Crane fitted on a Pheonix van

"Smart guy's those Phoenix owners, know what they want and go get it"....and when they hear how long the waiting list is they head down the road and buy a Phoenix ;-)))

He told me that the crane weighed 40 Kgs, so with the O/Board of 40 to 60kgs plus the batteries and jerry cans it would be fairly heavy as you say.

Brian

Hey there,

Met a new BT owner at a camp afew nights ago and borrowed a CandM magazine he had that conatined a review on a 17ft BT aswell as the Phoenix owners own van. The Phoenix advitori..article was interesting. Quoting a tare of over 2300kgs and saying this was light in comparison to other off road vans-though also mentioning that this van contained NO solar (so probably little in the way of batteries). Penned by Mr Rooth who's no doubt mates with the Phoenix crew the rest of the article was much the same. Everytime I pick up one of these mags I am more sure that I will never hand over a cent for another one.

The relevent part though was mention of the computerised methods used to calculate ball weights. A team of scientists doing complex equations for hundreds of hours...(okay they didn't say that). This being the reason why all Phoenix vans tow so fantastically or something along those lines was the authors comments. No doubt they rarely get it wrong ;-))

You can only hope they allowed for afew 100kgs of extra gear sitting on the A frame in their calculations and placement of axles in this case......though the photos show a van which looks to have its axles in a fairly standard placement (highly technical judgement there!!)

BTW, "I'll eat my hat" great saying that, got me giggling. I think your safe though in this case.

Cheers

Matt

As a matter of interest what do you think caused the spring failure on your van after such a short time, and was it covered by the warrenty.
I had heard that the air bag suspension as used by BT now is not covered by VC should the van be taken off road, manufacturers were sent a notice to that effect late 2003.
Regards

What the???

No air suspension here.....I have however busted a main leaf and pulled the alignment out at the same time. Drove a good few thousand K's before I noticed, rang BT, had the parts in afew days and a couple of hours work later I had installed new springs and pivot blocks on both sides-total cost, less than $400. Not bad to replace most of the moving parts of the suspension.

Adams44, Looking at your website I'm almost certain yourself and 10Para (smothing like that) are one and the same. The same fella that was such a PITA that BT refused to build a van for....Forgive me if I've mistaken you, though I'm fairly certain I haven't.

Matt

Not correct Bob have identified myself as a Phoenix owner quite clearly at least hundreds of times under my profile, just takes a little check however when trying to insert the name of the van under my the site will not take the name Phoenix "not enough space" which is why i posted the web site showing hundreds of pictures of our van and its travells.
Regards

Thanks for the info Bob, certainly no mention of Phoenix for us newbies to the site to make a judgement until your clarification.

I did notice there is plenty of room for this info in "Van Description"
rather than in "Van length" or "Van year".

Regards
CD&JW

Your profile shows a truck no van what site are you talking about - the answer seems a bit too defensive to me - thought one had to be a BT owner to become a member.

You need to be a BT owner to be able to be a financial member and have access to the owners forum.
We are a bit like missionaries with the open forum, let them read a bit, get them interested so that one day they may "See The Light."
Real heathens with Phoenix vans are sometimes hard to convert but it does happen from time to time.
Stage #1 of the conversion is that they buy a Chev.
Stage #2 is that they read the BOG forum.
Stage #3 is that they post to Boggers.
Whats next Adams 44?????? :-)

Bob

Stage #1 Bought the GMC would not touch the Chev
Stage #2 The bog hardly seems reading now that the Lone Ranger has been banned.
Stage # 3 Have done that to try and enlighten them
Stage # 4 Could be picking up my BT this weeked.

Brian

Just a little correction to follow up 3 above.

The Lone Ranger is not banned as stated. He is able to post if he wishes to.

Brian

I think your profile is only visible on the Owners Forum. Not to those of us still waiting to be eligible to be financial members (won't be long now - as the monkey said when the train ran over his tail)

What you need to do is go into the members list at the top of the page and look through the members list it is in state order you will us in Queensland it really is quit simple to do. Profile are available to the general public as far as i know ,and i think on public sites you do get a gross section view of things.

try it with ours and see how far you get???!!!!!??????
You can even use "Control" "F" to do a search to make finding a member easily, but to open the members profile - No.

Members profiles are not published and under the current privacy provisions that we are obliged to follow they never will be.
One reason for having and using the member message facility so that members, both fiscal and visitors like adams44 can exchange details privately if they wish to.

Bob

Just try to get into my profile from the member list and you are right does not work what a wast of time filling it out, on Exploroz it works fine and way you have got the web site so you can still enjoy should you want. From now it will be posted on my sign off message
Regards

That photo's a bit scary, where and how did that happen i do hope that no one was injured, is that what Steve calls the tail wagging the dog. Seriously do hope it turned out alright for you.

No dogs involved. Just something that happens if the driver has a sleep at the wheel rather than going back to the bed.

The interesting thing about this photo is how well the Aluminum framed caravan stood up to the impact. The timber framed vans that have done similar stunts on Sunshine Coast roads recently were unrecognisable when their frames smashed into thousands of splinters.

Brian

Yeah i know the feeling , we now have set guide lines of how far and howmany hours we travel in one go before resting and always plan to stop real early in the day to camp up, of course the best of plans do not always work out, age driving , and speed do not mix when one is tired. By the way there was a Phoenix that had a roll over "the bush tucker mans van" let his wife have a drive and it rolled quite a few times held together great and was towed away, i got to see the inside and you would not have known that it had been in a smash everything was still in place, and that was a timber frame. Not sure if it was the Aluminum or timber frame that would have helped both the Phoenix and your BT i think you can put it down to the fact that both vans are built for strength by good builders and tradesmen, IMHO the Phoenix is more personalised and being a builder i like the timer frame over the Aluminum one both would see me out.
Safe Travels

Hi adams44,

yes it was a bit scarey and thankfully we where all ok (I got a close up view of the freeway) and yes as Brian did mention it was a slip lapse into lala land that I feel cause our accident.

Myself being a carpenter by trade and my husband a builder do feel that it is the way these are built that makes then so strong and stay together in these circumstances.The interior of our van was basically intact with the exception of where the batteries smashed out of their compartment and flung aound the inside doing a fair bit of damage, smashing the walls and the seat they are housed under.

And since we have had our accident I have heard of 3 others that have gone over in the same stretch, the others being not off road vans and as Brian mentioned all over the place once they go over.

I feel everyone is entiltled to their opinion on what they prefer and this is what makes us all individuals.

Thanks for your your concern

Suzanne