Category Archives: Uncategorized

My last post….

22 Thursday Aug 2024

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Many thanks to all my friends. As I write this I’m in the Christi hospital hoping to go home in a few days. I was told about a week ago that I had about 3 months to live and should start preparing my affairs. Which Sue and I are trying to do. I have some very dear and close friends that are helping us in this task.

I’m not sure what is going to happen to this blog. It is funded for a further 12 months so should be available on line until then. Sue as editor- in-chief does not want to continue.

Our beloved outfit is now for sale, including two MiRider electric bikes, a good selection of spares and I had just fitted new bathroom and kitchen taps along with a top of the range filter tap.

The setup will include the VW Amarok which has been updated. The brake system is electric over hydraulic meaning no air tanks and air pump on the vehicle.

I’m sure Sue will be able to have a detailed sheet with more info available shortly.

As For me……

Once this is over I am looking to joining many of our fur children that have passed over the rainbow bridge. I am sure there is a bench that I can sit on and see Tilley, Kipper, Sam, Bailey, Lilly, Polo, and my beloved Oscar again.

Henry has an important job to do and that is to get Susan through all this.

To my wonderful wife, life long companion, navigator, voice of reason, soul mate, I will miss you so much I have not even gone yet and it hurts. I love you so much.

Sue may post up dates, but I am unlikely to write any more. Goodbye dear friends.

This Might Be My Last Post…

12 Thursday Oct 2023

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Not clickbait…. Three weeks ago Sue and I were cycling between 8 and 10 miles each morning to get a morning coffee. Arrived back home and…. well time stopped.

I had received notice that my test sample for Bowel Cancer screening had come back positive. Two days later I underwent a colonoscopy procedure which didn’t work out too well as there was a mass occluding my colon and they could not proceed further. A few days later I had a CT Scan.

This morning Sue and I met with a consultant from the Colorectal Surgery department at Manchester Royal Infirmary. We were told the results from the scan and biopsy lead them to the conclusion I had cancer, stage 4, and it was also showing up on my Liver and Lungs.

The pathway was laid out….. MRI Scan to accurately plot the cancer followed by a stent to stop the mass blocking my colon, then a course of Chemotherapy at Christies Hospital and follow up body scans to reassess the cancer.

Once that was done, further surgery to remove the mass from my colon.

Tomorrow I meet with an Oncology Consultant.

Today as I write this I feel like I’m still in that tunnel without a torch…. but I know help is on its way.

Once I can see the light again…. maybe I will continue with Caravan Chronicles. But for now just understand I might be hitting you up for a bit of sponsorship for a cancer charity…. I’m thinking of a “Grumpy Old Man Park Bench Sitting” marathon.

Take care friends, and remember GET YOURSELF CHECKED OUT…FOR EVERYTHING… NOW !!!

As Arni said “I’ll be back”……… followed with a bit of Vera Lynn….. “Don’t know where, don’t know when”

S

Moving from Twitter…

16 Wednesday Aug 2023

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OK a quick heads-up… I have moved away from X(Twitter) to Mastodon. This morning Elon Musk decided that TweetDeck, which I and many others have used free since it’s release, was changed and could only be used if you paid for a ‘blue tick’ on your account. In my case about £130 per year.

So, due to the insane amount of tweets that are totally irrelevant and the equally insane amount of advertising tweets that come through and as you can’t filter on the native X(Twitter) platform I have moved everything over to Mastodon. I can be found here: 

Caravan Chronicles
@CaravanChronicles@mastodonapp.uk

I will change links from my blog from Twitter to Mastodon in the near future. I’ll also post on Mastodon when new posts on the blog become available.

I have not deleted my Twitter account at the moment as I would like to retain @caravanchron. I won’t be monitoring it or responding to it.

