Tying down soft sprung tall van

[agent006]

A couple of weeks back I towed my now ex-neighbour's Sherpa campervan to his new house for him. About 30 miles away on fairly hilly A roads. Once the whole shebang was up to about 45-50ish, any movement of the trailer side to side set off a corresponding sway in the van's rather lax suspension. So after a few hundred yards it was alarmingly lurching about with the sway making the trailer move more and the trailer move making the sway worse.
Trailer seemed to be loaded OK with the right kind of nose weight. I did stop and consider moving the van but I figured it was far more dangerous to spend 10 minutes dicking around with ratchet straps in a layby with traffic howling past than it would be to just get on with it and be careful at 40 max.

So, in the end we got there in one piece. My question is, would it have been more sensible to tie down the body to the trailer rather than the wheels to the trailer in order to control the suspension? I had a strap tied down on each wheel. Or some combination thereof? I suppose the problem would be finding a suitable point in each corner of the body to tie down.

Thoughts?

[s p a c e m a n]

Yeah, always fun doing stuff like that

You have to secure the vehicle by the wheels, if you secure it by the body every time the vehicle bounces the straps wont be holding it and it will move half an inch, a few half an inches and it is then sitting all wonkey.

What I used to do was strap the wheels down and then take as much travel out of the suspension as possible. I used chains on the chassis for big things but on a sherpa you could probably do it by running a strap through the towing eyes on the front and back and tightening them down.

The main reason that vans/lorries on the back sway about more than cars is because the weight is higher up on them so it moves the centre of gravity of the towing vehicle higher. A loaded 18 tonner on a flatbed is great fun

[grumpy52]

As above strap the wheels down (all 4 corners) then pull the suspension down tight,I used to do this with 4x4's also

[s p a c e m a n]

The best one is when you see idiots strap down the chassis on things with air suspension. The further down the road they get the more air it loses until its bouncing all over the place, dump all of the air first you fools

[grumpy52]

Down this way it's beavertail transits with one tyre strap holding a car on !
Still waiting to hear if anyone can beat my traffic jam caused by me doing a recovery,6 1/2 miles of sat morn traffic !.