Category Archives: Maintenance

What’s The Question I Get Asked a Lot?

05 Wednesday Jun 2024

Posted by in Accessories, Caravan Chronicles Shopping, Electrical, Maintenance, Reviews, Tool Bag

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

“What’s in your toolbox when travelling?”

Tricky one… I don’t have a tool box anymore. I recently started mooching around the internet for a smaller tool box… or rather a tool bag. I used to use up until a few months ago a Stanley Tool Bag. It was lighter than a tool box, I could get more in it… and I could loose more in it too. I had tools at the bottom of that bag I thought I’d lost years ago.

The price of some of the ABS tool boxes, even the small ones took me back a bit. Which prompted the search for alternatives.

As most of my tinkering when out and about seems to be based on electrical, I ditched some of the other stuff…. well really returned a lot back to my workshop. That left me with a selection of tools that I wanted to take. In the workshop most of my tools are Wera, Snap-On, Klein, Knipex, Wiha and Channellock. Not the cheapest brands, but as a lot of my time was spent tinkering with aircraft back in the day, then you soon realise why some tools command a premium price. I still wince at the cost of a set of stainless steel wire wrapping tools for securing aircraft fixings.

So sorting out my ‘portable’ tools I tend to use semi-named brands. Mac do a half decent range of screwdrivers and a small plier and cutter selection. Cheap enough from B & Q (Home Depot) not to have nightmares when finishing something making sure you have picked up all your tools.

The next thing I needed was a bag to store them in. I had a specific size in mind to allow them to fit in one of the lockers of the 5th Wheel… this was to become my “mini- workshop” locker that also housed a box of specific spares for the 5th Wheel.

I do have a separate little bag containing tools for the e-bikes that is small enough to drop into one of the bike bags, but that is a bit specific to the MiRider bikes.

Buckets, Bags, Boxes…

I started looking at tool bags, One company bought my eye in the USA… they made tool bags and tool rolls out of old canvas fire hoses. I soon stopped looking when I saw the price… for what they were asking I wanted the fire engine the hose came from as well.

I spotted at the bottom of the Amazon page a company called Ryker. They seemed to offer a bag that was just at the right size and they also had tool rolls and tool pouches. I procrastinated for a few days trawling the web for something that might be better… In the end I didn’t find anything for the same price. Not the cheapest I found but had lots of good reviews.

So my portable tool collection is now housed in a small tool bag, small tool roll and two tool zip bags. It all fits in the storage locker on the 5th Wheel or in the tool compartment of the Amarok. It’s all light enough for me to carry it in one hand as well.

Take a Closer Look….

Yep crimp tools are the main thing in my bag… and a couple of types of wire strippers for different cable structures. For automotive use everything should be crimped, never soldered and heat shrunk. I’m still looking for a small portable heat gun (not a gas powered flame type) that can run on rechargeable or 12 volts. I know they are out there somewhere!

A selection of common screwdrivers along with a torque screwdriver so that terminal screws can be tightened to the required torque and not overdone. (If you have any dealings with Victron equipment, you will know they spec a torque for every connector!)

Above: A neat carabina clip containing 7 holders that allow you to easily store the most used hex bits. You can pop them out single hand and return the bit easily after using it. Saves routing round for the correct bit.

I carry two multimeters, now in their own cases inside the bag. One is a standard fairly cheap all round meter (left) and the other an AC /DC clamp meter that also can double as a general multimeter. Sometime having just one won’t cut it when fault finding. I’m undecided if I should switch out my general multimeter for one of my oscilloscope meters… so I can see CANBUS signals when fault finding. Same size so no storage issues.

If you think I missed out on hex bits…. well there is a full set in one of the tool bag pockets.

Let’s Roll With It…

OK this is still a work in progress… The Tool Roll.

Handy little roll actually. You can hang it up on the wall, it has a couple of removable pouches held in by velcro and a few clips to allow additional tool pouches to be added.

I used them to store 1/4 inch drive sockets and bits. The handles are stored in the first and second main pouches. Along with a 1/4 inch drive torque wrench that allows me to correctly tighten up larger terminals, including lithium battery terminals. My torque screwdriver is only rated up to 12Nm. I also have three 1/4 inch thumb wheels for hex bits for those hard to reach little places.

Next compartment is the long reach sockets. These allow you to slip on a socket and ratchet onto a long thread terminal or threaded rod. If you recognise the two sets…. the one above with blue handles and the long reach sockets……. they are Aldi / Lidl specials… each set was cheap as chips and if you look closely they are made by the same company that makes specialist tools for one of the major German tool companies. I recon buying these saved me about £120 over the named brand.

Finally some instrument screwdrivers… and a spirit level (Why?)

Last compartment… still working on it…. I did find my other pair of plumbers pliers though!

Finally…

Last two tool bags…

Odd collection of crimps and a full set of cable ferrules…. The spares box in the 5th Wheel has a full set of crimps… spare 13 pin plug, MelTruck EBS 24v 7 pin plug for the brake system, Fuses, Heat shrink, stainless fittings for the sun canopy, sets of stainless screws, cap head bolts, nuts, washers etc. If there is enough interest I’ll go through my spares box in a future article.

