Is A Euro 6 Engine Killing Your Leisure Battery?…

21 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Amarok, Caravan Electrical Fault Finding, Caravan Electrics, Electrical, Maintenance, Modifications, Off Grid, Technical, Tow Vehicle, VW Amarok

≈ 83 Comments

Tags

Caravan Electrics, Euro 6 Engines, Maintenance, Modifications, Sterling Power Wildside

OK… so that title was a bit dramatic! However here’s the thing… I don’t think everything is peachy with Euro 6 engines and charging leisure batteries.

If you are a regular reader, you know I have recently installed one of Sterling Power’s Wildside units (and so far I’m super happy with it!) but I did get an email from someone who had read all my postings about it and asked me if it might cure his problem. Here’s the gist of his email….

Note: I have edited this down a bit…. and withheld the name of the person and vehicle.

“I have recently changed my car to a new 2017 xxxxxxxxxxxx and after several trips with it, on arriving home there is never enough charge in the motor mover to manoeuvre our caravan up our drive (which is on an incline) and park the caravan round the back of the garage. I have to plug the caravan in overnight before I can use the mover.

This only seems to have started happening since we changed to the xxxxxxxxxx. I had the caravan’s battery tested at two garages and they said it is OK and it is only 2 years old. The local caravan service man said he could not find anything wrong with the motor mover.

As we are on mains at the caravan sites we visit for a few days the caravan battery should be fully charged.

Can you help?”

This did have me stumped for a bit. Battery tested OK, no issues with the mover, so what was going on?

While doing some of the prep work for writing about my installation of the Wildside unit, I had spent a few days prodding about our VW Amarok with a multimeter and making a few notes about voltages etc. One thing that I did cotton on to was the cyclic way the vehicles ECU seemed to turn off the alternator…. well I should really say put the alternator into “idle” mode. Now with the caravan attached (pre Wildside unit install) I did notice that at the start it seemed to take longer for the vehicle’s alternator to go into idle mode but also it seemed to stay in idle for a lot longer and I was in the process of trying to work out why as initially I’d have thought it would have been less as it was running the fridge and charging the leisure battery.

A picture is worth… you know the rest. Here’s one of my excellent drawings!

Right, here we go… The drawing shows a caravan plugged into a tow vehicle that has the engine-turned off. Pin 9 is live as it should be, and the habitation relay in the caravan is effectively off allowing the caravan’s leisure battery to connect and power the caravan’s internal 12 volt systems. As the vehicle engine is off, there is no power on Pin 10 the fridge circuit, as this is controlled by the vehicle’s ECU.

Really this could be any vehicle with any engine. Now let’s have a look at what happens with the engine running…

Pin 10 is live, turned on by the vehicles ECU and this powers the caravans fridge. It also operates the caravan’s habitation relay which now disconnects the leisure battery from the caravan’s 12 volt systems and connects it to Pin 9 so that the vehicle can start to charge it.

Again, this could be any vehicle with any engine. This is how our Land Rover Freelander works with our caravan. All straight forward.

Now lets look at what happens when the Euro 6 engine puts the alternator into “idle” (or Eco mode etc.)

This is where it starts to get interesting. I have taken a few liberties here and made a few assumptions. I have shown the vehicle’s alternator disconnected. In practice the ECU doesn’t disconnect the alternator, it will reduce the field voltage and hence the output, not really disconnecting it but reducing the output to a negligible amount.

The ECU will also monitor the vehicle’s battery voltage and continue to allow the vehicles general electrical system to drain the battery to somewhere around 75% charge (this may be a bit of an arbitrary figure) The ECU will then turn on (or up) the alternators output to recharge the vehicle’s battery to about 80%. Why 80% well it needs the remaining 20% ‘free capacity’ so that when you brake, the excess energy of engine braking (regen) can be dissipated into the vehicle battery. Remember that on a Euro 6 engine the alternator is capable of generating round about 2Kw.

