Owner review: Trakmaster Pilbara Extreme

Many travellers don’t own the caravan they really want until their third try. It’s not that their first guess was wrong; it’s just that experience develops new priorities.

By this measure, my wife Wendy and I can deem ourselves very fortunate, as we have come pretty close to our ‘ideal’ mark on our first attempt, thanks to the many caravans we’ve reviewed over the years.

We had a 3500kg-capable Land-Rover Discovery 3 TDV6 diesel that we bought new in late 2007 specifically for remote area travel and wanted a compact off-road caravan that we could take to difficult places – and back – many times.

We looked for a manufacturer who made the sort of caravans with the comfort features we (Wendy!) wanted and after talking to a number of travellers we ended up at Melbourne-based, off-road, custom-built specialist, Trakmaster.

Not so old fashioned

Initially we thought that Trakmasters were a bit old-fashioned, but to celebrate their 20th Anniversary, they built a new, extreme rear-cutaway Pilbara model, with full thickness composite walls, exciting new decals and a tough ‘Tonka Toy’ look that we really liked.

Being ‘in the business’ I wanted to have the latest in sensible, new caravan technology. Talking to other Trakmaster owners convinced us that its Trakair air suspension was the way to go. The fact that our ‘Disco’ was also air sprung clinched the deal.

I also had experienced lithium batteries from Enerdrive of Brisbane on a Van Halen caravan and as I was keen to save both weight and space while living longer off-the-grid, I felt this was the way to go.

As I also fancied the idea of fresh coffee from a pod machine in a remote area and using the van’s microwave oven off the grid, we added a 1600W Enerdrive ePro Combi inverter/charger.

After looking at the confined place that we had to house the lithium system, Enerdrive came up with a tidy, compact circuit board housing all the main elements that even the quality-obsessive Steve Jobs would have been proud of!

To ensure our Lithium battery was properly charged off the grid, I initially specified two 150W Enerdrive full-thickness glass solar panels for the roof.

No beating the drum

I wanted the best brakes and axles and all signs pointed to North America’s Dexter, which is now joined at the hip with Europe’s AL-KO. However, Dexter didn’t have the disc brake option I wanted, so on Trakmaster’s recommendation I went with their off-road 12-inch drum system, combined with Dexter axles and Dexter DSC anti-sway, which I had positive experience with in both on and off-road conditions.

We (Wendy) wanted a space heater and I toyed between a gas and a diesel system, but as I’d already made the choice in favour of gas cooking (much faster to heat up and cool down than an electric ceramic system), I decided to specify a Truma E2400 gas system, both for its low level of servicing required and because I didn’t want to introduce another fuel to the caravan.

Because we intended to do a lot of remote area (free) camping and wanted to leave no trace, we ordered a separate 80-litre grey water tank in addition to the two fresh water tanks with their combined 182 litres.

Squeezing in the bathroom

Finally (and this was the deal breaker) Wendy wanted a separate shower and toilet bathroom like the ones we had experienced in large luxury vans. This put extreme pressure on my wish to have a caravan with a body measurement no more than 15ft x 6ft 6in, weighing no more than two tonnes!

I download floorplans from the Trakmaster website and scale-drew a layout that I thought would work. From the outset, then-Operations Manager Richard Metcalfe, was adamant Trakmaster would only build something that would work and tow properly.

In the end, Metcalfe came back and said they could build what I wanted, with one proviso: it would have a tandem axle, would measure 15ft 6in x 7ft and with the Ultraglaze cabinetry and bathroom wall, it would weigh closer to 2400kg.

I wilted. After all, it was still more than a tonne less than the Disco was legally able to tow and we weren’t seeking to take it into extreme rock-hopping terrain; simply on rough roads to little-visited places.

Queen goes in sideways

My layout dictated that the queen bed with its pillow-top, innerspring mattress ran transversely across the upswept rear of the Pilbara, while the separate bathroom stretched across the full front of the van to the left of the entry door.

In between there’s a galley with a full four-burner cooktop, griller and microwave on the left-hand wall, with a set-back half wardrobe above a 140-litre Waeco compressor fridge-freezer.

Opposite the galley I specified an L-shaped lounge and a rectangular table on an eccentric pedestal that allows us to seat four people at a pinch, above the Enerdrive battery, inverter/charger and circuit board.

The upper wall of the full-height caravan was lined with cupboards with no waste space. If I saw it in the design, I made sure it was filled.

My secret fear during the building stage over several months was that the 2950mm high caravan would look too tall for its width and that my feature-packed interior would be cramped and unworkable, but to my relief, neither was the case.

