Category Archives: Electrical

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

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“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

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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

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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 Great Upgrade…

29 Tuesday Aug 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Accessories, Gadgets, Modifications, Product Review, Vehicle Wiring Projects

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One of the upgrades I wanted to do to the Dream Seeker was to install a good rear view camera. Looking round for options it seemed that you could easily spend a lot of money and end up with something that didn’t achieve what you wanted in terms of reliability and quality.

I did a little research and found that there were options from several manufacturers on Amazon that would fit the bill that seemed to match my basic requirements of being reliable, good vision day and night and durable with the option to upgrade or add to the system in the future.

I chose a wireless AMTIFO kit, 1080P 7 inch LCD display with a range quoted as up to 320 feet with a 150 degree rear camera. I’m not doing unboxing or installation, although installation was really easy and all the hardware you needed comes in the box. The system also records onto an SD card (not included) and the screen can accept up to 4 cameras.

Quick note: I bought this from Amazon, I paid just under £110 for the screen and one camera. This is not a sponsored post and the link to it is here https://amzn.to/44pOB0x if you want to see it and you can also see my review on Amazon… I’m SP

Fitting on the Dream Seeker was quite easy… except I realised just how tall it was!… and it was wired to come on when the vehicle supplied power to the trailer. This means as long as the engine is running the camera is active. I may opt to change this in the future if I add more cameras and a screen in the caravan.

I set the angle of the camera slightly different to convention. Most people set them so they can see the rear bumper, I set it so the bottom of the screen is about two feet from the bumper. My thoughts are if an object is at the bottom of the screen I’m still two feet away and that is close enough! The secondary advantage this gives me is that the top of the screen is effectively seeing further behind… about a cars length in fact. Due to the height of the camera and the angle of view on the motorway for example I can actually see both lanes either side of me and this helps when judging when to pull in after an overtake as I know if I can’t see the vehicle I have overtaken I must be at least one cars length in front of it. Mind you I don’t do much overtaking!

Mounting The Screen…

In the box comes a couple of options for mounting the screen… fixed dash mount or sucker on the windscreen mount. I sat in the truck for ages moving the screen about… then thinking of moving the Sat Nav somewhere else so I could locate the rear view screen in its place. Then I had one of those “Doh” moments…. why not put it where the rear view mirror is as the mirror is really just full of caravan nose cap when towing. I know they do make mirrors with screens in them but I looked at a couple of these at the caravan show and they seemed really small… a honking seven inch screen on you mirror is much better IMHO. I’ve also discovered that located there its still natural to glance at it as you would normally look at your mirror and its also unaffected by sunlight reflections.

I came up with a simple solution that used a tiny elasticated cord and a pad…. it kept the screen off the mirror and gave enough room to angle the two small aerials downwards behind the screen. I installed a power feed via the roof lining and can simply unplug the screen and remove to stow safely when not towing.

Mounting it on the mirror also has a secondary advantage… I can angle the mirror so that Sue in the passenger seat can also see the screen… just incase!

I had never towed with a rear view camera before and after fitting I really can’t understand why caravan manufacturers aren’t fitting these as standard.

How’s It Working Out?

Picture is clear and bright, no drop out or freezing, there are options to change screen layout, number of cameras displayed etc. etc. Even my unconventional screen mounting with the two aerials pointing down doesn’t seem to affect things. The screen recording works great…. I can see this being a great help especially if you have side cameras to compliment your dash cam system in your vehicle.

Adding To The System…

I said that you can add to the system… up to 4 cameras. Well after using it for a few weeks now I will be adding a left and right side rear facing camera so I can see down the full length of the trailer, but first I think I will be adding a rear view camera on the pickup bed to make hitching up a lot easier.

Would I recommend a rear view camera?…. most definitely. Would I recommend this rear view camera?… well based on my experiences so far, yes. For the money… £110 is not a lot to invest in something like this.

Flushed With Success…

19 Friday May 2023

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

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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

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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.