Now at this point it dawned on me that something could be happening here, but the idea was a bit ridiculous…. guys with far more agile grey cells than mine must have worked this out and I dismissed the idea. I must have missed a trick somewhere.

I did a bit more checking. I was using two 17Ah sealed lead acid batteries as my “leisure” battery simply because it was quicker to charge or discharge them than a 120Ah battery. For a fridge load I was using 3 x 50 watt light bulbs and it was all jury rigged to a 13 pin plug so I could just plug it in to either the Freelander or the Amarok to make comparisons. I was using a trusty old AVO 8 meter, a couple of digital multimeters and a clamp meter to measure current so really the whole set up was super sketchy for anything that I could write about. I thought that I must have been missing something somewhere and I actually kind of put it to the back of my mind. I just got on with installing the Wildside unit and writing it up.

“DING” You have mail……

I received an email from Charles Sterling with some very interesting information. During testing he had come across exactly the same issue I was pondering over but had put off further testing. I guess by now you have worked it out. Quite simply you can get current flow in the opposite direction… from caravan leisure battery to vehicle battery. In testing Charles had measured a current of around 6 Amps.

It dawned on me that maybe during my initial testing with my jury rigged set up I hadn’t missed something and the readings I had seen were correct. Both Charles and I quite separately had (in my case ‘stumbled’) on a potential issue with Euro 6 engines and caravans.

Back to the original email earlier. It now made sense. The sender of the email was setting off from their campsite to travel home with a fully charged battery (being on EHU while they were on site) and during the course of the drive home, the vehicles ECU was actually reducing the fully charged leisure battery down to 80% charge as it actually thought that the ‘vehicle’ battery was at 100% charge. Hence when he arrived home, the caravan’s leisure battery didn’t have enough charge to run the motor mover long enough to put the caravan away.

So what does this mean in practice?

Well effectively (give or take a bit of loss due to cabling) the caravan’s leisure battery will only get charged to about 80%. You can now think of the vehicle battery and caravan leisure battery as being one battery bank because that is how the vehicle sees it. If the leisure battery is fully charged its voltage will be higher than the vehicle battery so the vehicle will turn off (or down) the alternator so that the vehicles electrical system can drain it to about 75% ready for accepting the excess energy from regen braking. The caravan’s fridge helps the vehicle by draining the battery bank that bit quicker.

This also answers another question. While I was testing, sometimes I’d plug-in my jury rigged setup and if my two little 17Ah batteries were fully charged I’d get a low current drain indicated on my clamp meter. I’d dismissed this to a certain extent, but now I realise that as my two 17Ah batteries were fully charged and the vehicle battery would be at about 80% charge, there would be enough of a voltage difference for a short while, that the two 17Ah batteries would try to equalise with the vehicle battery by recharging it slightly..

Whats the answer?

Well thankfully I solved my problem when I installed the Wildside unit a few weeks ago.

Finally…

If you have had any electrical issues with a Euro 6 engine and towing please drop a comment below. I’ll try to help.

As an aside, I am trying to arrange attending a tow bar installers electrical course with a couple of the OEM electrical equipment manufacturers and one of the approved bodies so I can hopefully increase my knowledge base and widen the number of vehicles I can cover. It’s a bit up-in-the-air at the moment as it would appear its going to cost a small fortune! (Sponsorship deals gratefully received!)

Getting All Charged Up – Update

02 Sunday Jul 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Caravan Electrics, Electrical, Off Grid, Product Review, Projects, Reviews, Technical, Towing, VW Amarok

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Caravan Electrics, Leisure Battery Charging, Modifications, Sterling Power Wildside, VW Amarok

The best laid plans….

We had originally intended to spend a week down at Glastonbury which would have meant the 5 hour drive down would have been an excellent test for the Sterling Power Wildside unit’s first outing. However we had to cancel the trip literally the day before we were due to set off. In the few days between installing the Wildside unit and our planned trip to Glastonbury I had been exchanging emails and phone calls with Charles Sterling talking about some of the aspects of the Wildside unit and the direction that caravan electrics was heading in.