Thank you for understanding

Simon

You Asked…

14 Friday Jul 2023

Posted by in 5th Wheel, Blog updates, Donkey Creek Farm, General, Towing, Uncategorized, VW Amarok

≈ 2 Comments

Well, I never expected so many questions as to the weight, size and towing our 5th wheel Dream Seeker. So here are the stats…. now these are for OUR Dream Seeker, and as each one is virtually custom made to the buyers specification, then there will be differences.

As our DreamSeeker is currently configured with an Avtex 4G/5G antenna on the roof it stands 2950mm tall (for bridge clearance my check is 3.2m minimum I would ever attempt and then only with a spotter).

From the rear bumper to the very front of the hitch, uncoupled, it is 7638mm long and 2292mm wide. Now that is not the whole story. The pin box (the bit that sticks out the front and connects to the 5th wheel hitch in the truck) can swing out of the way when on a pitch, so the actual length when pitched is 7517mm, so exactly the same as a 7.5m motorhome.

Now when we are hitched up to the truck, the effective length behind the vehicle becomes 6630mm, which is actually shorter than some twin axle bumper pull caravans.

The Weighty Stuff…

Our Dream Seeker runs on two 1500Kg rated axles and we have a MTPLM of 3750kg. So at max weight we would have 3000kg on the axles and 750kg on the hitch pushing down into the bed of the truck. The hitch in the truck is positioned directly over the rear axle so this mass bares directly onto the rear axle. Our Amarok is rated for 1000kg in the rear pickup bed so we are easily within limits.

Our Dream Seeker as bought was weighed and had 2210kg on the axles and 570kg on the pin hitch totalling 2780kg. If you subtract that from the MTPLM of 3750kg it gives us a user payload of 970kg.

The hitch is installed directly over the rear axle and has plates underneath connecting it directly to the chassis rails and suspension mounts. This Reese hitch is rated up to 800kg pin weight and 4300kg towing capacity.

Now here’s what confuses a lot of people… our Amarok is rated to tow 3200kg and we are hitching up a potential max of 3750kg…. 550kg more than we are rated to pull. Ahh pull… that’s the key word. The rating is based on the vehicle manufacturers tow bar pull capacity. With a 5th wheel hitch you are also carrying some of the weight so for every 1kg of weight that the truck carries on the pin hitch that is effectively deducted from what you are pulling. So at MTPLM of 3750kg I am carrying 750kg and pulling 3000kg (OK I know that we are moving a mass of 3750Kg but that is how the figures are assessed for 5th wheel towing… not a clue as how this calculation was decided on!)

GTW…. Gross Train Weight

On the face of it we are ok… however there is one last thing to take into consideration. GTW or Gross Train Weight. This is the absolute maximum weight the vehicle and trailer can weigh together in any combination of the mass being shared between the vehicle and trailer. Because we were approaching the GTM max for the Amarok if we had the trailer at MTPLM I wanted some extra safety margin and we opted to have the Amarok uprated to a GTM of 6400kg and the rear axle load rating increased to 2180kg. This was a fairly simple process that involved removing the hard rubber bump stops and inserting air bags, which are currently inflated to 7psi. They have increased the hight of the truck at the back be about 20mm but hitched up the truck and caravan are dead level. The only other thing is a new weight plate stuck to the door pillar of the Amarok. All the weight upgrade installation and paperwork were done by the wonderful guys at the 5th Wheel Company for us.

So there you are….

That’s it, on a pitch we are no longer than some motorhomes at 7.5 metres and when hitched up it is only 6.6 metres in additional length…. which is less than some single axle caravans!

As for drivability, well doing 60mph on the motorway and having big vans steam past at 70+ it doesn’t move or even impart any sideways forces I can feel when driving. Road bumps you can just about feel but no where as much as I could towing our single axle caravan.

On corners you just have to be mindful the the rear wheels of the trailer will scribe a smaller arc than the rear axle of the tow vehicle so for example a 90 degree left turn into a street means you need to move more to the right hand side of the lane before the left turn…. but all you class one HGV drivers know this and can definitely teach me a thing or two about 5th wheel driving.