The business card style box (photo below) was a bit of a find. I was looking for removable draw organisers fr the workshop and after a lot of searching came up empty. However changing my search to ‘business card boxes’ found these… a box of 100 only cost me about £20 delivered. removing the lids and using them as trays as well gave me 200 storage compartments. I’m now on my second box of 100.

…. and you can never ever have enough tip ties…..

So that is a quick roundup of “What’s in my tool bag” thingy posts on you-tube. Not very interesting for 99% of people out there, but everyone seems to do it now and again.

So, I’ll bet the next question is…. “OMG love the bags where can I get them from?”

All available from Amazon…. I’m not affiliated with Ryker or sponsored by them, but I will get a few pennies if you absolutely can’t live without these and buy them through the links below. In the couple of months I have been using them I find that they are good quality, stitching and zips are up to mustard and the material seems to be hard wearing.

There are other similar products available if you follow the links on to Amazon, some cheaper too. You might find something that is more suited to your needs and price range, but have a look at tool bags instead of tool boxes. For me it was a bit of a game changer and space saver…. no to mention the weight and the fact I don’t need to get a big tool bucket or box out that contains everything.

More Jobs Ticked Off…

19 Sunday May 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Caravan Road Lights, Donkey Creek Farm, Electrical, Fifth Wheel Company, Maintenance, Projects, Water & Plumbing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

OK we are still working on a few bits and pieces but the weather on Friday and Saturday was ideal for cleaning the outside of the 5th Wheel. So while Sue made a start on the cleaning of the nose cap, I finished the first stage of the water pump relocation project and upgraded the wiring.

At some point the original wiring had been modified to include a 10 Amp socket in the wet bay to allow the use of an external pump to fill the fresh water tank. We still wanted to use this as the original external electrical connector was missing the original plug and it was just easier to sort out the wiring. It had been modified using 6 amp rated cable to both eh internal water pump AND the 10 socket. All fused on a single 10 Amp fuse. The wiring I upgraded to 16 amp rated cable but retained the 10 Amp fuse. So there should be no issues with cable rating in the future.

You can see from the photo above some of the work involved in moving the water pump. It was originally mounted where the holes are on the vertical wall. This resonated quite badly as it is located just under the bathroom and was particularly loud at night if the loo was flushed.

So to reduce the vibration from the pump before mounting it in a different location I made a aluminium cradle to mount the pump to and sat this on rubber isolation mounts before mounting it to the floor using stainless steel bolts, washes and lock nuts….. in fact I used stainless hardware for all the mods.

The next job was to install a 0.75 L SeaFlo accumulator with the bag set to 15psi and isolate this from water knock caused by the pump using a stainless jacket flexible hose in a loop. I have another stainless hose that will be used in a future upgrade that will allow this pump to be used to draw water from a 120 litre bladder in the back of the pickup truck….. but for now that’s going to be a end of season upgrade.

The two valves [in blue] are used to isolate the feed from the water tank and the output from the pump and are a bit untidy…. these will be repositioned shortly as I’m going to add an outlet to allow me to connect a hose so I can wash off the bikes and flush the grey water drain pipe when I disconnect after dumping on a serviced pitch. I’ll also swing the pump filter 90 degrees for a bit of space saving and I’m thing about a water treatment pre filter between the tank and pump. We have a filter on a separate clear water dispensing tap the we use for the kettle or food prep…. but this would allow all the taps to be protected.

The result of moving the pump, anti knock loop and accumulator is that now we cannot hear the water pump running in the caravan. Result!

Sue working hard cleaning the front locker wall after going a grand job on the front cap above. The task of cleaning…. including the use of a tooth brush around all the door seals eventually took two whole days.

If anyone has tips about restoring the plastic handles on the lockers I’d be grateful if you could leave a comment. I’ve been steered to something called “The Pink Stuff” miracle cleaning paste by a couple of other 5th wheel owners

Let there be light…. more light in fact!

The other title upgrade was to the rear of the 5th Wheel. I have been reading up on some proposed lighting changes for articulated trailers in some countries. What used to be called front and rear marker lights seem to have gone through a name change….. these are now called “edge out lights”.

If you are parked in a straight line they are not required to be seen, but if you park at an angle exposing the edge of the trailer, the edge is required to be seen by either on coming traffic or following traffic… depending on the angle you are parked at. I’m not exactly sure how this affects things in general in the UK, but it was interesting that I picked up on the watching a couple of training videos about hitching and unhitching a articulated trailer in preparation for your HGV test.

As I understand it, if you are stopped and an edge of the trailer is exposed past the normal line of the prime mover unit and trailer straight line width then this edge must be marked with lights.