Continue reading →

A Step In The Right Direction…

03 Saturday Jun 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Amarok, General, Modifications, Tow Vehicle, VW Amarok

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Accessories, Pegasus 4 x 4, T-Step, Technical

OK, so if you read about the bike rack install I guess you might have seen the video of me getting onto the tailgate of the VW Amarok…. akin to a whale wearing a tutu and trying to get on points. I needed something better… well my knees were telling me I better do something about it at least. In the USA, the land of the pickup or Australia the home of the Ute there were plenty of options. The downside was the Amarok has not been released in the USA and shipping charges from Australia are insane. I had to find something closer to home. Doing the usual google searches always ended up with products on sale in different continents so I ended up searching for images that contained the word ‘tailgate’, ‘step’ and ‘Amarok’ and after clicking on various pictures discovered Pegasus 4 x 4 in Bristol. (Note to all the companies out there… spending time correctly tagging and key wording all the photos on your websites pays off!) Continue reading →

Getting All Charged Up – Part 1…

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Boondocking, Caravan Electrics, Caravan Servicing, Electrical, Gadgets, General, Maintenance, Modifications, Off Grid, Product Review, Reviews, Technical, Tow Vehicle, Uncategorized, VW Amarok

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Euro6 Engines, Leisure Battery Charging, Maintenance, Project, Regen Braking, Sterling Power Wildside

If you are a regular reader you may remember a couple of posts I wrote about leisure battery charging in caravans and motorhomes (Smart Alternators: how they affect Caravans and Motorhomes…. and NEC Show Roundup – it’s all technical…) and I linked to a few videos that Charles Sterling from Sterling Power has produced covering charging topics and Euro6 engines. At the recent NEC show Sterling Power were featuring a new product that would soon be available that would solve all the issues for caravan owners that were experiancing towing with vehicles that had “smart alternators” which were are standard on Euro5 and Euro6 engines and the issues around regenerative braking on Euro6 engines. Charles promised to send me one of the first pre-production “Wildside” Battery to Battery chargers specifically designed for caravans.

A couple of days ago I was excited to receive a package from Sterling Power containing one of the pre-production new “Wildside” units. The unit itself is robustly constructed and weighs in at about the same as a bag of sugar – 1Kg.

It comes with a comprehensive 11 page instruction/installation manual that goes through all the steps that you need to install the units and what all the various lights and connections are on the unit itself. For anyone that is familiar with my electrical drawings, Sterling have based their installation drawings on my format so are easy to understand (in my opinion!).

I’ll state now for the record, Sterling Power have sent me this free of charge to install and evaluate and that is what I’m going to do, but I will be honest and tell you if I think there are any issues with the installation or the unit in the way that it operates.

Looking at the connections for the unit it all looks straight forward. The circuit board is labelled exactly as the drawings in the installation manual which is reassuring and the manual goes into the various functions of each connection and the programming of the unit.

Why this unit?

Since we had changed from using our 2006 Land Rover Freelander HSE as our primary tow vehicle to our 2016 VW Amarok Atacama I had noticed that our leisure battery was not getting close to a full charge even after towing for a couple of hours. We don’t have a solar charging system installed and relied on the tow vehicle and EHU when on site to keep our leisure battery topped up. I knew about the limitations of smart alternators and have written about them before and answered lots of emails about problems readers were now experiancing. Up to this point I really didn’t have an answer to most of the problems and I was considering going down the same route as our Australian cousins and installing some hefty cables between the tow vehicle and caravan, connected together with Anderson connectors. Works fine down under and would do here, especially coupled with one of Sterling Power’s B2B units which I had been looking at.

