Fleetwood Owners Club

I currently have a 2 wheel powrtouch motor mover on my TA Heritage 640EB. It works OK but strains a bit getting up the drive and I cannot turn the van on the drive, which was easy with my last, single axle van.
Can anyone advise me what sort of turning circle is needed to turn a TA van with AWD mover and which make/model has the best turning circle?

Gordon

Hi Gordon, glad to offer you my experiences.

In 2010 when we purchased our 640EB we dug deep and had the AWD Powrtouch and I couldn't be happier with the turning circle although I have had some problems. The rubber boots on the motors have perished and I had water ingress on the nearside front motor which seized it and it was replaced just before the warranty ran out. I would definitely purchase Powrtouch again but this time the latest model.

The fitter who did my job said nearly all of his Powrtouch twin axle customers came back to be upgraded with a second set of movers so this convinced me to go AWD from the start. When turning the tyres are nearly forced off the rims but it's no worse than scrubbing them when attached to the car I guess. Whichever brand you get the turning circle will be about 6m radius. I like the Powrtouch because the electronics seem superior, there's no need to full stop when applying slight changes of direction and when on full lock the inner wheels are slowed to a smooth crawl where other brands apply a stop start pulse which gives the van a duck-tail waddle. I also use the speed adjustment when things get tight, not sure if other brands even have this?

There's plenty of power for hills and kerbs, it eats them. For a couple of years I had some cutting out problems due to low battery voltage though. Sometimes the movers wouldn't work at all because the battery was completely dead. Eventually I found this was caused by an intermittent dry joint in my PDU charger, there's some posts in the technical section somewhere about that. This led to me needing a new battery. Four motors are power hungry!

I will see if I can get a video of it turning because we may be out in it soon!

Depending on your location I have a couple of contacts who may be able to upgrade your existing movers with matching secondhand kit. This would be my first choice and it saves you the hassle of selling the old movers.

While a totally agree with Paul there is another option for you to consider if the only issue with your current setup is locating the van on your drive.

Take a look at the battery operated "Mister Mover" it attaches to the hitch coupling, is very powerful and gives an excellent turning circle. On the last look they were around half the price of a mover. But of course the downside is you can't take it with you and you'll need somewhere to store/charge it.

If you do decide to go with the awd movers the new units are much lighter than adding like for like which is important in preserving your payload.

Powrtoich's new unit look good and their service/repair attitude is first class.

Thank you both for your replies and comments. I emailed Powrtouch last night asking for some information and received a call from their technical department first thing this morning, which was quite impressive. The chap was really helpful and went through some options including an updated twin mover which was considerably cheaper than the AWD version. However my thoughts were that unless I went for the AWD version I would not really achieve much.
In the end, after mulling it over I bit the bullet and ordered the evolution AWD with the automatic engaging and am now waiting for the fitter to contact me.

Regards
Gordon

Hi Gordon, totally agree with the other lads we have a Powertouch AWD fitted to our 640i. Never used it to do a complete turn but agree that it seems to want to remove the tyres when turning.
I find it best to let wife use it she loves it.
best of luck with it.

Regards,
John.

We have a twin axle van and power touch are ok but not that fast at turning forward speed a 7/8 meters Minute if you lucky
Battery wise the biggest amp battery you can in battery box the better if want turn the van on it quicker I don't put mover front wheels and I lift the front so front axle is just rubbing the ground
But each one to there own