From the front our ‘marker lights’ seemed to be located in the correct position…. but I could not find out about the rear in much detail, so a quick chat with a man that knows all about this he pointed me in the right direction. Although that said he was also unclear as how this would affect 5th wheel caravans as he thought it might only apply to commercial vehicles. I did mention that the VW Amarok as most of the heavier pickups are actually listed and taxed as commercial vehicles. That brought some “Hmmm’s and Ahhh’s” into the conversation….. including “in that case you will need the ‘angles of death’ stickers in Europe….. Angles Morts”

These lights show red to the rear and orange to the front. As they are located at the widest part of the trailer…. on this side that has to include the awning frame they indicate the edge of the trailer to the rear…. and from the front the amber side also indicated the edge of the trailer to oncoming traffic.

A really handy thing for me is when driving even during the day I have my side lights on. The amber light I can see in my side mirrors and it clearly marks the end of the trailer…. in inclement weather this has become a bit of a game changer as I now can clearly see even in a lot of road spray where the back of the trailer is.

when following lorries I always notice how bright these tiny LED rear lights on rubber stalks are that stick out from the side of the trailer…. I tend to notice these before I sometimes see the rear light cluster….. these are the same… they are CE marked along with the UK / Euro markings so must be compliant with regs but they are brighter that the 5th wheels rear red side lights….. and the more rear lights I have hopefully will reduce the chance of someone getting to intimate with the rear of the trailer!

Personal note….

Thanks to everyone asking how I’m progressing….. the chemo is going well and I seem to be quite lucky as I have very few side effects to the point that really the couple I have is a mild inconvenience.

I have settled down in to a routine of having a stoma and bag…. bit of a shock to me when I had it done as it wasn’t mentioned in the pre-op that this might be an outcome….. but there again it might have been…. I was on that much medication I was convinced that I’d had a conversation for about an hour with a man stood at the end of my bed dressed in 1040’s clothes complete with trilby hat and chain smoking staring up the ward never taking his eyes of someone I could not see because of the curtains around my bed. He told me he was tasked with keeping an eye on this person as he was suspected as being a spy for the Germans.

What the hell were they medicating me with!!

Only a few days away from the big TourFest North West at Donkey Creek Farm… if you are going please drop by and say high. Sue and I would love to see you. Henry might be a bit noisy though!

A Few Little Jobs Done…

03 Wednesday Apr 2024

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Fault Finding, Caravan Servicing, Donkey Creek Farm, Electrical, Fifth Wheel Company, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Technical

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

It seems such a long time since I posted anything.

Last time out with the Dreamseeker I noticed that the charging voltage when we were hooked up to the truck was only about 12.1 to 12.3 volts as measured in the Dreamseeker battery box.

I know that the VW Amarok puts out 14.6 to 14.8 volts, measured at the 13 pin socket AND indicated on the digital voltmeter I installed in the dash. So it was time to do a bit of investigating.

After measuring the resistance of the charging circuit and fridge circuit it was clear there was a bit of an issue. First stop was to disassemble the Dreamseeker’s 13 pin plug. All became clear…. The cable had been terminated in the socket with soldered ends and were suffering corrosion (solder very dull) and cable degradation….. the copper conductors when stripped of their insulation were black. All in all not good.

I wanted to replace the whole 12 core cable with a replacement but unfortunately I didn’t have a length in stock long enough. I usually keep a length suitable for replacing the cable and plug on a normal bumper tow caravan.

The simple solution for the time being would be to cut back as much as I could and install a new 13 pin plug with correctly crimped ferrules on the cable.

I cut off the old plug and stripped back the protective cover from the cable allowing enough to shorten the individual conductors to the correct length and inspect them for internal corrosion before crimping on the ferrules ready for termination.

The torque setting for these terminations are listed as a minimum of 5Nm to a max of 8Nm so I set my torque screwdriver to 6.5Nm. A happy medium I think.

The new plug was reassembled and I could get on with testing it. At the Amarok I measured 14.7 volts on the leisure battery circuit (same on the fridge circuit) and at the leisure battery I measured 13.9 volts and 9 amps charge, which considering the two 110Ah AGM leisure batteries are at the rear of the Dreamseeker I was happy with the loss.

Something I’m going to try…

While I was doing all this I started thinking (I’d also just seen the price of 13 core trailer cable per metre!) Why are we using this cable?

I have a length of woven kevlar cable sleeve (used in the aviation world) and I could thread my own cable…. upgrading the 1.5mm2 to 2.5 and the 2.5mm2 to 4mm and the “cable” would… (actually is…. as I have made one up now)… a lot more flexible than the existing product as it allowed the individual cables to move and slide past each other. I also used marine grade coated copper cable, so no corrosion of the strands.

4mm2 cable was a bit of a faff to terminate in the commonly available 13 pin plugs, but I believe the genuine ” German Jager manufactured plugs are acceptable for 4mm cable and they even have a crimp terminal version. So I’m going to do a bit more investigating as if I can get 4mm2 leisure battery and fridge circuits from end to end, that will reduce the voltage drop… which is always a step forward.