Now this would be ideal for us, but anyone who tows using a company car, a lease vehicle or a vehicle on a LP scheme can’t just go ahead and install stuff willy nilly. Unless it is done right, it has the potential to be a bit of a ticking bomb as well and if I was going to recommend it as a solution there are very few people with experience to do an installation of this type. I have seen some right botch jobs on heavy-duty cabling by so-called “professionals” when installing simple winches and dual battery systems on 4 x 4 off road vehicles. Using a lump hammer, cold chisel and block of metal is NOT the professional way to crimp battery cables!

I was looking round to see if there were other options and talking to the chaps on the Sterling Power stand at the show told me they had a product in development that might just be the solution…. and here we are!

How does it work?

I’m not going to give you chapter and verse on the internals (some of that would be guessing on my part and some is propriety information anyway) so I’ll simplify it as much as I can.

In current tow vehicles you have two connections that supply power to the caravan – one for the fridge which is only live when the engine runs and one for charging the leisure battery which is usually live all the time. Now the problem is that as it’s quite a distance from the front of the vehicle where the battery and alternator are to where the leisure battery and fridge are located in the caravan. The size of the cables providing the connections are key to how efficient it all works.

Nearly all good quality tow bar wiring uses 2.5 mm square (2.5mm²) cable for these circuits and they connect between the tow vehicle and caravan through a 13 pin plug and socket (or 12N & 12S in older vehicles). The problem with all this is down to good electrical ‘laws’. In essence the more current you draw through a length of cable the greater the voltage drop ( I go into a bit of techie detail about it here… Understanding Cable and Cable Sizes ) Some people go to the lengths of re-wiring the circuits in 4mm² or even 6mm² cable, which was OK up to a point… usually the point which is the connection between the vehicle and caravan. With the traditional installation what you end up with is two circuits that the voltage is usually too low to provide a good charging capability for the leisure battery and the fridge circuit that might or might not, depending on voltage drop, have some spare capacity but you can’t use it to charge the leisure battery.

Back to the Wildside unit…

What the Wildside unit does and this is really clever, is it takes over the two power circuits, aggregates them and manages the output. It draws the maximum current available through each of the two circuits and provides an output for the fridge always at the correct voltage to maximise the efficiency of your fridge and protect it from the voltage fluctuations inherent with Euro6 and Regen engines and any spare capacity on this circuit it added to the leisure battery charging circuit, steps up the voltage and provides a separate output via a four stage intelligent battery charger to maximise the charging capability to your leisure battery.

This is a very very simple one paragraph explanation, it does have a few other tricks up its sleeve though.

One feature is the “Remote Mode Select” switch option. This allows you to install a switch that will allow you to turn the unit to “Wildside”, “Boondocking” or “Off Grid” mode and run the fridge as though it was being powered from the vehicle. It is actually being powered from the leisure battery.

Take note though… Most caravans and motorhomes are fitted with absorption fridges which use a heated element that is constantly on to make the fridge work. However some motorhomes ( I don’t know of any caravans) are fitted with the more expensive and vastly more efficient compressor fridges which work exactly like your fridge at home but can’t run on gas. If you are camping off grid for a few days with an absorption fridge, then run it on gas. However if you are worried about your fridge not maintaining temperature on an hours ferry crossing or on a euro tunnel crossing then you can use the switch to keep the fridge running. The period you can power it will depend on the capacity of your battery(s)… I would not advise using it with and absorption fridge on a battery bank with anything less than 110Ah capacity.

If you do use this feature on the Wildside unit, it will protect your battery bank from discharging past the safe point by turning off the fridge when the voltage reduces and reaches a critical point that would damage your battries.

You also have the ability to specifically select the type of leisure battries you have installed – GEL I, GEL II, AGM I, AGM II, Sealed, Open, Calcium, LiFePO4 to get the correct tailored charging and maintenance program for your battery bank.

If you are fortunate to have lithium leisure batteries there are a couple of other connections you will need to check out too.

Installation Considerations…

We know what it does so how do we connect it. Well this is where it could get messy unless we have a plan.

