Rear suspension on the TD5, help please

Hello, New on here having just bought 03 plate TD5 (commercial) and in the process of making it a 5 seater. (got the seats and seat belts in)

Use to have a 54 plate RR vogue (before the divorce!)

The rear suspension on my TD5 has been replaced with coil springs.

Now the problem, I tow a large twin wheel caravan (I hate slow caravans)
and use to tramp along at the "legal" speed limit quite happily with out
a problem, bit on nose weight and the caravan, and it never twitched.

Towing at the weekend with the TD5 and it felt very unstable and
twitchy, I've got 18 inch hurricane wheels with scorpions on, however I
have got an adjustable height tow bar on at the moment which I plan to take off.
The caravan has the usual stabilizer hitch, but the problem is with the
land rover set up not the caravan as I have towed this caravan many
miles without a problem with the RR.

Any ideas?

Should I fit the air suspension back on?

Many thanks

I have a buccaneer schooner and a td5 with air on the rear and on 18", it does get a little side to side but that is due to the 55 profile tyres overall tho it is pretty stable, the disco seems to be a little sensitive to heavy nose weights on the caravan but with my 18ft beaver tail dosent seem to bother it carrying 3.5 tonne.

I tow a twin axel abbey spectrum with mine which has coil springs with no problem. Could it be the towing hitch height on the disco??

Thanks for the replies, could well be the tow bar as there is a lot of play in the adjustable height mechanism. I’ve checked the height and it’s correct.
I tow an Elddis Super Storm, 1600Kg empty 1900MPTL.

I had an air sprung rear on my previous TD5 that I had converted to coils. I had the choice to put normal or heavy duty springs on. As I rarely tow anything but a trailer/quad bike the normal springs were okay for me. Perhaps you need the beefier springs?

I converted mine to coil springs 2+ years ago and never had any bother towing anything the biggest being a trailor with sometimes easilya 2/1-2 tonne on it mines also on 18s

its worth cheking the whole suspension system shocks ,bushes ,watts linkage etc as well as springs including front

1. Check the nose weight of the fully loaded caravan - use bathroom scales. If you are over 150 kgs, that won't help stability.

2. Having coils rather than air springs shouldn't make that much difference to stability - imo opinion it's more a question of comfort.

However if the anything is worn that'll allow undesirable flexing.

Check stuff suggested by James such as the rear suspension bushes. The Watts linkage would be a classic for producing this sort of phenomena, as they control lateral movement - that's where I would start checking first, after the nose weight.

Dave

HI.. I have a similer problem... but i do have slight play in my steering box.. not noticeable on its own but with the caravan on the back its ruddy sh%t ya pants time any thing over 45 mph.... its bgetting sorted as we speak.... thank goodness..

I regularly tow 3 tonnes plus on my coil sprung D2 with no problems now that I've replaced the watts linkage and anti roll bushes - it is worth checking out the watts linkage as James suggested - when mine was knackered you could feel lateral movement and a clunking noise - see this fred