I’m also looking again at a high current circuit using Anderson connectors between the Truck and 5th Wheel. Currently I’m thinking of a 50 amp circuit with a 30 Amp DC to DC charger installed in the Dreamseeker…. ready for the battery upgrade. (along with a solar install, when I can find a suitable company to work with on that project)

Tourfest Northwest… as arranged by “The Caravan Addys”

Sue and I will be at Tourfest Northwest hosted at Donkey Creek Farm near Warton in May (24th to 28th) drop in and say “Hi”……” see you in a bit“

A Bit Of a Follow Up…

02 Saturday Sep 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Dash Cam, Hitch Camera, Maintenance

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

This is just a bit of a follow up to A Bit Of An Upgrade… really. After installing the new camera on the 5th wheel, I went ahead and installed a new camera for hitching up. Now obviously hitching up a 5th wheel is a bit different to a tow ball and having a camera in the right position makes it so much easier… So the view in the ‘mirror’ is now a bit different!

The cameral is aligned with the hitch centre line so it should make reversing back on to the pin a doddle…. OK I have square it up a bit since taking the photos! The system I opted for allows the addition of up to 4 cameras to the screen and I have the option of displaying any combination of these cameras in single camera, two camera or four camera in various patterns, all easily configurable from the screen. So for the moment I have it configured so that each camera is displayed full screen and I can simply swop between them using the CHannel button.

Mounting the camera was pretty easy…. I used a short length of 50mm aluminium angle and with a deft bit of drilling in the right places it allowed me to mount the slim licence plate style camera on the top of the Roll-N-Lock cover.

From a distance it doesn’t stand out too much. I sprayed the aluminium angle with etch primer then a couple of coats of black bed liner so it almost matches into the black of the Roll-N-Lock… but a quick glance I don’t think you would notice it from the rear.

So I think that is that project finished…. until I decide to do the trailer side view cameras that is!

Getting A Slide On…

04 Friday Aug 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Accessories, Amarok, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Tow Vehicle, VW Amarok

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

After our trip out to Donkey Creek Farm I started procrastinating about the slide out bed we used to have in the Amarok. Did I need it… was it worth it….. should I put it back in? Well my body kind of made the decision for me after loading and unloading some heavy boxes from the bed reaching over the opened tailgate it kind of said “We ain’t doin’ that again big boy“.

I had to set about working out how to install the base of the slider in and around the Reese 5th wheel hitch and where it could be mounted. It also needed to be raised up 35mm so it would pass over the 5th wheel hitch cross rails and still allow me to pull the pins so the hitch could be lifted out if required.

I got lucky…. with only having to cut out the rear cross bar the slide bed would fit and the original mounting holes lined up with the holes I drilled in the truck bed when I first installed it. Next step was to fabricate some spacers to raise it to the correct height.

I just happened to have a couple of blocks of high density poly in black so cut 4 100mm long by 35mm wide slats to fit under the frame and drilled 10mm holes through them for the mounting bolts. A quick trip to Francis Kirk – my local engineering fastening company. (I’ve been going there since 1976 for all my fastenings) got me four M10 grade 8 bolts of the correct length… I even splashed out on coated ones and nylock nuts.

A test fit of the sliding frame allowed me to see where I needed to cut so it would clear the hitch. A bit of quick work with a four inch grinder and cutting wheel and it slid in without any problems. I needed to remove the original locking pin system and a couple of coats of black rust preventative paint on cut areas that I’d smoothed off with a fine grinding disc soon had the sliding tray ready to be fitted again.

I did a couple of other mods that allowed the ray to slide out further. Previously it only came out about an inch past the tail gate, now it comes out about 10 inches which will have a great advantage… more on that later.

It was now time to refit the decking and do some trimming as required so it would fit around the hitch.

I cut the sheet so that the section in the truck would remain in one piece and if I needed to the hitch could be lifted out and the cut section replaced giving me a full size sliding bed once again. I do like having options!

The trimming was actually quite easy. The board is Phenol faced marine ply and quite easy to trim. I gave all the edges, especially the new cut edges several coats of clear brush on wax and let it soak into the ply. I’ve found that this is usually better than any polyurathane edge sealant when it is in an area that is prone to dinks and abrasion. The wax penetrates quite a lot and soaks into the layers protecting them from water.

Everything was given a spray and rubdown with Boeshield as a protective against the elements and looks as good as the day I installed it.

Next little job is to find two waterproof boxes to mount on the sliding bed either side of the hitch for my recovery kit and straps. This is why I wanted to make the slide tray come out further than it originally dis so I would have better / easier access to the two “fingers” either side of the hitch.

I need some low profile narrow boxes 200mm wide, 200mm high and about 600mm long with a hinge lid. I did start looking around at what is out there but I suspect that they might need to be fabricated out of aluminium diamond tread plate.

A couple of bonus things…. there is enough space under the 5th wheel hitch to allow me to store two of the “Really Useful Box” company’s boxes under the hitch which will be fairly secure when the slide tray is stowed.

The second is there is now enough room under the sliding bed to be able to store some kit and it pulls out far enough for me to sit the Cadac on for a bit of tail gate BBQ’ing.

Flushed With Success…

19 Friday May 2023

Posted by in Caravan Electrics, Maintenance, Technical, Thetford Toilet Repair

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

We have just been for a short stay at Donkey Creek Farm in Freckleton, near Warton…. just up the road from Lytham…. that’s near Blackpool. OK you get the idea. We can’t recommend this site highly enough, in fact in a break of usualness I’m going to write a little review.

