Hi Al,
No problem. There were many things (like the way it towed, and how basically solid it was) that I was really impressed with. There were a few other details that I wasn't so impressed with. To answer your points:
1) I think it was a 2015 build.
2) There were a few things I found with the trailer that bugged me. None were huge issues, but they bugged me as all of them were things that I would have expected Cub would have fixed and sorted out years ago, given that they have been building essentially the same core design of trailer for a long long time.
- Water leak into drivers side rear door - We had a tropical roof fitted which was great for keeping the temperatures down, minimising condensation, and making it a little quieter in the rain BUT the way the water ran off the tropical roof when it rained was not well considered. The tropical roof basically funnelled the water off in a way that it ran down the side of the camper (inevitable), BUT it ran down on top of the drivers side rear door. The door construction was such that it had additional layers of canvas stitched onto the outside of the main canvas and the water ran down directly on top of these extra layers of canvas. The extra layers of canvas essentially formed a little ledge, maybe 2-3mm wide, and the water ran down on top of this, so it was inevitable that water would get in eventually, and when it did it there was a lot of water wicked through this canvas that ran down the door zips and then flooded the rear fold floor. Without the tropical roof this would never have been a problem but it obviously wasn't wondered when they added the tropical roof. I did sort it by getting some flexible glue-like sealant and running that along the top off the door canvas but this didn't look great and shouldn't have been needed if they had thought about the design properly.
- Tension on canvas. In a similar vain to the first point, the added weight of the tropical roof, plus the small amount of downward force you need to apply to it to keep tension on it then forces the front end of the tent down. This made it impossible to keep a suitable amount of tension on the front canvas sections. Again, without the tropical roof it likely wouldn't have been an issue, but once fitted it was an easy problem to foresee. The lack of tension in the canvas caused it to sag inwards, made worse when it was wet. If we hadn't had the extra wide camper (see comments below) this wet canvas would then have been touching our bedding. This problem could potentially be solved by adding some vertical braces under the front tent bow, but this its something that should have been sorted from the factory rather than me having to find my own solutions, and in the end we sold the camper before I got around it.
- Annex poles. I didn't like the way the annex poles fitted to the side of the camper canvas by basically pushing the against the internal tent boxes and then holding them in place with velcro. I understand that this allows them to fix in place without needing holes in the main canvas wall, but it meant that the annex poles were "fixed" to canvas which can move around and slide over the internal tent bows. This meant that again it was difficult to maintain proper tension in the annex roof as any breeze would cause the annex poles to slip off their location against the tent bows.
This is not to say that these aren't good campers. They have many good attributes and given the length of time they've been on the market they must be a good product, but these things did bug me all the same as they seem like simple things to fix if people had bothered to try.
3) One thing I'd advise is go for the one with the bigger trailer. I might get the names wrong here, and they've changed them all since we had ours, but when we got ours I think there was the Brumby which was the smaller trailer (smaller in length and width) and then the Escape which was bigger. The extra size is definitely worth it. You get more space at the end of the bed for packing things in, and you have say 100mm between the sides of the bed and the canvas. That space is good for putting your phone on etc, but also keeps your bedding away from the canvas so it doesn't soak in any condensation. That extra length and width then also gets added to the rear fold section as well which makes a surprising difference to the amount of floor space you have. I think the Escape was wide enough to fit bunk beds across the trailer, whereas the Brumby wasn't.
4) I had no issues with finding sufficiently flat ground for the rear fold as it had adjustable legs so that aspect was fine. In theory I liked the idea of the forward folds more initially, given that they already had a lounge set up inside, and they folded out within their own footprint. However, in the end we preferred the greater flexibility the rear fold offered in using the space inside the tent. We were able to have a daughter (only 1 year old at the time) sleeping inside with us, and still have plenty of space to move around her. This would have been more difficult in the forward fold.
All in all it was a good solid trailer, but I'd probably not buy another one.