In essence, what do we need to do? Well we have to cut and divert the incoming pin 9 and pin 10 into the Wildside unit and connect one output to the leisure battery. We also need to disconnect the fridge from the caravan’s original control box and reconnect it to the Wildside unit. As the habitation relay is usually buried inside the original control box we need to be able to control this from the Wildside unit. There is a terminal for this (“CVan Dis Output”) but what do we connect to this to make the habitation relay operate correctly?

The original Pin 10 lead that we cut and diverted into the Wildside unit, the other end of this still goes into the installed control box and this will operate the habitation relay. Remember we disconnected the fridge power lead from the installed control box and reconnected it directly to the FRG+ output on the Wildside unit so all it does now is operate the habitation relay.

So summing up, we have to cut 3 cables and re-terminate 5 ends into the Wildside unit. This of course does not include the neutral connections which will be easy and straight forward.

Other Considerations…

The installation of the Wildside unit must be easily reversible so it can be moved to another caravan at some point in the future.

We must also use the correct size cables to connect to the leisure battery as we will now be charging at higher currents than was possible before, the original cable that was installed in the caravan to connect to the leisure battery may not be of a sufficient rating.

We must document the changes properly so that at some point in the future someone can follow what we have done incase they have to fault find.

We must make sure all the connections and general installation are done to a high standard to ensure the installation is safe.

Finally we must be able to do the install without invalidating any warranty on the original installed control unit (i.e. not opening it up) and retain functionality of all the elements of the caravans electrical system. It’s no use installing the Wildside unit if half the electrical features of you caravan don’t work afterwards!

In Part 2…

In the next part I’ll go through the manufacturers electrical schematics of the caravan and show how to find and trace which cables we are going to look for when we do the install and how we produce a simple drawing showing the changes.

I’ll also come up with a quick check list for all the additional bits (cable, terminals etc) that we will need for the install.

Fitting A Bike Rack to the VW Amarok – Finale…

12 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Amarok, Bike Carrier, Bike Rack, General, Modifications, Tow Vehicle, VW Amarok

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Bike Rack, Modifications, Touring, Towing, VW Amarok

It’s time to wrap up the bike rack install. I had to wait a few days for the final rack to arrive. Although I had ordered a twin pack of the Thule FreeRide 532 from Holdcrofts via Amazon and they had shipped out a twin pack, it would seem that their courier had ‘lost’ one and to Holdcrofts credit as soon as I emailed them they dispatched another… which the courier took four days to deliver.

Continue reading →

Fitting A Bike Rack to the VW Amarok – Part 2…

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Amarok, Bike Carrier, Bike Rack, General, Modifications, Projects, VW Amarok

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bike Rack, Maintenance, Modifications, Touring, Towing, VW Amarok

OK, so now to fit the actual bike carriers onto the rack I had previously installed a couple of days ago.

We had opted for the Thule FreeRide 532 over the ProRide version. What put me off the ProRide were a couple of videos on YouTube showing just how easy it was to remove a bike supposedly locked on to the rack. The FreeRide 532 has two arms supporting the bike and offered an option for additional security…. which I’m not going to go into for obvious reasons!

I had ordered a twin pack of the FreeRide 532, unfortunately I only received one. It seems the other was lost in transit somewhere according to my enquiries with the supplier. The other thing I found out was they (or it) didn’t come with the “T” track fixings. OK so a quick trip down to my nearest Thule dealer Northwest Towbars to pick up the elusive fixings. They would remain elusive… Northwest Towbars didn’t have any in stock. Not to be out manoeuvred I’d make my own.

To the bat cave again…

I just happened to have some 2mm aircraft grade aluminium handy and cut eight 21mm x 45mm pieces. The FreeRide 532 normally has three mounting locations, but as there was an additional hole that lined up with the “T” track it would be rude not to use it! So I made four for each rack.