OK back to the main event. We pitched, set up shop and sat down to the usual post pitch brew…. “Ah I thought… I’ll just pop to the loo before sitting down”…. Pushed the blue button on the Thetford toilet and….. nothing, nada, not the slightest hint of a flush pump running. OK we had this once before and it was the fuse that had corroded, probably since it was located in one of the dumbest places possible…. but I won’t go into that. Nope not the fuse, terminal looked clean (probably because I’d given them a coat of protective terminal gel. Phooey it had to be the circuit board.

Using my trusty Swiss Army knife I peeled back the big Thetford sticker on top of the loo… and retrieved the circuit board. It wasn’t looking too clever.

The circuit board was connected to the loo’s wiring via an edge connector… OK for some applications. However on removing the edge connector the copper circuit board tracks had simply corroded away tot he point there was not much copper left on the circuit board.

The other issue was the edge connector was an IDC type (Insulation Displacement Contact) which basically means the wire is squeezed into a knife like ‘V’ in the terminal cutting into the insulation to make the contact.

The upshot of this was the circuit board had corroded, the contact surfaces where the connector contacted the circuit board pads had corroded and the cables had corrosion on their conductors. (in fact I had to cut the cables back by about 60mm to get to good un-corroded conductors)

Going Full MacGyver….

I did have a spare circuit board…. back in the Bat Cave at home….. wouldn’t do much good though as the edge connector was toast. With a Swiss Army penknife…. and my trusty tool bag… Time to do a “MacGyver” and get this thing flushing. I just happened to have a strip of 6 amp terminal block… well doesn’t everyone have a spare strip of terminal block? I cut the connector free from the wiring loom one lead at a time and transferred this across to the terminal block. Once all 6 were moved across it was a simple matter of finding Positive and Negative, jumping the Negative to the Negative side of the flush pump and providing a short fly lead that when simply touched onto the correct terminal on the terminal strip would run the pump.

The rest of the stay went well…. got some cycling in to Lytham for morning coffee’s… watched a few planes and watched the wildlife.

Back In The Bat Cave…

Back home it was time to fashion a contrivance that would not suffer the same fate…. heading into the Bat Cave I had an idea…

The terminal strip offered a way to still make the circuit board removable and replaceable but without the drawbacks of the edge connector.

I did try to source an edge connector but as per usual it was something that was a bit of a bugger to locate… unless I wanted 50 of the things shipped direct from China.

Here is what I cam up with. I’d directly solder short leads onto the circuit board and protect them with a coating of track varnish… something used to coat bare circuit board tracks on prototype boards to stop them from corroding. The short leads would be crimped with a boot lace ferrule after dipping the stripped ends of the cable in a protective anti-oxidising grease.

The finished article prior to coating the soldered terminals with a protective circuit board varnish, and finally assembled back into the circuit board holder…

Installation…

Installation was fairly quick and easy, the wires from he loom that I’d previously terminated on the terminal strip while away in the caravan were removed in turn, cut back to make sure there wasn’t any corrosion in the conductors, dipped in anti-oxidising grease before having a boot lace ferrule crimped on and being fastened into the new terminal strip.

The whole lot fitted neatly into the space below the circuit board and hopefully my little fix will keep the loo flushing successfully for the foreseeable future.

Another Little Job…

A while ago I swopped out the two LED spotlights above the bed (reading lights) for two that were a little less bright and that had USB sockets in their base. This left me with two ‘spare’ LED spotlights that matched those in the lounge area.

We have always thought that the location of these existing spots are great for reading, but not if you are having a meal. The lights provide a saintly halo behind your head but you plate of nom nom’s in front of you in shadow.

So I installed one of the lights right slap bang in the middle of the front overhead lockers points down at the table. So now when we are having a TV dinner with the lights low I can still see what I’m stabbing my fork into. It’s also handy of you want to do one of those artistic foodie shots…. here’s what we are having tonight.

That’s it for the moment…. unless you want to see a picture of a vary lazy cat who didn’t want to get up. Everything is better with a cat… especially if it is Henry.

Lighting Up The Scene…

25 Saturday Mar 2023

Posted by in Accessories, Car Trailer, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Road Lights, Electrical, Gadgets, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Technical, Tow Vehicle, Towing, Vehicle Wiring Projects

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

A while ago I upgraded the lights on our caravan by changing the functions round and added two new LED reversing lights which I can’t understand why I hadn’t done this years ago. In daylight they are bright… and at night they are really bright… retina burning bright according to reports. Reversing into a dark pitch is a lot easier and safety wise having an additional set of tail and brake lights with two large bright rear fog lights instead of the single factory 21 watt light mounted almost as low as you can get on the rear of the caravan is a vast improvement in my mind. You can read about my changes here… “Put Yer Lights On Mate…“