And as for driving round tight spaces…. can you get your caravan 90 degrees to your car?

I’m still new to this and a blind side reverse does have your head swivelling a bit and I can now see why a lot of American 5th wheels have side mounted rear view cameras. I’m just getting used to the novelty of a rear view camera…. so all in good time.

Brakes…

The brakes are something else. They are Electric-Hydraulic units working on 4 massive drums. Once you get the feel of them and learn to keep an eye on the red LED in the truck that lets you know when the brakes are operating, then within a few miles it becomes instinctive. I can now judge how much pressure to apply to get the brakes to just let me bleed off a little speed or apply with some gusto then ease off so the LED goes out and we coast to a gentle stop without giving Sue whiplash at the moment we do stop. I have not tried an emergency stop and intend trying to drive so that I never have to.

While we are still on the subject of brakes…. yes it does have a handbrake that works on all four wheels and like on you over run break away cable we have something similar…. it’s a cable that is attached to a switch… pull it out and a separate 12 volt lead acid battery powers the hydraulic pump and applies pressure to all four drum brakes and maintains that pressure. The other end of this safety cable is clipped exactly as you do a normal break away cable to a secure part of the vehicle. In my case the floor mounting rails of the 5th wheel hitch.

PS…

I’m currently writing this sat in our Dream Seeker at the wonderful Donkey Creek Farm near Freckleton. It’s one of those sites that I don’t want to tell you about so I can just keep it to ourselves. (and no, before The Caravan Vlogger ask’s…. this isn’t a sponsored link!)

EOE (Errors and Omissions Excepted) As I said earlier these figures are based on OUR Dream Seeker and OUR Amarok do not take any of these figures to be a basis of working out any load capacity for any potential vehicle or caravan purchases. Speak to your vehicle dealer and caravan dealer.

Something for BMW X3 owners…

08 Wednesday Feb 2023

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A while ago I had an email from a chap called Roy. I thought it was going to be an easy one to sort out but never expected what the eventual issue was.

Rather than try to explain all the steps, which is difficult sometimes trying to diagnose without actually being hands on, Roy did a fantastic job, so I thought I’d simply post the email exchange…..

Hi Simon,

I have a problem with the drivers side lights on my 1997 Bailey Unicorn caravan.

I bought a new BMWW X3 in 2020 and had a BMW tow bar and electrics fitted in the factory.

I towed the caravan with the X3 for the first time this year. After driving using my headlights for about 70 miles the drivers side lights on the caravan stopped working and I got a message on the dash telling me “trailer electrics were overloaded. Trailer not or only partially illuminated, switch off unnecessary electrical consumers in the trailer and have problem checked by your service engineer”. I switched off the fridge but it made no difference. 

I bought a 13 pin caravan plug and short piece of 13 pin cable and checked the wiring with a multimeter. I connected the black probe to the white no. 3 pin and the red probe to the black no. 7 pin and I was getting a reading on the multimeter, I then checked the brown no. 5 pin which feeds the drivers side but I didn’t have a reading (I have checked for continuity on the brown cable and that is okay). 

I continued to our destination, it was daylight, I had nearside lights on caravan and car but no drivers side lights on caravan.

When we came to leave the caravan site I connected caravan to car and all the lights were working on the caravan but after about 10 miles the nearside caravan lights went off and remained off. I found that if I tried to connect the 13 pin plug the nearside lights on the caravan came on and then immediately went off.

I took the car back to BMW and they can’t find  a problem on the car.

I took the car to a caravan dealer and connected up to one of their vans and the lights on their van all worked.

Is this a problem you have come across as I do not know and also the caravan dealer doesn’t what the problem could be.

Kind Regards.

Hi Roy

Not heard of this before, but I think I might know what may be happening.

The number plate lights are usually connected to one side or the other…. near side running lights or off side running lights. The slight load increase because of this ’trips’ the electronic load sensor in the BMW and it shuts down that circuit. It should reset when you shut off the engine and start it up again.

