Good day to all.

I would like to install a towbar / manouvre coupling  on the front of my vehicle........where Is there a correct place....should it be on the left front.....centre or right front....no one quite seems to have a definite installation position.....,.any suggestions????

Steve.

As always I guess it depends on what you want to achieve.

Some have placed if on the left, so that they can see passed the caravan on the right.

If you want to push back into a narrow passage then i guess it would need to be in the middle.

I installed one on my previous tow vehicle, a Kombi. That was to push the van into the garage along a narrowish path. I installed it myself to the left of the Kombi so that I could just see past the van on the right. It worked perfectly and I could push the caravan even without assistance. A few times I could also use this where we camped. Mounting the coupling in the middle would not have helped a lot and putting it to the right would have made even less sense. Before this I had to push the van in backwards which was nerwe racking and hard on the clutch.

Mounted mine in the middle, used to push the boat and the caravan.

Thanks for the responses there guys....yep as I thought.....one would ideally want to see the right hand side of the caravan when pushing it onto a site as normally the van gets pushed back as far as possible to allow for maximum side tent space in the front, but this cannot even be achieved as, if the towbar is mounted on the furthest part of the bumper on the right hand side of the vehicle .....sitting in the drivers seat will still not give the driver a clear view of the right hand side of the van. I would then say the next best option would then be to locate the towbar on the left hand side of the vehicle giving the driver a better view of the left side of the caravan (tent side) One would just have to work out exactly where he wants the tent side of the van to be prior to reversing into position........just my feeling and thoughts.....thanks all the same.

I may just add that normally pushing the van backwards attached to the towbar at the back of the tow vehicle is mostly quite doable. The problem is this is not as easy as driving forward but with practice it gets easier. This is an important capability for a person towing a caravan.

100% Fred......just easier sometimes ....thanks once again!!

Give us an update at the appropriate time including where you had it done and cost. Some other members are sure to also have an interest.

Will do .....no problem.

Steve Wise wrote:

Thanks for the responses there guys....yep as I thought.....one would ideally want to see the right hand side of the caravan when pushing it onto a site as normally the van gets pushed back as far as possible to allow for maximum side tent space in the front, but this cannot even be achieved as, if the towbar is mounted on the furthest part of the bumper on the right hand side of the vehicle .....sitting in the drivers seat will still not give the driver a clear view of the right hand side of the van. I would then say the next best option would then be to locate the towbar on the left hand side of the vehicle giving the driver a better view of the left side of the caravan (tent side) One would just have to work out exactly where he wants the tent side of the van to be prior to reversing into position........just my feeling and thoughts.....thanks all the same.

Have you consider movers? With movers you can park your caravan on sites where you wouldn't be able to do it with a towbar

I asked Auto Bar in Pretoria to help me manufacture a front towbar for the Navara I had.  The Navara had a recovery hook on the left side of the front chassis.  I removed that and install the newly made front towbar in its place.

Did it in such a manner that I could remove the towbar when not in use.  Similar to the removable bracket on the fortuner at the back.  The fact that it was off centre worked very well when moving the boat around on the beach.

I would have placed a pick on the forum when I did this way back.  Will see if I can bring it forward.

Could not find a pick wrt the front towbar on the Navara we had.