Following that article I had lots of people contact me letting me know they liked what I had done and considering upgrading themselves. Not a clue if anyone did, but that’s how these things go. I did have another email from a gentleman which was a bit different. Now I’ve edited it a bit as it was originally two emails and included a company name and some specific details which I’m sure they would not wish me to publish to the world…. here’s the gist of it though:

“Hi Simon, been reading your blog for a while and I read your post about upgrading your caravan lights. I was wondering if you might be able to help with something we would like to do with our trailers or could put us in touch with someone who can? We have around eight trailers that are used on various locations separately or as a group and are towed by a variety of vehicles, mostly our own but occasionally by contractors. Most of our trailers have additional side lighting powered off the trailers own batteries which are charged from the vehicle or while on site from generators. A lot of our set up and tear down is done at night and we have had issues at dark locations where the vehicles reversing lights don’t really help. Is there any way we could get the side work lighting to come on when the vehicle reverses but could be controlled from the vehicle without any additional switches or alterations to the vehicles but could be turned on and off as reversing on a public road with them on might not be legal”

From an exchange of emails, I do know what the company does and some of the sorts of places it works. They don’t always have access to mains power when setting up or tearing down and would like something that can easily be installed in a trailer without too much alteration to the electrical services. Nothing could be installed in any of the tow vehicles as the vehicles were not always their own and I first suggested a cheap(ish) remote switch that could be used by the driver to turn them on and off as required. I was told this was not an option as the remote switches would likely get lost/damaged or need batteries or be with the wrong crew, some sites they could not use any radio equipment.

Time to put my thinking cat on…

Polo…. always a great thinking cat, sadly no longer with us.

I had a bit of an idea forming. Something I’d seen on a Class A American RV (Prevost I think) was a set of spotlights set in the side panel of the RV pointing backwards and located near the front wheel. These lit up down the side of the RV and the ground to the side when reversing…. I’d thought about adding a couple of simple cheap LED lights to the underside of the caravan between the wheel and front of the caravan angled outwards by about 60 degrees mounted under the floor… so when I reversed they lit up the caravan wheel and the ground it was going over so I could see it clearly at night in my mirrors. I had pondered how to switch this on and off using the Amarok but not add any more wiring between the caravan and vehicle. So I’d already come up with a solution.

Here is what I came up with…

It’s a simple two relay set up. The two triggers for this to work are the vehicle reversing lights and the rear fog lights. The top relay in the box is activated by the vehicle being in reverse with the reversing lights on. The lower relay is activated by turning the vehicles rear fog lights on. Only when these two conditions are met, is there a circuit across the two relays switches made thus activating the work lights on the trailer.

Quite simply when reversing to turn on the work light simply turn on the rear fog lights and the work lights will come on.

Cables 1, 2 & 3 connect to the road lights. Cables 4 & 5 are for the switched load. The cost was around £15 for the components for each unit and that included Bosch relays & sockets, the die-cast box and fuse holder. I guess putting it in a plastic case and using cheaper eBay sourced relays could halve that cost.

I did also think that as an upgrade or option the relay operated by the reversing lights could be a timer relay. Set it to say 15 seconds, then when reversing you turn on the work lights and they will remain on of 15 seconds after reversing as long as the rear fog lights are on. This would give you time to reverse, pull forward and reverse again. Each time you select reverse the timer would reset and as soon as you disengaged reverse the timer would start its countdown again.

High level work lights could be a boon to reversing into dark pitches or storage sites. Image take from the internet, copyright not mine.

It was as simple as I could get it using existing signals from the vehicle that already pass through to the trailer. I guess it could be used to turn anything on using any combination of lights operating from the vehicle.

The wiring between the road lights and work lights is kept separate as I wasn’t 100% sure how the trailers power system worked and how it was connected to the road lights (if at all) The two relays were installed in a die cast box with a grommet for the 5 cables. All the trailers were fitted with one of these and apparently they have all been working fine for several months.

Why did I opt for reversing lights and fog lights?

I wanted something that would not be used generally through the day so reversing on a public road during daylight or even at night the work lights would not illuminate. Running during the day with lights on and your fog lights will not operate the working lights… and if you are running in weather that requires headlights and rear fog light… then I guess having the working lights come on while you reverse in those inclement weather conditions just makes you more visible to everyone around. So apart from that I don’t think that you will cause a danger on the road with this set-up.

So…. I think I might just have to install one of these on my caravan…. just in case!

Low level scene lights down the side of the trailer can be just as effective as high level work lights. Image taken from the internet, copyright not mine.

Its a fairly simple DIY job to build a box and install it without too much messing about with the original wiring. Now someone asked me about getting the orange side marker lights to flash in time with the indicators…. and remain as side markers when the indicators weren’t being used. Is this something I need to put my thinking cat on for? Let me know in the comments.

A Few Mods and Updates…

08 Sunday May 2022

Posted by in Accessories, Gadgets, General, Maintenance, Reviews, Tips, Water & Plumbing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

After our recent trip to Meathop Fell it was time to say goodbye to an old friend. We have had our leisure battery since 2011 and for 11 years it has given us great service. For the last year or so I have thought hard about converting over to Lithium and drew up plans for a high capacity charging link between the tow vehicle and caravan and converting the caravan over to a Victron based system. However I think that for this caravan it would not be worth it.