One quick temporary solution would be to remove one of the side running light bulbs from the orange marker lights running down the side of the van.

A longer term solution would be to swop out the incandescent bulbs for LED ones. These have a lot lower power draw. Just changing over the tail lights and number plate lights should do it.

Let me know how you get on

Cheers

Simon

Good morning Simon,

Thank you so much for your very prompt reply.

I shall take your advice and change the bulbs for led ones. I will let you know how I get on but it won’t be for a couple of months as the van is stored for winter.

Thank very much.

Kind regards. Roy

A short while later…

Hi Simon,

Just an update. I collected my car from BMW this afternoon, I asked why if there was no fault found, why I had a reading on my multi meter for the nearside but not the offside. He said that this did sometimes happen with multi meters. He got his meter that they use for MOT’s and this showed that there was current on both sides, he also did a lamp test which showed the same result. This proves that it must be a problem with the caravan so with the help of your articles I will check all the running light electrics on the caravan. Incidentally, the front sidelights and the marker lights are all led units but all the backlights are incandescent bulbs so I will take your advice and change them. Can I replace the incandescent bulbs with led bulbs or will I have to change the whole units?

The light units are available from Bailey’s.

Kind Regards

Roy

Hi Roy

Never known a multimeter to behave in that way…. you can get a voltage reading, but when you try to pass current across the connection if the connection is high resistance, the voltage will drop. That’s why testers usually have a mini trailer board with bulbs in to enable them to test the voltage when the circuits are drawing current.

The existing tail lights can simply be updated  with LED bulbs. I replaced all mine …. https://caravanchronicles.com/2021/09/09/finishing-off-a-few-jobs/ I included details for a company I used on this page. I have had mixed results buying LED replacement bulbs in the past so asked some of my readers for their suggestions for companies and this one was suggested by many people. I’ve used them a few times and the products they supply are IMHO the best quality I’ve come across.

Cheers

Simon

Hi Simon,

Thank you for replying to my query so promptly.

Re.the multimeter, I bought a 13 pin caravan plug & a small length of 13 core cable. I have used this with my multimeter to check the current, I have tripled checked the continuity of and all is good. After “witnessing” there is current coming through at the BMW dealers, the dealer was checking using the 13 pin socket on the car I wonder if there is a problem in the 13 pin plug connection supplying current to the o/s caravan lights. I will start checking in that area first. When I took the van in for service earlier this year I had difficulty connecting the 13 pin plug and they fitted a different make for me, I.have checked the wiring in the plug and it is all okay. While I am at it I will rewire the plug.

Re the led bulbs, thank you for that address, I will order a set of bulbs & replace all the incandescent bulbs with led’s. Strange that they fitted incandescent bulbs at the back and led on the side & front, probably cost came into it.

Thank you once again for your knowledge and advice, I will let you know the outcome.

Kind Regards 

Hi Roy

Where the 13 pin cable comes into the caravan and terminates there is usually a small fuse board for all the road lights. This is a good place to check the voltages when connected to the vehicle…. as you should be able to pull each fuse and check (with the lights on of course) the voltage being supplied to the fuse from the vehicle then with the fuse inserted the voltage with the circuit ‘live’ and under load. I would not expect more than a 2 volt drop. If it’s more then possibly time to take the 13 pin plug apart.