Keeping Electrons Contained…

16 Thursday Feb 2023

Posted by in Caravan Electrics, Electrical, Modifications, Technical, Vehicle Wiring Projects

≈ 3 Comments

One thing about being retired… you have way too much time to think about things. One thing that has been wandering round my grey cells for the last few months relates to an email I had September last year and it was from someone who was fitting out a van and had a few electrical issues, which I managed to help him remotely sort out the problems.

Something that struck me was an off the cuff remark about being able to separate the vehicle side electrical system and the habitation electrical system but still have them work together.

So here is my thoughts and a bit of a sketch (you all know I like sketches) on a possible but workable solution…

Taking a bit of inspiration from the world of aviation and how systems are split into individual bus systems and master bus system that can be combined and isolated as safety procedures require, I thought about how the current wiring on conversions could be improved.

Installing two fuses, one on each pole between the vehicle and habitation, would limit the maximum current between the two systems… the habitation system and the vehicle system. I’ve called these the “Habitation System Isolation Fuses”

In my sketch, the DC to DC charger is a 50 Amp unit, so I have sized the fuses at 50 Amps… (I’d actually install Tyco W23 thermal switch circuit breakers… more about that later) Fusing the positive (live) is normal, but adding a fuse in the Negative / Neutral line is not normally considered. However I have a sound rational for doing this.

Looking at the right hand side – the Habitation Side, we can see that there are two LiPo batteries located some distance apart and connected by a battery bank interlink cable. The feed from the battery bank goes from one battery via an isolation switch and 200Amp fuse to power the habitation equipment and the return is via shunt to monitor the battery bank to the opposite battery. The interlink Positive cable is fused at each end with a 200 Amp rated fuse. All that is pretty normal.

However there is the possibility that the battery interlink cable could be routed through bulkheads or the cable from the battery bank via the battery isolation switch could be routed through vehicle bodywork bulkheads to a distribution point. If this cable was to chafe, there is the potential for a direct short or intermittent / low resistance short to the vehicle ground. As this battery bank is fused at 200 Amps, you could end up warming up a bit of vehicle cabling to the point of PVC fumes filling the van or a full blown fire. Remember you can stick weld steel with 150 Amps!

By inserting a fuse in the Neutral /Negative line – the Habitation System Isolation Fuses, you have effectively fused any potential short to ground from the habitation side battery pack to 50 Amps which if a direct short will blow the fuse before any of the 200 Amp fuses have started to even warm up! Note… if your DC to DC charger is only 30 Amps then these two fuses would be rated at 30 Amps.

Could This Be Improved?

Well yes, everything can be improved. Upgrading the Vehicle Charging Isolation Switch to a double pole would mean when you are parked up, turn the switch off and the habitation electrical system is completely isolated from the vehicle electrical system… down side is some solar chargers have a trickle facility for the vehicle battery (normally connects to the vehicle side of an isolation switch to work and relies on negative continuity between the two systems)… and one day you will forget to turn it on when you are going to do a days driving.

Load sensing on the Neutral / Negative at the Habitation System Isolation Fuse would show if you had a drain from the live side of the habitation system to vehicle ground.

Prerequisite …

The big prerequisite to doing this is of course you haven’t been a cheapskate and only used one wire to supply equipment on the habitation side and used the vehicle body as the Negative / Neutral path.

Short story… someone contacts me, can’t get a device working properly. Tracing the power side, no issues, tracing the return path… some resistance. Turns out the body panel is bonded on to the vehicle and there is no electrical continuity between the body panel and vehicle neutral… so in order for the 5 watt interior light to work, the vehicle manufacturer installed a 75mm long flat beaded strap between the body panel and the section of chassis it is glued to. I recon this strap was good for about 2 or 3 amps… so when the fridge was running and the 5 amp accessory powered up the combined negative wires that were screwed to this body panel slowly heated up the bit of flat braided bonding strap installed by the manufacturer.

Morel of the story…. if you are supplying electrons to something…. also install a route for them to go home! Don’t rely on others to have done it for you. They don’t know what you were planning to do when they designed the thing!. (OK Physics majors will now be sitting upright, drawing their keyboards close and about to compose a long winded essay on why I’m wrong… Yep I got it… I know electrons, negatively charged, move the other way).