Thanks to its four large side wall windows and Wendy’s inspired choice of ‘Champagne’ Ultraglaze, white walls, dark brown benchtop and a light-coloured vinyl floor, the Pilbara is light-filled and looks far more spacious than its actual dimensions.

Good and bad?

So, what would hasn’t worked and what would we improve on next time around? Very little – certainly nothing important.

My first weekend shakedown a few days after taking delivery in March 2015 didn’t go that well. Determined to give my lithium battery and its 1600W ePro Combi inverter a workout, I heated a microwave meal, made several cups of Pod coffee and ran the LED lights, the water pump, sound system and heater pretty much all at the same time the first night while free-camping.

I awoke the next morning to find that the lithium battery had thrown its safety switch and shut down. How could this be? Sure, I had arrived late afternoon after a two-hour drive; it was overcast, but I had 300W of solar on the roof.

A call to Enerdrive quickly solved the problem and taught me an important lesson in lithium battery management.

Basically, lithium batteries charge faster and hold their charge longer than AGM batteries, but they need to be kept on charge – via a mains connection or their solar panels – when stored in between trips, to do this.

My problem is that I had taken delivery of my Trakmaster, parked it, unplugged, in the shade for the best part of a week with the compressor fridge running and the two-hour drive wasn’t enough to bring the battery back up to the demands I made on it.
Plugged into mains it recovered quickly, but I decided to fit a third 150W solar panel to the roof – just in case.

More power problems

I ran out of power again when travelling around Cape Leveque in Western Australia, when we camped, unplugged, in total shade, for five days. Rather than move, I plugged in a portable 160W solar panel, left it in the sun and the battery recovered.

My error was denying the battery any source of charging, while continuing to draw on it. You’re always learning. . .

During a multi-day trip to Omeo in the Victorian Alps for a Trakmaster owners’ get-together, the Pilbara felt a bit ‘nervous’ behind our Land-Rover. Had our van’s design been compromised to meet our layout requirements?

No. I traced the issue down to the fact that the van wasn’t towing level, allowing it to steer on its front tyres, rather than all four. A visit to Harding-Swift in Bayswater, Melbourne, sourced a new Hayman-Reese tow bar tongue with less drop and a shorter shank, which meant that the lever effect of the former longer tongue was eliminated. Problem solved!

Water pump failure

The 12v pump that moves waste water to my grey water tank also failed on our big northwest trip. I’d been using the grey water tank to store waste water, then releasing it in a safe and responsible way, rather than fitting a waste water hose in caravan parks or when free camping. I’ve got a new pump coming.

The front truck-mesh stone shield did its job on that trip, where we covered nearly one third of the 14,500km off sealed surfaces, but to its own cost and Trakmaster sent me a new one with a revised mounting system, at no cost.

The exterior picnic table warped slightly, but I’ve lived with it, as its replacement is not a DIY job and I now live 2000km north of the Trakmaster factory. Frankly, its quality is not up to the rest of the caravan and Trakmaster, now aware of this, have changed suppliers.

Live and learn

Apart from my battery issue, we had three equipment issues on our big trip to the northwest.

The first was that a rear wheel of the caravan began to grab when braking. This was traced to a combined issue of adjustment and grit that had found its way into the drum.

I also needed a new set of wheel bearings after the trip. Another ‘mea culpa’, as I happily drove through a series of shallow water crossings on the Kalumburu road, thinking the water would wash the dust out of my troublesome rear brake.

Wrong – what it did was allow water to enter the wheel bearings, as their seals, being hot, had opened up. What I should have done is to allow my brakes to cool before proceeding slowly through any water. As I said earlier, you’re always learning.

The third unexpected thing is that I had a stone nick one of the rubber airbag springs – not enough to cause an air leak, but enough to make me replace it for the next trip (and keep the ‘winged’ one as a spare).

Verdict

But that’s it. In nearly 30,000km of use, the Pilbara has performed almost faultlessly and (touch wood) none of its General Grabber AT2 tyres has ever punctured.

Setting appropriate on and off-road tyre pressures with the help of my dashboard-mounted Tyre Dog tyre pressure monitoring system and its dust cap pressure and temperature sensors has really paid off.

Finally, I can’t leave this story without commenting on two things: my wife’s choice of décor, which has drawn universal praise from everyone who has inspected our Pilbara (and has led to Trakmaster offering our layout as a standard option on their latest Pilbara S and Flinders models) and the quality of the entire caravan, thanks to the watchful eye of Trakmaster Production Manager, Don Brown.

Don has his own Trakmaster and impressed me by knowing every detail of our van throughout its production, often suggesting alternatives and coming up with solutions to problems that I had not even thought about. I can’t imagine a better custom caravan buying experience. . .