Hope this helps

Simon

A few months later…

Hi Simon, I wrote to you about 4 months ago asking for your advice re. no offside road lights on my caravan and I thought that I would give you an update.
The caravan is a 2017 Bailey Unicorn and I tow with a 2020 BMW X3 diesel, the car has a factory fitted tow bar and 13 pin electrics. The first time that I towed with the car road lights all worked when I connected up but after about 15 miles the off side lights went out and a message came up on the dash telling me that the electrics on the car were overloaded and to speak to my dealer. They stayed off for the rest of our journey but when we came to return home the lights all worked for about 10 miles then again the off side lights went out and I got the message on the dash. 
I wrote to you and went through all the items you suggested and everything was fine, I even changed the 13 pin plug just in case there was a connection problem. 
I felt sure that the problem was with the car and not the caravan so I took it to my BMW main dealer. The technician checked everything whilst I was there and everything was was working fine, but when I got home and connected car to caravan I still did not have road lights on the off side.
My caravan was due for a yearly service so last week when I took it in I asked the caravan dealer if they would check it out, he said that they had heard of this problem. I got a call a few days later, and the workshop manager said that they thought that they had found the problem. He had spoken to an electrician and he seemed to think that I had been running with the lights on automatic, which was quite probable, he said that it has something to do with the smart alternator. His advice when connecting car to caravan was to switch of the engine and switch the light switch off, connect the 13 pin plug to the car, start the car engine then switch the headlights on (don’t use the automatic headlight function when towing). When I collected my caravan I went through the suggested procedure and the lights were fine. I took the car and caravan for about a 30 mile run and the lights stayed on all the time. Hopefully this has sorted out the problem. 
I had read on your site about the different problems people are having with smart alternators and as far as I am aware I haven’t come up against any of those, fingers crossed. I think that cars have become far too complicated and even the technicians are baffled with them.
Thank you for your advice Simon.

I’m so glad you got back to me with the results…. and even more pleased that you are all sorted!

Your email was quite timely…. I have just received an email from someone towing with a VW Toureg and he is having the same issue…. and as both auto light systems in the BMW and VW are made by Bosch….. I’ll bet it’s the auto light again.

I think this is a bit of important info, so with your permission, I’d like to write a brief article about the problem and steps taken to resolve it.

Cheers

Simon

Hmm….. I have auto lights on my VW Amarok but don’t use them…. I can feel a little testing in the near future!

So…. it was the Auto Light function on the BMW. I have checked on my VW Amarok and this doesn’t happen, I’m waiting for the gentleman that emailed me about a similar problem on his Toureg to get back to me.

If you have a BMW with Auto Light function and this has happened to you can you post in the comments as it will help anyone else when searching on Google for a similar problem.

I get a few of these type of problems emailed to me from time to time and the results never really make it into the blog. As some of them could be useful for other’s with similar problems do you think this type of posting would be useful? Obviously permission is required for me to repost and I did confirm with Roy if I could tell his story… I was going do one of my usual articles, but them thought actually the emails tell a better story just as they are.

Let me know what you think.

Is This A Growing Trend..?

30 Monday Jan 2023

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First things first… Happy New Year to you all. Ok so I’m a bit late but there you go, that’s what retirement does for you… no sense of time.

Right, I seem to be receiving a LOT and by a lot I mean 3 or 4 emails a week offering to provide content for my blog. Anything from selecting a new BBQ and the top ten best BBQ’s all the way to Best Hiking Trails in the US. They all start in a similar way…. “We love your blog and think that we have some really super articles that would fit right in with your readers“…. or something similar…. you get the idea.

Now most enquire what my rates are for publishing articles and a few offer a flat fee right up front. One outfit in California offered to pay $800 US per article. (Hmmm I could be rich!) However I decided to do a little delving into the articles and followed some links provided. It seems that most of the articles were designed to lead readers to YouTube creators channels by recommendation and direct link, or were just plain advertising for product sponsors of one form or another. I know the YouTube rules are getting silly forcing creators to produce more and more, which is actually having the effect of reducing quality of content IMHO. (Except Graham… see below… shameless plug warning)

I have never accepted advertising on the blog, I’m not here for that and I don’t like adverts popping up when I’m trying to read something and I guess you don’t either. So I’m not going to start now after ten plus years of Caravan Chronicles accepting paid promotion stuff.

Talking Of Paid Promotion…

I have received a rash of invites to review solar power stations for either free products, percentage of sales generated or cash payment after review is published.

Having seen the number of reviews by others I decided to respond to the requests slightly differently. I agreed to do a review of their products or product line on the understanding that return shipping was paid for for all products that were sent for review. Any review may or may not involve disassembly of the product and component verification and would be covered in any article I wrote about the product and testing would be real world and not based on the advertised performance of any product.

