Home/Caravan Servicing Perth
Bearings, brakes and suspension — the three things that strand caravans, and the three things nobody looks at because they are out of sight underneath.
A caravan does not have a dashboard warning light, a service reminder or a logbook that nags. It sits on the side of the house for eleven months, then gets asked to do 4,000km across the state at highway speed and full weight. Everything that fails on a van fails because of that pattern.
Sitting is genuinely worse than driving for some components. Bearing grease settles and dries out, brake components corrode in place, tyres develop flat spots and age out while the tread still looks new, and rubber suspension components perish without ever having worked hard.
A collapsed bearing is the classic caravan roadside failure, and it is almost always preventable. Bearings need to be cleaned, inspected, repacked with fresh grease and correctly preloaded on a schedule — not simply topped up. Overtightening is as damaging as leaving them loose.
Warning signs are a rumble or growl that changes with speed, a wheel that is hot to touch after a run, or play at the hub. If you have covered a big trip, or a lot of gravel, or the van has sat for a season, bearings are the first thing to look at.
Half of a good towing setup is the van, and half is the vehicle in front of it. In the same visit we can check whether your tow vehicle is squatting under towball weight, whether its brakes and fluid are ready for the trip, whether its suspension suits the load, and whether load-assist airbags or a GVM upgrade is the right answer for how you actually load it.
Worth knowing before a big trip: a loaded 4WD with a van hitched up is often much closer to its legal GVM than the owner expects, and towball weight is a large part of that. A weighbridge ticket is a cheap piece of certainty.
Questions
Follow your manufacturer's interval, and treat a long trip, significant gravel running or a long period of storage as a reason to inspect regardless of distance. Grease dries out while a van sits, so time off the road matters as much as kilometres on it.
A rumbling or growling noise that changes with speed, a hub or wheel that is noticeably hot after driving, or play felt at the wheel when it is jacked up. Any of these should be checked before you travel — a collapsed bearing can damage the hub, the axle and the brake assembly.
Yes. Shoes or pads, drums or rotors, and the electric brake or mechanical operation are all part of a service. Van brakes are commonly overdue simply because they are out of sight.
Yes, and with enough lead time to order parts if something is found. Bearings, brakes, suspension and tyre age are the items that end trips, and all of them are far cheaper to address in a workshop than on the roadside.
Yes, and it is the sensible way to do it. We can assess how the vehicle sits under towball weight, check its brakes and suspension for the trip, and tell you whether airbags or a GVM upgrade is worth considering for how you load it.
Related
Areas we service: Malaga · Wangara · Balcatta · Morley · Midland · Osborne Park · Perth CBD and the surrounding northern and north-eastern suburbs of Perth.
Tell us the vehicle, what it carries and what it is doing. You will get an itemised quote before any work starts — no upsells, no surprises.