Not using the body as a conductor has been known about for a long time by the Professional Audio Boys… you know the ones on You Tube… stereo bass kicks in and the girls….. hair…. that’s a better word… jiggles about with the sound pressure driven by speakers that consume enough energy that even Doc Emmitt Brown would raise his eyebrows at ( I wonder if that where he got Jigga Watts from?)

Tyco W23 Circuit Breakers

On aircraft anything that is powered by electricity goes through circuit breakers and nearly all fall into two types… W23 / W31 or W58.

W58 are pop out breakers that you push in to reset, but W23 and W31 are switch breakers. W31 look like a toggle switch while W23 have a button that can be pulled out to turn it off. I like W23 style breakers….

They are made for 240 volts AC, 50 volts DC and have been around for 40+ years. I’ve flown planes built in the 60’s that still use the original CB’s in them. Now they are mostly made in Mexico or China but are all to a very well established spec and testing standard. You can get them in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 and 50 Amp ratings so you can best match them to your system. The spec sheet even tells you what to torque the cable screws to when installing. Personally I’d replace all fuses with these things…… oh yesssss…. I do like a good CB panel… pat on the back if you guess the aircraft type.

Conclusion…

Well I’m not an expert in 12 volt systems and although I have designed and worked on aircraft electrical systems, that really means nothing in this context. These are my thoughts on something that may or may not be needed but it’s how I’d probably go about doing things.

P.S.

If anyone from INEOS is reading…. I love the new Grenadier and especially the aircraft style panels…. quite happy to do some tow testing for you…. hello…. anyone there?

Just a quick one…

08 Sunday May 2022

Posted by in Accessories, Caravan Electrics, Electrical, Modifications, Off Grid, Projects, Technical

≈ 9 Comments

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Lithium Upgrade for a caravan

I’ve had quite a few people email me asking for more information about the Victron system for a caravan that I was planning mentioned in the previous post. As this seems to have generated a number of questions, rather than give detailed answers to each one I thought I’d post the drawings. For the moment it’s on hold but here are the drawings.

While Victron would seem the obvious choice, there are a number of recent new products from Sterling Power that have rekindled my interest in the project…. watch this space.

Finishing Off A Few Jobs…

09 Thursday Sep 2021

Posted by in Accessories, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Restoration, Caravan Servicing, Caravan Window Repair, Gadgets, General, Modifications, Technical

≈ 7 Comments

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I’d got a few little jobs still outstanding from our big clean a week or so ago. The big one was to repair the front window. When we were cleaning the caravan I noticed that the bottom edge of the central window was starting to separate. After some lengthy procrastination I’d have preferred to replace it but given the hefty price tag and the “It will be January next year at the earliest before we can get you one” type answers from suppliers and removing the window and shipping to off to a company for repair would cost almost the same as a replacement.

It can’t be beyond a diy task to repair. I did a bit of searching for information relating to repairs and one name kept popping up as the manufacturer of the product used to bond the two sheets together…Bondrite Adhesives Ltd.

After reading through Bondrite Adhesives Ltd website a couple of times to work out exactly with adhesive I’d need I ordered their WC112 acrylic adhesive. The 50ml size was £12.10 plus shipping and VAT bringing the total to £20.52. It arrived within 24 hours of ordering, was really well packaged and came with a detailed technical sheet and guidance notes.

I’m not going to do a blow by blow account of how to repair a delaminated window… as I don’t know if this is even going to work, but my first step was to support the window as flat as I could. The standard recommendation is to remove the window lay it on a flat surface and go from there. I didn’t want to remove the window as all I had to repair was the lower edge.

Improvising I used two stands with a cross beam clamped between them to hold the window horizontal. This should take any flexing stress caused by the window stays out of the equation…. Hopefully!

To hold the gap between he two sheets I used three long needles from syringes… this allowed me just enough wiggle room to slide some blotting paper with a bit of isopropanol alcohol to clean out any contaminates. I’d already tested this to make sure it was safe and it does evaporate very quickly.

