Anyone used a truck sat nav when towing a caravan?

thestens

I have been thinking of buying a sat nav, mainly to use when towing my van in UK and Europe, but the prices of sat navs specifically set up to use with caravans seem very high. I have seen several truck sat navs advertised on E Bay priced between £50 and £110 which sound like they would fit the bill. Has anyone had any experience of using one of these cheap truck sat navs with a caravan?

hartcjhart

cant help, but curios as to why you cannot use a 'normal' satnav

gilbert_and_sullivan

Ordinary sat nav used with common sense equals no problems.

marlot

gilbert_and_sullivan wrote: »

Ordinary sat nav used with common sense equals no problems.

I have some sympathy with the OP.

Mine was fine until it sent me down a road with a 6'6" max width. I had to turn around with a queue of impatient people behind me - fortunately I managed to find somewhere I could reverse, but failing that I was going to have to uncouple the caravan and turn it by hand.

marlot

OP - try here: http://www.caravantalk.co.uk/community/forum/43-satellite-navigation/

fivetide

marlot wrote: »

I have some sympathy with the OP.

Mine was fine until it sent me down a road with a 6'6" max width. I had to turn around with a queue of impatient people behind me - fortunately I managed to find somewhere I could reverse, but failing that I was going to have to uncouple the caravan and turn it by hand.

I was thinking about that at the weekend. We were in North Yorkshire and although not towing we ended up going down a road which went from being a regular b road into a single track with passing places. If we'd have been towing we'd have been in trouble but there was no warning.

That said, I always check out the route I want to take online or with a proper map so you know the main roads you want to be on. then you can ignore the sat nav if it starts trying to send you through a housing estate because it thinks it is 100m shorter than staying on the main road. they'll always recalculate if needed and should really be used to cross reference the direction you know you want to be travelling in or to find an address at the very end of the journey.

That's my thought at least.

5t.

gilbert_and_sullivan

Sat navs should not be used to route find, thats where people go wrong.

Think of them as a handy pocket sized street map of the country.

Use number one eyeball and common sense after choosing the route to roughly where you want to be, than use satnav to guide you in, only use it en route as a back up to what you already have planned..

Where they do score well is by being precise when counting down to unseen, unknown and often unsigned turnings.

Cash-Strapped.T32

Computer proggies such as TYRE let you plan-out a route using Googlemaps on your computer, & then export that to a standard tomtom or garmin satnav; Dragging the "route" over roads & so-forth.

I used it for a bike camping trip for a couple of 300mi legs of the journey, weeks before I actually set off, since I knew where I'd be, where I'd be going, etc..

That way I could be double-double-sure of what roads I'd be taking (mainly motorways in this instance but hey), even going so far as dipping into street-view if something on the back roads looked a bit shonky on the map...

Beats punching in a random postcode while sat in some unknown lay-by in a strange city & just hoping the defaults will magically work.

Notmyrealname

thestens wrote: »

I have been thinking of buying a sat nav, mainly to use when towing my van in UK and Europe, but the prices of sat navs specifically set up to use with caravans seem very high. I have seen several truck sat navs advertised on E Bay priced between £50 and £110 which sound like they would fit the bill. Has anyone had any experience of using one of these cheap truck sat navs with a caravan?

They're crap. They'll also route you round stuff you don't need to be such as weight limits. And they're frequently wrong.

Notmyrealname

marlot wrote: »

I have some sympathy with the OP.

Mine was fine until it sent me down a road with a 6'6" max width. I had to turn around with a queue of impatient people behind me - fortunately I managed to find somewhere I could reverse, but failing that I was going to have to uncouple the caravan and turn it by hand.

That was entirely a situation of your own making. Why did you ignore the width restriction signs in white with a bright red border put on a pole?

Your Satnav didn't send you down any road, it SUGGESTED that was the route to take. You chose to go down it like countless other morons who blame Satnavs for their own stupidity.

Notmyrealname

hartcjhart wrote: »

cant help, but curios as to why you cannot use a 'normal' satnav

Indeed. I used a normal one for 14 years driving an artic, even using it when I was moving 100ft long 100 tonne wind turbine masts. Coupled it with a map showing low bridge heights and MK1 Eyeball.