We had bought a 120Ah Numax battery (left one above) from ABS and it had worked well, even now it still hold a charge and is sitting in my workshop on trickle charge waiting for a project to come along. I went back to Advanced Battery Supplies and opted to go for a 120Ah AGM. It wasn’t too expensive and hopefully it will give us years of service like it’s predecessor. I’ve used ABS for batteries a number of times over the past 12 or so years and can recommend them. I’m not sponsored by them and I paid for the battery but I have found that for me they give sensible advice and great service. That’s why I’m happy to mention them. You can call in personally or they do ship overnight ordering from their website – https://advancedbatterysupplies.co.uk

Battery taken care of now it was time to head into the workshop for a bit of construction….

Henry’s Conveyance Contrivance…

If you have read any of my posts over the last few years you will know that we have Siamese cats…. well sadly Oscar our health and safety officer passed away a while ago leaving us with just his brother Henry. Up to this point we have always had a cat sitter whenever we were away but June has now retired and honestly we could not face the thought of leaving Henry in a cattery or on his own with another cat sitter. So, a couple of exploratory trips up to the caravan for an hour just to let him sit in it and explore round lead us to a two night stay at Burrs Country Park…. only about thirty minutes away from home, that went well and so did the next trip to Meathop Fell. It was now time to build Henry a suitable transport platform for the vehicle.

Henry keeping an eye on the goings on at Meathop Fell

After a bit of head scratching I came up with this….

I built it out of 12mm Ply and painted it grey. I used an off cut of black car carpet to cover the top and sides and a couple of lengths of pipe insulation on the edges where it comes into contact with the car seat and door. To secure it I used the ISO FIX points and it takes less than 30 seconds to remove or install. Without Henrys carrying cage it’s a handy place to put things and the space underneath come in super handy for all my bits that I normally have rolling around on the floor behind the drivers seat. It’s high enough for Henry to be able to see out around in all directions and there is still enough space for two people to sit on the back seat and use the seatbelts if required.

We have used it for two trips now and Henry seems to like it. The rear windows are heavily tinted in our Amarok which will cut the heat from the sun and we can open the rear window for fresh air as required. We are looking round for one of the stick on baby sun screen thingy’s if we think the sun is going to be too strong. Of course we would never leave Henry in the vehicle unattended for more than a couple of minutes… the only time we have done this is while we were hitching up the caravan. If you know Siamese then you know they can be noisy talkative beings…. so far he’s not had anything to say about it. Is that a good sign?

Tempting Fate…

In the eleven years we have been at our storage site we have never had any break-ins but it’s aways in the back of your mind…. and couple that with us sometimes leaving Henry in the caravan while on site I decided a little security upgrade was required (there are others but I’m not going to tell you about them!) I’d looked at the various offerings of additional door locks and after some thinking… and several coffee’s decided to go for the Milenco Door Frame Lock Version 2 offering that allowed us to operate it from inside as well.

I ordered it via Amazon ( https://amzn.to/3sHywnd )and it arrived within two days. It was easy enough to install but I ‘upgraded’ the interior fitting with a custom stainless steel strengthening plate…

The stainless I used was 1.4mm tooled finish, cut to size and drilled using the template provided with the Milenco lock. After measuring the location, I bent the stainless on my sheet bender in the workshop. I chose the location as this was the strongest part of the door frame where the existing door lock was located and would help protect the original lock so a small extent. Ideally I would have liked the arm to have been a bit longer so it covered up the keyhole for the original lock. But I’m happy with it.

Down the drain…

Long time readers will remember that several years ago I wrote a post about how we solved our connection to the drain while on serviced pitches. After ten years of use It was time for an upgrade and I had seen the COLAPZ products and thought it was a rather nifty idea. Having a mooch round the web I ordered directly from the website https://colapz.co.uk/?ref=yjXJSsLdBkh5d and opted for the Flexi waste pipe kit – 8 pipes for £55.

The first use was great and easy to set up. No modification was needed to my original manifold that connects to the caravan and it seems to drain OK….

However you can alway improve on things…. and if you have ever watched any Youtube videos about American RV’s then you will know that for their ‘stinky slinky’s’ they have a few upgrades…. I ordered one from Amazon….

Camco 43041 15′ Sidewinder Plastic Sewer Hose Support – https://amzn.to/3Fp2elM it cost £44 and came all the way from the great state of New Jersey. It comes with a carrying handle and honestly is really easy to use. I just stretched it out and lifted the pipe on to it. It is designed for a 4 inch sewer pipe… but as I was using basically a 2 inch version it would allow the hose support to stretch even further… I bought the 15 feet version and I recon it would stretch to 20 feet without any problems.

When we were packing up, I ran all the remaining hot water down the sink to flush the pipework out… including the Colapz pipework and honestly when disconnecting everything it really wasn’t that dirty, but breaking it down into individual lengths makes it easy if it does need a brush through it (which you get by the way in the kit).

