Caravan Dealers - are any of them any good?

Thanks for the tip!  Changing every three years is something I hadn't thought of.  Sounds like a bit of hassle but in return I suppose you remain problem free and basically each caravan holds it price, so you don't lose out financially either.

What's an ABS panel?  (bear in mind, 8 years motorhoming and nil years in a caravan).

I know the dealer you mention as we've been to see their Oxfordshire branch which isn't very far from us.

 Hi @CaravanRamblings just spent a happy 15 minutes browsing your blog.  We live not far from Anita’s Touring Caravan Park and Holiday Cottages but never heard of it (but then, we tend to take our breaks further away than our local bus could take us too!)  I've never been to Cropredy festival, though the village of Cropredy is nice.  My partner helped out a few times at the festival which is mostly folk/folk rock so not my thing (I'm more of a EDM person) but Fairport Convention were massive in the late 60s.  

Anyway, enough of that........

I found your blog really interesting and it was the first caravan blog I've ever read.  I'll be dipping in for more for sure in the future.

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene

Google will explain.

It's like a hard moulded plastic. It has a propensity to crack particularly if under pressure from say screws over tightened or due to the state of the roads and the motion of the van. It was used mainly as back panels but sometimes front as well, you can see from my blog we had a major failure but every van we have owned with ABS panels has suffered cracking to some extent.

It's an absolute sod to fix. Nothing sticks to it. In theory Acetone can melt it as can heat but I've never had any success making it good.

Our new panel is GRP (Fibreglass basically) which I'm far more comfortable with.