Stone/Rock Deflectors/guards

Mine is a sock made out of heavy shade cloth that goes over a 3/4" gal pipe frame. The sock is held on at the bottom with cable ties.
It's 500mm high and 1950mm wide and bent towards the back 650mm in from each end. The bends are about 30deg. There are 2 3/4" gal pipe uprights at the bends.
Drove about 200k's on a gravel road before I fitted it and absolutly peppered the trailer. Done 1000's since with no rock drama's and only had to replace a couple of cable ties .
One trick... make sure the sock is a loose fit otherwise it will act like a trampoline and throw the rocks back at you.

We met some peolple who had one fitted to their trailer and still managed to break a window, maybe just rotten luck but I'd still be cutting up a beer carton for the back of the car, paintwork and all ('cept number plate of course!!!)

Mines like this one Truckster

http://www.simonheardcanvas.com.au/stonetray.jpg

Shadecloth Sock , thats zippered on.

Slight angle either end.

Mine doesn't lean , it sits upright , but I have seen quite a few that are angled down.

Truckster

If you do an archive search by selcting BOTH in the switch post view and then tick the two boxes ( title & body) under kewords - then type STONE GUARD as the key words.

It lights up like a X-mas tree.

Ken Robinson

Truckster go here stone guards

Shade cloth seems to be the most popular.

Baz.

Truckster,
I had a Kimberley Camper and the stone deflector on that worked perfectly, it had plenty of forward angle on it to deflect stones down. The model I had was prior to the current one on which they also fit mud flaps below the stone gaurd, so I bought some heavy re-inforced rubber sheet from clark rubber and made a set of mud flaps to go almost the full width of the stone gaurd, problem solved, no more stone damage to camper or tow vehicle. The mesh deflector really must be angled forward at the top, if its vertical the stones will be deflected into the vehicle. It also doesn't hurt to fit longer mud flaps to the tow vehicle, every little bit helps.......

Stu

Truckster

Better to lean it forward and down to throw as much crap down as possible - when you lean them forward you get close to the back of the vehicle and some Nissans and Toyos clip the guard when you open the back door.

If you mount/weld the guard onto large hinges and then bolt to draw bar you can then put a spring pin in which means you can lock it down (leaning forward & downward) when driving and then just pull the pin and push back to vertical, against your spare or storage box, when you need to get in the back!!

Hope this helps.

The best material is the mesh truckies put over their loads.
Also after our outback trip I have come to the conclusion that the best stone guards are the 'underskirt' type. They keep the stones under the trailer.

Truckster, if you don't want to break your back windows - use a cardboard carton or perspex - nothing else works out here. Fact!

Truckster
If you use shade cloth on a typical stone guard frame it will eventually deteriorate and detach when stones hit and cut it at the point where it wraps the frame.
It ends up flapping in the breeze and getting worse.

Don't think of putting rollcage tubing around the frame to reinforce either, it helps but causes the stones to rebound like a bullet ricochet so your back to square one.

Most success seems to be with the add'nl mudflaps on vehicle.

On a decent trip we also use Scatchpro on back of vehicle and some parts of trailer to assist.

John C

See stone guard in pic. below made from 70% shadecloth and worked well on the Gib Rvr , Great central outback Qld and NSW.
However I still had the back window covered as one can never predict where stones may fly. You may not believe this but when crossing the gibber country in 4wd a stone came off the front tyre ( I think ) and landed on my windscreen with no damage luckily.
I obtained an old 4 sale sign from a real estate agent, (they are made of honeycombe plastic ) cut it to size then used double sided tape to fix it to the rear windows. Works a treat and can be reused next juant. The glue off the tape is easily removed from the window with petrol.

My stoneguard came from The Complete Campsite (Gosford, NSW) and from my perspective is the best I've seen around.

Consists of 3 panels (middle one straight across, the end ones being angled towards the trailer), all angled downwards. On a frame with the material a little loose to prevent stones being bounced back at the vehicle. One additional feature it has (that I've seen on Kimberley Kampers but not any others) is a 'mudflap' of rubber material attached below each side panel which works really well. This also prevents stones geting underneath the guard and hitting the trailer itself.

Had no stone damage since fitting this to the trailer. An example, not really big picture though, can be seen on the 'DELUXE 4x4 OFF ROAD CAMPER' model on the company site Complete Campsite (about halfway down the page).