Monday, Mar 26, 2007 at 07:19
Geeeze... poor Owen (above) hasn't had much luck with his, has he??
Our Cavalier is a 1994 model, we have had it for a little over two years now and are extremely happy with it! We have the 14' tent and wouldn't dream of having anything smaller, at least not while we still cart our kids with us. Ours didn't come standard with a
water tank, doesn't have a built in kitchen either, but we have found that this suits us perfectly. We carry four jerry cans of water, one on each corner, we have had the bed base tilt up thingy installed so that the trailer can be opened from the side and the cargo area accessed without setting the tent up... the previous owner built a box inside the trailer by the tailgate and had four plastic tubs in there for crockery, cutlery, dry food etc. I have since built _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx into this box which has made life so much easier! I took the spare wheel off the drawerbar and added two 100mm plumbers pipe tent pole holders and an ARB spacecase for extra storage. The spare now resides on the dustcover of the tent, tied down with ratchet straps and a cargo net..... sounds like a pain doesn't it? but it really isn't, takes a minute to get it down and a couple of minutes to put it up there. On a long trip, we put it on the roof rack.
We also carry an Oztrail deluxe gazebo, my bride has made fly sceen walls that velcro onto it when the flies are bad, and we have solid walls for when the rain comes. Our cooker, table and chairs and Coleman
camp kitchen fit into it nicely and we have the benefit of being "modular".... (we were away camping this weekend just gone and moved our gazebo and kitchen gear 3 times till we found the ideal setting for us.) About the only other mod we are thinking about is a way of mounting the bike rack on the rear, so the kids can bring their bikes away, I have the plan in my brain, just need to get it outta there and onto the trailer!
For lighting, I was going to install lights and a battery etc, but "discovered" the jump start packs that Repco sell. I think the brand is Projecta. There are others... We bought the 18 amp hour unit it has two ciggy sockets and we use a couple of fluoro lights, which will work for 17 continuous hours! So plenty of light! On a three week jaunt last year, we re-charged the projecta just once! We carry a porta loo and accompanying tent and have a Primus hot water shower system which we can also run off the Projecta if we need to. It's again a very modular set up.
To be honest, I can't think of anything to say against the Cavalier, although I agree with Owens comments about the jockey wheel.... we certainly are happy with ours! If you have any questions, just ask, or send a member message and I'll give you an email address if you'd rather that.
Hope this helps Kevin
Cheers
Brian
AnswerID:
229727
Follow Up By: Oz Travellers - Tuesday, Mar 27, 2007 at 10:30
Tuesday, Mar 27, 2007 at 10:30
We have a Cavalier Off Road Shiralie, 2003 model and apart from throwing the useless jockey wheel away and getting a pneumatic one , we are reasonably happy with it. The mods we have done are minimal such as:
We take a small Al. step ladder with us (for use to get up into the bed) but more use in zipping up the annex tarp, especially near the apex point.
We use expanding rods all around the annex to stiffen it up. We put a padbolt in to the Drifta kitchen to stop it sliding aound when travelling and added an extra drawer to it. I also fixed a Coleman stove (2 burner green model) permanently into the kitchen. Also I have a RCD power point unit mounted on plywood, which I clip internally onto the steel tubes, near the bed. I then plug other various things into this, lights, toaster, jug, fan heater sometimes........
Next mod is to put some permanent holder inside the trailer to better hold the annex poles.
Sparky
FollowupID:
490775