Advice on buying a camper trailer

Thanks Richard.
In response to your questions
1. Unfortunately finances only allow us to go to $20K max.
2. Yes it will go off road
3. At the moment we camp for 3-4 days, 6 times a year, and do a 4 week trip every second year. We would camp more often on weekends, if we had something that was easy to put up.
4. We have a AWD Ford Territory
Look forward to your reply.
Cheers

You have a hugh range to choose from, we have aTrakShak that we love.

The TrakShak has 2 queen size beds and heaps of room for the kids, one thing with TrakShaks is you could buy a secondhand on for $15000 plus but make sure it is an Australian built one ....even though the newer Chinesse ones seem OK.

It takes us about 10 minutes to set up and about 30-60 minutes to pack up depending on how organised we are.

There are plenty of other good brands as well and I would not worry to much what other people say as some like one brand over another....it's personel choice and you may like something on one then the other.

You might want to have a look at "Australian off road camper trailer" forum...heres the link and the have a trader section.

http://www.campertrailers.org/index.html

Regards Richard

Two things to consider are.
Trailer brakes
Water storage

Don't worry to much about suspension types either.


When you start going over $10-12000 you go into a differant range of trailer...but don't think the cheaper ones are not as good.

Don't worry about suspension? Hmmm .......

Most trailer failures are in the suspension.

Don't worry to much about suspension types either.

Is it is leaf, leaf with shocker or indapendent

"...Don't worry to much about suspension types either...."

I went about the selection of a camper trailer in a slightly different way.....

Firstly, I wanted something reliable that wouldn't fall to bits. I've travelled on many of these badly corrugated roads...Gunbarrel, GCR, Cape York, Tanami etc and by far the most common failure of trailers is in the suspension and secondly in chassis cracks. So I looked long and hard at this FIRST. From my research (though this will always be a topic of discussion) I found Track Trailers, who build trailers for the military, for them to transport sensitive electronic equipment and sattelite dishes etc) to have a very impressive setup on the TVan. It is called MC2 suspension and is fully independent, with King Spring coils and Koni Shocks. I have seen it in operation on video and it is very impressive when loaded correctly.

Track also have an older model called the Desert Eagle which features this suspension....and that's what I bought. In terms of all the little 'luxuries' like stainless steel kitchen etc, I was less concerned about this as it's pretty useless if the trailer is broken down on the side of the road in the outback. I opted for lots of storeage, lockers, electric brakes, 240/12v wiring and a nice simple, practical design.

Different people will value different things as their priorities and I second the suggestion to have a look around the campertrailers.org website and the associated Yahoo Group. There is a wealth of information and many very experienced travellers on those sites.

Good luck in the search.

Cheers,

Mark

Mark, that is exactly what I did, disregarded all the bells & whistles, a stainless steel kitchen isn't going to get you home with a broken spring!
I also bought a Track Desert Eagle with MC2 suspension.

Who was that again?? :))

Kev

I can vouch for the Safari from Trackabout....great camper.