Practical Caravan explains Al-Ko ATC – and more!

so we've spent most of the show so far looking at the outside of caravans but have you ever wondered what's going on beneath it well if you own a UK built Caravan ninety-eight percent of them will feature something pretty much like this underneath well can you tell me a little bit more about what this is we're looking at yeah this is a standard one-piece construction chassis say one piece it's the side rails that are that are one piece they're then joined together with the axles itself it's a single axle or a tandem axle they all join everything together to bring in the in the strength so it starts in this front front end here where you got the the hitch this is a standard aks 3004 stabilizer it's been developed for a number of years and it's designed to help with instability slight cases of pitching and we're always so when it starts to sway it just helps to bring the caravan back under control and just make sure that the people driving the car don't feel - were affected by too much like and what's this piece sitting down here this is the brake rod that linked the the front end of the overrun braking device to the to the vehicle lube axles itself and then you've got the Bowden cables at the far end just linking with the with the wheel brakes so when when the caravan feels as though the car is slowing down the overrun compresses it pulls on the brake rod which in turn pulls the folding cables on applying the road brakes on the on the caravan and that's the traditional braking method for traditional yeah see we've got something something else here was yes that this is this is the ATC system it's an anti sneaking device for caravans a bit like electronic braking on a on a caravan so again when the caravan is driving down the road it might be hit from from the side by by a high wind could get caught a bow way by an HDTV or coach or it could be that it's just driving too fast and the caravan is just becoming a little bit unstable ATC picks up on that movement of the caravan waits until it's I wouldn't say dangerous but waits until it's it's significantly picked up and then applies the brakes on the caravan just to slow everything down just to bring the caravan back under control and allow the journey to carry on nice and easily well you've heard the theory now let's see it in practice we've got a miniature version of an alcove ATC stability system right here on this model so let's imagine we're driving along quite happily up the motorway at a safe and legal speed maybe I've got a bit enthusiastic or the wind started to blow and it's getting a bit out of shape and then the system applies the brakes then releases them once we're back in line and safe again all the way on the AL coast and I thought we'd come and take a look at this it's the new premium braking system now as far as I know only lunar are currently fitting this as standard but I think you can expect to see it on plenty of models very soon because it's simply but highly effective it automatically adjusts the brakes for you so you haven't got to take the wheel off and jet the van up in order to tighten up those shoes against the drums what happens is as it detects that there's pad wear in here this neat little mechanism rotates this dial here and pushes the shoes back out against the drum simple very clever

Channel: Practical Caravan

Views: 61,088

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Id: 0qIip9N9dT0

Length: 3min 20sec (200 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2016