Needles to say you won’t be seeing me review and solar power stations. I would actually like one, but all the companies and importers that initially contacted me have strangely gone silent…. I think the modern parlance is I’ve been ghosted.

Graham, the internationally renowned caravan vlogger hit the nail on the head with his video… (shameless promotion of a fellow blogger ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tNEkntgUIg Hi Graham… will that do?

What’s In Store For 2023?

Well Sue retired last year and we managed to get 46 nights away at 10 sites… It was great not thinking about how long we had before having to return home. Hopefully we will be doing much of the same, finding new places to explore on our eBikes. So look out we are on our way somewhere soon… well when I can stop fuming about the new C & M Club booking web site!

I’m also going to stop answering question/problem posts on social media. Someone asks a question, I post a reply which is then followed by dozen other posts telling me I’m wrong but not answering the original poster’s question or solving their problem is not helpful really. hey ho… if they want to change the laws of physics or rewrite a new section on thermo dynamics I’m not going to argue anymore… I’ll just point them in the direction of that amiable “hauuustralian” John Cadogan.

Oh Another Thing…

Caravan Chronicles is designed in WORDPRESS and hosted on WordPress’ own servers and has done from day one (11 years now I think) It costs about £100 per year and that seemed fair…. I just had an email though telling me that as our super super government had changed the tax rules, as from the 31st January 2023 they had to charge me VAT! so that’s £20 more going to our governments pockets.

See you on the road… or on site, TTFN.

P.S. I set up a coffee buying thing a while ago… that thing on the left…. I thought it was a bit of a fad thing….. well blow me two people bought me a coffee… cheers!

A Bit of a Milestone…

01 Saturday Jan 2022

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Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great Christmas and the big guy brought you some wonderful gadgets for the RV… yep I’ve been watching way too much stuff from across the pond.

This month Caravan Chronicles celebrates ten years of irrelevant blogging and I designed an eye catching logo… and you can see from it, that I’m not very good at designing logo’s.

I have been asked if we have any “merch” with the Caravan Chronicles logo and….. no. I really can’t see why anyone would want a mug or tee shirt or even a sticker with Caravan Chronicles emblazoned on it. I can’t see my eye catching 10 years of CC logo being any different so there won’t be any mugs, pens or stickers with that on it either. Sue and I did have a couple of shirts with a logo embroidered on for wearing at the caravan shows… but they are now used as coveralls when we are doing a bit of DIY and they are really good for that.

Milestones…

Well I guess I could tell you that in ten years we have had over 42.3 million page views and been read in almost every country in the world…. the one that amazes me is somone in the Marshall Islands reads it… I had to look that up on a map!

Over 2400 of you have left nearly 4000 comments and I have received over 44,000 emails of which about half weren’t trying to sell me something or asking me to help out a recently deceased Nigerian business man’s widow.

In the ten years I have stuck to my ‘no paid content’ through out and have turned down requests for paid reviews. I have been sent a few things to review… some have been returned and some given away… which reminds me the first person to say “Hi” at the next camp site can have an Eco Camel Shower Head.

I do however have an “Amazon Associates” thingy which is great, Amazon pays me and it doesn’t cost you a penny… it all comes from Big Jeff… and as he can afford to go into space I think he can afford to shell out a few pennies to allow me to pay the wonderful people at WordPress to keep this blog up and running. So if you want to encourage Big Jeff to pay me a bit more… use any of the Amazon links in the Caravan Chronicles shop… and buy anything you like.

What’s planned for the future?

Well I am thinking about some sort of smart Q & A system on the blog. I spend quite a bit of time answering technical emails and quite a few cries for help and maybe a searchable Q & A system would work. Only thing is I don’t know how to do it in WordPress so some research needed along those lines. If you have any thoughts on anything that would improve the blog or would like to see let me know in the comments.

