 85%match for your tow car and have a layout that suits you and your family, there is always some comprise you never get a 100% perfect van in every lay out shape and mode. I do not know kerb weight of your vehicle but I guess it is capable of towing a van up to 1300Kgs to 1450kgs 2 to 5 berth this is where the comprise comes in. any way good luck in your search.
6 years ago we bought our first van off ebay a compas magnum 4berth end w/room with full awning for £5k. Delighted with it and kept for 18 months and sold it via c/club for £5k. Then bought Abbey Vogue 416GT for £7k from dealer kept this 1yr (wld still have this van but small gr/children couldn't go in bunks as kept falling out of bed so p-ex for new Swift Challenger fixed bed. Big mistake. The dealer was fantastic but Swift wouldn't do anything the front box didn't fit so spray when towing filled it with water and I could get my hand inside up to me elbow when it was locked. Swift said it was designed like that!! so p-ex after 1yr and bt new Lunar SB from Derby Caravans. I cannot praise both Derby Caravans and Lunar enough. Yes the front windows warped, the brown sink watermarked badly and the tap didn't quite reach the bowl so sprayed water over the worksurface. New front windows, S/steel sink and new tap fitted all under warranty - no quibble. C/van coming up to 3yrs old and still absolutely delighted with it. We pull it with a 2.2 Jaguar XF. It tows like a dream.
We bought a 3yr old Lunar Zenith in 2009 from Don Amott caravans, it came with a 6mth warantee and we did have a few niggling faults with it, all fixed under warantee by the dealer. Late in the second season of our ownership, we found some boarderline high damp readings in the back corner of the caravan behind the washroom, and on advice from our local Lunar dealer, we had the awning rail replaced and resealed on that side. Within the 12 month repair warantee, the damp readings rose once again, and once again further repairs were made, this time FOC from the original Lunar dealer who had repaired it.
We then thought long and hard and came to the conclusion that, although we loved this caravan, which was 5yrs old at the time, it simply was not economically viable to keep paying out for such repairs, and with a generous Birthday gift from my old Dad, we scraped together enough money to go looking around the end of season sales and buy a better newer caravan.
Like the OP, we were at the time a little restricted weight wise, our Towcar was a 1.8 Honda Civic, which pulled the Lunar well, but we were towing at a ratio of around 90% , and didnt really want to go much higher than that.
We looked around several ranges of lightweight caravans, Explore, Venus, Sprite, Coachman Amara, and Lunar. We fell in love with the Explore 530, a three birth, which fitted our needs fine, although we would be rather tight length wise to get it into its storage space. Fate delt its hand though, as the entire stock of 530s had completely sold out for the season, and because of the situation with our Lunar, we didnt want to risk the possible consequences of it standing though another winter when new stock wouldbe available, so had no choice but to discard the idea of become owners of a Explore 530.
We looked at the Venus range, but at the time, the 2013 models were rather lacking in some of the features we expected a modern caravan to have, as well as being quite narrow both in the width of the front benches, which we tend to use as two single beds, and the leg room between the seats during the day. The final feature that made us discard the Venus from our wish list, was the lack of a propper lining other than ordinary wallboard in the shower area, something that all of the other makes of caravans we had looked at did have.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and we were contacted by one of tge Elddis Explore dealers to say that they had a caravan in stock that they believed would possibly suit our needs, and better still, they were holding a clearence event the following weekend, that would bring the price down in line to that of a comparable sized Explore, for a much higher spec'ed Caravan, that was still within the towing capacity of our Honda Civic.
We made the journey, spent a couple of hours inside this caravan, decided that yes, this was the one for us, and signed up on the dotted line to make it ours, this is the Elddis Avante 462 that we still have today.
Good luck with your search,
Julia
Post last edited on 08/05/2015 14:34:42
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Topic: Newbie need help please - Lunar caravan
