Choosing a van, tow car & planning a big van trip from scratch? Confused? This might help!

Описание: Choosing a new van, tow car and planning a lap can be so confusing. Many asked us for vids on how we chose our tow rig and planned our Lap. Now we're delivering. This ‪@nextleveloz‬ technical and equipment series covers how we stepped around the confusion, chose our rig and planned our Lap from scratch as brand new van buyers just a few years ago. And it was great.

There can be information overload especially for first time van owners. We explain our process to understand what sort of travel we needed our van and tow car to do, how that helped us plan our lap and make the right rig choices for us.

We hope our other subscribers share their views in the comments also.

We've heard too many cases where people bought the wrong van for their needs, the wrong tow car for their van and then had to do expensive mods - or had to change their van or car. We helped people who needed recovery, but had no recovery gear. What if you need remote roadside assistance but don't have the right towing and roadside assistance plan?

But mostly we came across so people in a widevariety of rigs that suited their travel style, their budget and they were having a ball, doing their big van adventures their way.

In the first part of the 3 vid tech series we introduce the issues, discuss how to decide what sort of travel might best suit you and introduce our 6R decision making process to best define what our Lap (or any dream trip) looked like for us, how that influenced the types of rig, so we could narrow down the choices and then plan the details step by step and sift out the important

The 6 Rs
The 6 Rs - Route basics (Route recce), Rig basics, Route Detail, Rig down select and equipping, Risk considerations (and how to plan for them), Routine (the things that added to quality or made living on the road easier) - all for what really is another "R" the reward of van travel around Australia's amazing landscapes and destination icons. In our case a Big Lap that changed our lives.

And we give some tips and rules of thumb for new (and first time) van and tow car buyers and new big trip planners. But of course there is some of that important technical detail like towing weights and what that means for you.

Resources

If you want to download a copy of our planner, here it is in pdf format. Hope it helps and sorry for the typos. We made this ages ago.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hiiZ...

Rather than repeating a detailed explanation of towing weights, here are some links to vids we found helpful on the detail of towing weights. :

Robert Pepper

Towing Weights    • Towing Part 1 - What Weights?  
Is your axle overloaded?    • Are you sure your rear axle isn't overloaded?  

Robert covers other towing technical vids on his channel.

For some car towing reviews that include weight considerations try some of the vids for one of Australia's leading van suspension and towing expert companies, Cruisemaster.

Cruisemaster Defender Towing Test and Weigh In    • Land Rover Defender - Highway Towing Test ...  
Cruisemaster Weighing the 300 Series with van    • Weighing the NEW 300 Series Land Cruiser  

Cruisemaster does some other towing reviews as well.

In the Cruisemaster Defender vid they use a longer and heavier tow hitch and a van that's loaded heavy on the ball. That worsens the effect on the rear axle. The 7 seater Defender (like ours) has a higher axle rating at 1900kg compared to the 5 seater at 1800 kg. But we still reckon its still a useful explanation of practical weights to understand how it works

And if you think bigger is better and prefer to go for an American Truck be aware the RAM 1500 for example has a worse rear axle capacity than our Defender - so make sure you get the right spec whatever you choose.

About us:
We're David and Paula and like many people we've worked hard for 40 years. so we took a gap year from work and did a Big Lap of Australia, which changed our life and outlook. Join us as we work out the balance and the next chapters of our future and travel and options. How much more big travel in our van and how many other bucket list items can we fit in? We don't know but let's find out.

And we're happy to share our experiences, what goes right, what goes wrong, tips, hacks, mods and the stunning places around our great country.

We aren't influencers or professional content creators, we don't have sponsors and 100% of our YouTube ad revenue goes to charity.

Please don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Hopefully you find the vids interesting and we can send a bit of money off the Legacy and RFDS while we're all sharing and watching these dreams and adventures coming true.

And please also share with other friends and don't forget, constructive comments and shares are very, very welcome.

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