So I’d just like to offer a genuine big thank you all for ten amazing years of support and both Sue and I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and safe travels.

Copying Content… Again!

23 Monday Mar 2020

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Since posting this a number of people have apparently emailed the company and as a result the page has now being removed. Many thanks to everyone that took time out to email them and to Homefit Tow Bars & Roof Racks for responding so promptly.

This is a bit of a letting off steam post.

I had a ping back notification for a page I wrote a while ago. A ping back is basically a notification that someone has embedded a link to one of your pages. Normally not a problem as most are from forums or other blogs saying “go and have a look at this….” and including a link to the article.

However Greg Smith of Homefit Tow Bars & Roof Racks in Sydney, Australia, decided to copy my drawings and reword a lot of my text… (although he did manage to make the effort and add some of his own) and post it in his company web site as their own blog.

Here are the screenshots of the web page…

Now I’m getting a bit hacked off with this. I have given permission to people like Collyn Rivers, the well know Australian author of a number of books on Caravans & Motorhomes and to a couple of Australian magazines to reprint articles and they always link back and include credits to myself/Caravan Chronicles.

Normally I would contact the person or company breaching my copywrite and ask them to either the it down or add a credit or byline with a link to the original article or post. This normally takes a while as they are slow to respond and usually come back with initially “well it’s on the internet so it’s free to use” ……. NO IT’S NOT!

I’m getting tired of chasing people, so I have decided to simply post the infringement/copywrite breach. So if you want to contact them to let them know here’s their details…

  • Central Coast Newcastle & Hunter valley
  • Sydney, Australia
  • +61 418 633 926
    Monday – Friday | 8:00 am to 5.00 pm
  • email address removed

You might want to let them know I nicked their logo…. well everything is free on the internet isn’t it!

Euro 6 Engines, Smart Alternators and Your Leisure Battery…

27 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by in Caravan Electrics, Electrical, Technical, Tow Vehicle, Uncategorized

≈ 49 Comments

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About 12 months ago I wrote a blog post “Is A Euro 6 Engine Killing Your Leisure Battery?” and it got a few comments and generated a number of emails. However 12 months on I’m getting a lot more questions relating to problems around smart alternators and I’ve brought forward this blog post by quite a few months from my planned posting date following a couple of long email exchanges with two readers and a few others.

Right, I think the best way to explain this is to set the stage so to speak.

Bob stores his brand new caravan at home and it is regularly plugged in to the house to run the internal battery charger and a dehumidifier. It’s got a new 110Ah AGM leisure battery and a new motor-mover fitted. The caravan is plugged in at least 24 hours before any trip to get the fridge down to temp prior to stocking it up. Bob also has a brand new car, Euro 6 diesel with a smart alternator. The car is a few months younger than the caravan and he’s never towed a caravan with this car. The tow bar and tow electrics were all fitted by the dealer (or dealers agents) prior to it being purchased. He did tow this caravan on 4 trips with his previous car, same make but 6 years older.

The caravan suitably prepped, fridge down to temperature and stocked. An early morning departure and six hour journey with a couple of stops to catch the Euro Shuttle over to France followed by a couple of hours driving in France to their first destination. On arriving, Bob sited the caravan on to the pitch not using the motor-mover and went about setting up. Mrs Bob knowing a request for a cup of tea was imminent went inside to put the kettle on where she discovered everything in the freezer had defrosted. Bob checked the fridge, it was still set for travelling. For what ever reason he also checked the leisure battery on the caravan’s system… 12.1 volts.

Over the next few days there was a couple of phone calls to their caravan dealer along with a number of emails. For the next three weeks and 2 other camp sites the fridge worked perfectly. On the return trip a similar distance and travelling time to the outward journey ended up when Bob returned home he only managed to get the caravan part way up the drive using the motor mover. He had to plug the caravan into his house overnight to charge the leisure battery enough to allow him to use the motor mover to finally put the caravan into its ‘home’ at the rear of the house.

