3.5t Horsebox and Anti Weave Grills

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Horsemad12

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Hi,

I am looking at getting a 3.5t horsebox, the plan is for a LWB with the small grooms area at the back. Most now come with high breast bars as standard, but the stories of horses jumping through still worry me.

So the questions are:

How many of you with the 3.5t lorries have the anti weave grills?
Do the horses (mine is 16.1hh) travel OK with them?
Where did you get it from and is it the design that swings?

Thanks,
 
I would just make sure you get a nice wide back door built, so if the worst should happen, you can get them out the back! The problem with anything like anti weave bars IMHO is they can cause probs if the horse tries to turn round to look at something. I have kown a horse break it's neck in a trailer before by getting its head stuck behind a head board on a partition, and although it's not the same, something similar happening would concern me!
 
I've just bought a 3.5T and were in the process of putting the grills in. My husband is an engineer so we are having them custom built so that they are hinged so you can load the horses with one person. I've got the extra height partition but I would have worried if we didn't put the grills in as well.

On the next lorry we get I will have a wider door and removeable breast bars I think.
 
I have a 3.5 tonne which I LOVE. It's a Vauxhall Movano van conversion, as when I looked into the van vs the coach built I couldn't really see what you go extra for the extra money..(the chasis are the same, they just cut them down and start again for the coach built ones - or the guy I had mine off does anyway)

From my experience I would say:

- Mine has the extra long top half of the ramp, so that the horse can get in and out a lot easier. If you are loading a big horse into the "sqaure" ramp ones I think it's really tight, and you might struggle with a big horse (see www.uniquecoachworks.com for pics of the ramp I mean).
- I'd say a collapsible breast bar is an absolute must. This means if the horse gets his front end over the breast bar you can collapse the breast bar back under him and push him back or allow him to walk out the back doors.
- The advantage of a van is that the back doors open to the full width of the vehicle, it'd be no trouble at all to allow the horse to walk out through them and step down if you had to. Agree with previous poster this is a good idea, there are horror stories of horses getting stuck in narrow trailer doorways.
- Weave bars are fine if you horse is a perfect loader...My friend has them in her identical van (same maker) and they are hinged so she can tilt them forward to load, you still have to pop the horses head through the gap as you load it still though, which i think is a bit fiddly (because they travel backwards you have them in your left hand, and have to turn them as they walk up the ramp - it's fine when they understand but the first time even seasoned loaders do get a bit confused i find!). Also, I travel big horses in mine alone with the partition removed, I'm not sure this would be as easy with weave bars, as the horse would have to keep its head through the gap, but would be able to swing it's body to travel herringbone if it wished. I was also worried about foals rearing and getting their feet hung up in them. On balance I decided if it came to it I'd rather they did go over the breastbar and we had to collapse it under them than got their legs hung up - a scraped stifle being preferable to a broken leg. I guess it depends on how you think your horse will react.

Finally re size and weight, unladed with 1/4 tank of petrol my van weighs 2 tonnes exactly. So this gives me 1500kgs to play with, which is loads. That was important for me because when i got it I had a great big ID x, so I don't have any living in mine (cheaper too!).

WRT height my van has 7 foot 4 inches head room and I travel my 17.1 fairly fine warmblood in there no trouble. He is 16 though and a seasoned traveller, which I think makes a difference, as he just marches in and stands still. My hefty ID x was 16.2 and only 6 though (and about 16.2 wide too lol!) and she travelled fine in there too.
 
I recently bought a coachbuilt racemaster 3.5t that had a relatively low breast bar and no weave bars which my husband has now modified - it was a lot cheaper than buying one perfect to start with and meant we could the strongest /best in other ways (and I was really paranoid about safety).

He built up the breast bar so it's now really high, and then mounted the weave bars above this. The weave bars are hinged to the wall of the box so open flat back against the wall for loading and then swing in once the horse is loaded and bolt into the top of the breast bar with long shoot bolts. They can also be secured against the wall if I don't want to use them / to prevent swinging when loading. We ordered the weave bars from Rideaway (smaller size) and then my husband modified them (cut off the bits which slot into the stable door and welded hinges on the side), I think the 2 weave bars came to just under £100 delivered which was a lot less than the extra we would have had to pay to get a box with them already fitted.

I only travel one horse (16.1hh ISH) and he travels really well like this.
 
When I built our 3.5t for the OH we decided to completely seperate the horse area from grooms area so no chance of horse getting stuck.
This is it. Tack lockers are underneath the horses head area.
Picture041.jpg

DSC05540.jpg


I also made the ramps wider than standard so easy to load/unload
Picture039.jpg
 
JunoXV - yours looks lovely, but I cannot afford custom built and the second hand ones don't seem to have a sep horse area - Do you take orders!?!

Katb - Likewise the ones in my price bracket do not have the wider doors.

It is so difficult as it is such an investment,

Thanks for the good advice so far!
 
Horsemad12 said:
JunoXV - yours looks lovely, but I cannot afford custom built and the second hand ones don't seem to have a sep horse area - Do you take orders!?!
Click to expand...
Not at the moment but also not ruling out the possibility in the future. ;) I would prefer the economy to be in better shape before leaving a well paid job to start a business. :eek:

When we decided to downsize for 7.5t we looked at a lot of conversions and TBH I wasn't impressed with the build quality on most of them or the design.
So we decided I would convert one myself. Ours has an ali body (keeps weight down) and including buying the chassis and all materials the total cost was just over £7,000. Lorry is currently valued at £18,600.
Very worth doing if you have access to the necessary skills
 
Juno - I like the sep horse idea, very nice. Mine has an 8 foot 10 long horse section (breast bar to bulk head), did you have to shorten yours to get the sep horse area?

Talking of price, I found it cheaper to source the van myself and then pay for the conversion. My 55 plate van with 93k on the clock cost £4000, and the conversion then cost an additional £4000 (£3200 plus VAT). To keep the cost down I didn't have a respray (saving £1500) and instead spent £80 on some very nice swirly graphics from ebay, didn't have the living (saving £800) since the "living" in a van ends up being a pair of seats over the wheel arches which I could live without and didn't have the fibre glass moulded panel ramp - just had flat faced ramps instead (saving £1000). I thought it was better to spend that money on a newer chasis and do the upgrades later if I needed to. Conservatively now it should be worth 10k, so again, worth doing that way if you can't build your own.
 
I would advise against fitting weave bars because during travel the horses neck is an aid to maintaining balance and requires freedom. I have actually seen strong metal weave bars bent during travel. A horse also tends to tug sideways when eating from a haynet causing further restriction if weave bars are fitted.
We have completely separate living living area in our 3.5t horseboxes, slightly less payload but far safer.
 
We had our breast bar setup changed so that it was fully collapsible in an emergency. Cost a couple of £100 I think but worth it for peace of mind. It also means we can use the full length of the van if we ever need to transport something non-horsey as everything comes out.
 
I agree. A collapsable breast bar is a good safety addition, especially where there is no separate living area and the horse is consequently looking directly into a big open space. A nervous horse sees through the rear window as its escape route and this is what has caused so many problems with open plan rear-facing horseboxes.
 
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