Again we are not sponsored by either of these two companies but the links above will earn us a few pennies that will help provide biscuits for Henry. You wouldn’t want Henry to mis out on biscuit treats would you….

After all he can’t survive on just belly rubs…. I know it’s blackmail but EVERYONE said you need a cute kitty to get more views!

“Put your lights on mate…..”

28 Saturday Aug 2021

Posted by in Accessories, Amarok, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Road Lights, General, Maintenance, Modifications, Projects, Technical

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

How many of you have driven behind a vehicle in less than ideal conditions… going dark, raining or foggy… and uttered those immortal words “Put you lights on mate” in the vein hope it will do some good only to approach a bit closer to find that the lights are on and are less effective as a couple of Ikea tea lights in jam jars. That is the feeling I get with a lot of caravans. In my opinion a lot for rear lights are less than ideal. In this day and age some of the drivers out there need all the help they can get as they even struggle to notice a big white box in front of them in bright sunshine let alone in inclement weather or in the dark.

Our caravan like a lot of other Swift caravans looks great from the rear with nice big lights and reflectors. Reflectors are good if the following driver has turned his headlights on and not been too busy texting and simply relying on the DRL’s to light the way. The big reversing lights will surly let the driver and anyone else behind know you are reversing… but about as useless as the aforementioned Ikea tea light in a jam jar when reversing at an angle into a pitch at night. The rear fog light however deserves a special mention… the single rear fog light…. can you see it… the tiny Lego brick sized rear fog light… the red thing in the middle down low… difficult to spot on a stationary caravan in daylight let alone from a distance on a road in fog. Mind you when that bit of wire in the bulb warms up it will blind you… honestly it will…. eventually… when you get so close because you didn’t see it from ten metres away.

Its time for a change. An upgrade if you will… to allow me to shine a beacon of light towards all that follow. But… and here’s a the big thing… I have to keep it looking nice. Everyone likes a nice rear don’t they.

OK, I searched for all the replacement options. Swift don’t make it easy. The two panels that the lights are mounted in don’t come out, well not easily and I was cautioned about even attempting to remove them. Changing to smart round LED lights was out. Then it struck me… the reversing lights could become fog lights and I would install new reversing lights. I’d towed a trailer a while ago that had football stadium sized reversing lights and wow what a difference it made. One of the first things I did with the Amarok when we got it was to install LED work lights under the rear bumper as reversing lights and that was a huge improvement so I ordered another set from the same company as I’d fitted to the Amarok.

A bit more searching I found the exact lenses for the existing lights in red to turn the reversing lights into fog lights.. it was actually cheaper to order a pair of complete lights than it was to order two replacement red lenses… I’ll never work that one out.

Ok how was I going to wire this lot up. I made a couple of brackets that fitted under the caravan allowing me to mount the reversing lights up close just inboard of the rear steady jacks. This would offer a modicum of protection from road debris thrown up by the tyres. These could be wired to run off the old fog light which would now become a junction box and the reverse lights would become the fog lights, so simply switching the reverse light and fog light cables over at the road light fuse box in the front of the caravan would have everything working correctly.

I also angled the reversing lights out slightly. I wanted the centre of their light pool to be along an extended side line of the caravan so that looking through my mirrors down each side of the caravan would be the centre of the lit area. This hopefully would provide the best angle of illumination when reversing and performing a reversing turn onto a pitch.

“Hang on lads… I’ve got an idea”

Cue the music… no, no doors were blown off during this mod. Right what if the new rear fog lights could be my brake lights when they weren’t being used as fog lights?

A simple diode blocking bridge using two diodes could do this quite easily. Routing through my electronics spares I found a bag of 10 Amp diodes which would easily cope with the task.

For a quick solution I used two strips of terminal block and built a quick blocking bridge. What happens now is applying the brakes powers up the brake light circuit and the fog lights. The diode in the fog light circuit stops me back feeding current to the tow vehicle fog light circuit.

Turning on the fog lights powers up the fog lights and the diode in the bridge stops it powering the brake lights in either the caravan or back feeding to the tow vehicle. Really simple and when testing I didn’t have any canbus or other errors thrown up by the VW Amarok’s management system. The existing (and original) brake and tail lights work as normal.

I’ll have a look at coming up with a better solution than using two lengths of terminal strip and probably build something in a small electrical project box so it can be mounted securely.

As far as I can tell the changes I’ve made all fall in line with the lighting regs for trailers. While I’m 99% sure, there is always the possibility that I could be corrected and shown the error of my ways and point out I have missed something in my reading of the regs. I’ll let you know.

The next thing…

I’m trying to find some good quality bright LED replacement bulbs for all the rear road lights. I have some, but I suspect they are not correctly marked. If anyone has any recommendations for replacement 25W and 5/25W bulbs that they deem are good options to look at, especially if they are correctly marked, please let me know in the comments. If you are a company that sells LED replacement bulbs and think they are the good enough to pass the Caravan Chronicles testing department (we don’t actually have a testing department… its just me) then challenge me to break them!

Safe travels everyone… and “PUT YOUR LIGHTS ON MATE”