Within a couple of weeks the caravan was returned to the dealer for extensive checking and the dealer could not find any issues with it or the fridge. They put forward the idea it must be an issue with the car. Bob tended to agree with this as he had taken this caravan on four trips towing with is old car and never had any issues. Three relatively short trips, the other a longer two week trip from the North East down to Cornwall, a similar 8 or 9 hour journey and everything seemed fine.

After a conversation with the main dealer who agreed to have the vehicle towing electrics checked over the next couple of days. The verdict from the main dealer was they could find nothing wrong with the vehicle, everything was working as expected.

Now, this is where I got involved. The above is actually an amalgamation of two very similar emails asking for thoughts and advice. The people involved had vehicles from different manufacturers and the caravans were also from different manufacturers. The only common element was the vehicles were new and had Euro 6 engines with smart alternators. I am not going to mention the vehicle or caravan manufacturers for a couple of reasons…. one, I don’t want to end up on the wrong end of a legal letter and two, I don’t actually think the manufacturer of either is relevant.

What’s Going On?

Luckily for me Bob is recently retired but knows his way round an AVO 8 being an apprentice TV repair man for Redifusion back in the day when valves were king. (Just as an aside, I bought my first AVO 8 back in 1976 and paid £8 for it. It was Ex REME in a leather case. I purchased it from MAZEL RADIO on London Rd in Manchester. Anyone from Manchester of a certain age will know Mazel Radio).

To cut a long story short over a period of a couple of weeks we proved that when hitched up, as soon as the smart alternator went into eco mode, there was a current flow up to about 4.5 to 5 amps FROM the leisure battery TO the car. This only stopped and reversed when the electrical load in the car caused the vehicles ECU to turn on the alternator’s output. Furthermore we determined that with the caravan hitched up, the period the alternator was in eco mode was also longer than when unhitched. Although we could not prove this with definitive evidence, this would also support the reverse current flow from the caravan to the vehicle that we were seeing as the caravan leisure battery was now supporting the vehicle battery.

Now there were a few questions that were buzzing round my brain….

  • Why didn’t the caravan habitation relay drop out when the smart alternator went into eco mode to stop this reverse flow?
  • Why didn’t the dedicated tow electrics strop this reverse flow?
  • Why didn’t the vehicle ECU knowing a trailer was hitched stop the alternator going into ECO mode?
  • If the ECU put the alternator into eco mode why didn’t it drop the fridge supply and by default release the habitation relay?
  • Why did the fridge defrost/not work even though in theory there was a voltage supplied to it?
  • Was this the reason I had seen an increase in emails relating to motor mover issues and batteries not holding their charge?

What Next?

I don’t really know. I don’t know how wide spread an issue it is or its going to become. I also don’t know the details of how specific manufacturers implement eco modes in the ECU programming or how the tow bar electrical interface manufacturers could work round the potential issues while still being able to get their products certified by vehicle manufacturers.

I think it might be down to the caravan manufacturers to come up with a solution. I know that there are a couple of after-market products available that provide a solution – We have one I installed in our caravan and in the short term I think this will be the quickest route. Caravan manufacturers may have a reluctance to respond and they can legitimately say “Well it is designed to work correctly to the relevant standards.” I think that maybe it will require the two main caravan clubs to look further into this and if what I have outlined above is proven by them to be the case, bring pressure to bear on all the parties concerned to come up with a way forward to resolve the issue.

For my part, I have contacted a few manufacturers asking for information and clarification or even acknowledgement of an issue. Unfortunately no one seems to want to talk about it. I do know individuals have emails details of their own problem to manufacturers and have received less than helpful responses.

Let me know in the comments below if you have had anything that might be related to this. I’d like to find out more.

EDIT:…

The thought just crossed my mind…. what affect, if any, will this have on AL-KO ATC (if fitted) when the vehicle is in eco mode and the alternator shut down? Does is mean that there is a possibility that the AK-KO ATC may not work correctly in all circumstances?