You are advised to lay down a 5mm bead of glue… as this was going to be difficult between the two sheets of partially bonded plastic I opted to use a wide bore syringe needle on the glue bottle which allowed me to squeeze glue into the gap… it was a bit fiddly but I managed to achieve what I thought would be the right amount. Sliding the three previous inserted needles out to allow the sheets to come together I used some fairly light clamps to hold the pieces together while they cured. Bondrite do caution about NOT using an excessive clamping force as it can lead to crazing of the sheets.

The data sheet advice is that handling strength is achieved after about 3 hours at 20 deg C. I covered up the glued area with microfibre cloths to protect it from the sun and had a sit down with an iced coffee and a sammich.

Next Job…

If you read my previous post “Put Your Lights On Mate…” then you might have picked up on my request at the end for any recommendations for a UK supplier of good quality replacement LED bulbs. Well Peter Farnham posted in the comments section and recommended Classic Car LEDS Ltd ( https://www.classiccarleds.co.uk ). A couple of days later I dropped them an email with a few questions and Duncan replied back with some details. A few more exchanges of emails ended up with me ordering replacement LED bulbs for the new fog lights, indicator lights and stop/tail lights. This is not a sponsored post and I paid the required number of beer tokens for these.

Not much to say on changing the bulbs over… what was noticeable was though they did have a bit heft to them… they seem really really well made. No flexing, solid and just had that feel about them that made me go “Mmmm” while nodding slowly…. almost in a Joey Tribbiani moment.

I did try to do before and after photos to compare the light output…. even tried a short video with one side changed over and the other side on conventional filament bulbs… all failed…. not as easy as it looks in strong sunlight even though the caravan rear was in shade. However the photo above is one side converted over. This is showing the indicator, tail light and fog light lit. The indicators are really bright. Having the LEDS the same colour as the lens works well. The tail light is a strong red and bright while the fog light looks washed out and white… it’s down to the fact that it is so bright its over exposed…. the exposure is correct for the indicator and tail light but the fog light is amazingly bright.. and red.

On the VW Amarok I haven’t had any canbus warnings… I even plugged in my reader to check… all good and no strobing or hyper flash.

To say I’m chuffed with these LED bulbs is a bit of an understatement… if you suffer from rear light envy as you follow one of those gloriously illuminated trucks down the motorway, drop Duncan an email at sales@classiccarleds.co.uk and tell him I sent you. Sort out your rear lights and never again have someone with four megawatts of light bars and spots flashing you and shouting “Put Your Lights On Mate” as they simulate a starship going into warp drive passing you.

Another small job next…

I’d had this gadget for a while and I can’t remember where I got it from. I think it was from a caravan shop at a dealer near York that we visited a while ago.

Simply it’s a security head bolt with a hardened shroud that replaces the normal jockey wheel clamp handle. When it’s installed it is flush with the A frame cover and pretty difficult to get to. It comes with a short handle and socket that fits the security bolt head. I did try with a couple of sockets but the shroud makes it almost impossible to even knock a socket on with a hammer. So if anyone want’s to nick the caravan they now also have to contend with the hassle of getting round my jockey wheel clamp. As I always leave the caravan nose high in storage you can’t even pick it up and drop it on to a tow ball. Hey if it makes them try elsewhere… it works for me.

Thinking about the next step…

This is going to be a big one. I’ve been planning this for a few weeks now and it involves two or three drawings… some detailed planning and I’ve been checking equipment specs in detail. The last stage was to sit and stare at the space available in the caravan and work out Tetris style how it is all physically going to fit in and how much of the existing kit will be removed. More to come soon!

Back to the window…

OK I bet you have been wondering how I got on. Well after nearly five hours of curing time I disassembled my contraption holding the window open and it seems to have worked OK. I can see that it has bonded all along the bottom edge. I could have put a bit more glue in at one spot and needs a light clean up all along the bottom edge to remove what has oozed out. I’ll leave that for at least another 48 hours before attempting to gently sand it off.

All in all I’m pleased with the result and hope to see that it will stand up to the test of time.