Stoney Creek Camper SC-FF Limited Edition

A few issues – First time use, and we can’t get gas to the burners, even with bottle connected and hoses connected. Also interior lights don’t work. Any clues from anyone?

Great Camper, but – The Stoney Creek Forward Fold Limited Edition is a very good quality camper with almost everything you need to make camping comfortable. The forward folds are a great use of space with a club lounge so you can sit inside if you want and a full size awning outside. The construction of the Stoney Creek Campers is very solid with all welded corners on the body and a substantial sub-frame and drawbar with serious off-road independent suspension.

The campers come fully plumbed and once you hang up the water heater on the back, you have hot water for showers and the sink, supplied by 140lt of water across two tanks. A four-burner stove really makes cooking as easy as home. It’s a little lacking in bench space, but you can get an extension added to the end of the kitchen that gives you a bit more.

The Limited Edition came with an automatic opener, so you just need to use the remote to open the camper up, then go inside, and lift the poles. If they tell you it takes two minutes to put up, they're not far wrong. Adding the awning and putting up your window awnings etc takes longer, but still great for a quick overnight stop.

If you want to fully enclose the awning area, then you'll definitely add a bit of time and the first time you put it up it's bound to take a little longer, but you'll soon get used to it.

Also bundled with the LE was an 85lt Evakool fridge and the instant hot water. Two essential additions if you don't have them.

What was missing was a DC Charger, with the anderson plug on the drawbar running straight to the battery. That's ok if you have dual batteries in your car with the charger on board, but not so good if you want to have the charger in the camper, close to the two 100ah gel batteries. There's also no 240v charger, but you could get both fitted for an extra cost or do them yourself if you're handy.

When we picked it up, we took it out for an overnighter to give it a shakedown and even though you're pulling a fair bit of weight, I have to say it tows beautifully.

One area that really lets it down is the water pumps. They are ridiculously loud. In fact the loudest I’ve heard on any camper, ever! I hooked up the hot water and ran the sink and the whole kitchen area vibrated, with the noise drawing the attention of other campers. I tried the pump for the shower and the sound was enough to scare off the wildlife in the lovely bush campground we were in. So much so that we literally couldn't run the water for long and certainly not at night. Fortunately, the campground had hot showers nearby, so we were able to use those. A little annoying since the camper was fully kitted out for having a shower right there, but unusable unless you feel like upsetting everyone around you. Not a great advertisement for the brand.

Another area that often needs attention is the mattress. It's king size, but as hard as a rock. We had bought a mattress topper anticipating it may be a little hard, but it wasn't enough to cushion us from what felt like lying on a concrete slab. I can probably fix that with a good memory foam-topper, but I decided to take the camper back to the workshop for them to have a look at the pumps.

Unfortunately, the first real test of the Stoney Creek service department was disappointing with very little being done to quiet the noisy pumps. Unless you consider a bit of foam tape under the pump enclosure to be a thorough job. The camper was returned to me with absolutely no noticeable difference in the offensively noisy pumps. I’ve since lagged all the pipes and tried to insulate the pumps, but they’re still appallingly noisy. Not sure where to go from here, as the service department appears to think “job done”.

Here’s a tip. If you’re looking at one of these campers, get them to run the water.

A pity really as it detracts from what could be a first class camper.