For the threaded bolt I had some dome head bolts handy. The width of the dome head was wide enough so it would not pull through the slot on its own so I was not relying on a 2mm think aluminium plate entirly. To hold the bolts in place I drilled a slightly undersized hole in the aluminium…

…and used my small press to force the square shoulders of the bolt through the aluminium plate to hold it in place.

The result was eight “T” track bolts. A quick dressing up on the sanding belt and fine grinding wheel to remove any rough edges finished them off.

The excess length of the bolt would be trimmed later.

Fitting the FreeRide 532 Racks

Sliding four of the newly made “T” track bolts in to the WingBars I could place the FreeRide 532 on to the bars.

I used a couple of nuts to hold the rack in place while I test fitted one of the bikes. It was a bit too tight. The swing up frame section that clamps on to the bike only partially engaged on the bike frame. The whole rack needed moving rearwards by about 10 to 15 mm.

Not a problem, as the WingBar mounting is off set laterally compared to the “T” track, reversing the bar so it faced the other way would solve this and effectively move the “T” track slot rearwards by about 20mm.

With the WingBar mounted in the other direction the bike was a perfect fit. Also it made it easier opening the end caps of the WingBar as configured the correct way round they were a bit tight against the roll bar.The next thing to address was the overhang. I still had around 50 to 60 mm of adjustment I could make to the rails of the FreeRide rack. Removing everything again and a bit of ‘adjusticating’ with a small rubber mallet soon saw the rails in the correct position. I had not been able to get the rear of the mount flush with the pickup tailgate as was my original hope, but checking with a plumb bob…

… It was still shorter than the tow ball and only about 40mm longer than the rear bumper. So the overhang wasn’t anything to worry about. Even with a bike on the rack it would be clear of the caravan in the tightest of turns. Next it was just a matter of squaring things up and tightening everything down.

I ended up locating the rack more to the side than I first planned. This was for two reasons. Firstly, once the second rack is in place it leaves me with nearly 800 mm between the two racks which will allow for the option in the the future of having the ability to install a mesh tray, ski rack, surfboard rack (we don’t ski or surf… ho hum) or slimline roof box if we ever run out of storage in the Amarok. The second reason is it will give the rear view dash cam a relatively unobscured view rearward even with two bikes on the back.

Everything torqued to the correct settings, I topped off the nuts with an additional nylon lock nut to make sure they could not vibrate loose…

… and using a Dremmel I cut off the excess thread and ground off any sharp edges. I need to find a suitable plastic or rubber push on cover for these then I can give them a quick coat of preserving grease.

One thing that I did think about was the prospect of the swing arms bouncing up and down when bikes were not on the rack. A quick rummage in my straps box produced a few of these little blue straps and a handy slot on the mounting plate seemed ideal…

… problem solved. A simple solution to something that may or may not be a problem.

So one rack fitted, all that is left is to repeat for the other side, when it arrives!

Fitting A Bike Rack to the VW Amarok – Part 1…

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Amarok, Bike Carrier, Bike Rack, Modifications, Uncategorized, VW Amarok

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Bike Rack, Modifications, Touring, Towing, VW Amarok

It’s been a few months since we bought our VW Amarok and I hadn’t originally intended it to take this long to install a bike rack or carrier. What slowed us down was sorting out the bits needed for mounting a bike carrier above the bed of the Amarok. In the USA, pickups are plentiful and there are various companies that make carrier systems and mounts for pickups. My initial thoughts it would be fairly easy and started perusing the Thule website. Unfortunately they did not sell the correct mounting hardware for where I wanted to mount the rack.. on the side rails for the Roll-N-Lock cover.

Searching the internet found plenty of results for the type of mounting I wanted… all in America and the most promising system was produced by Yakimar.

However, trying to find a retailer that would ship to the UK was a bit of a problem as most would only ship to the US and Canada. I did eventually find a company in California that would. The next hurdle was the cost. To buy everything and get it shipped over here would ring up a massive £2180 bill at the checkout. This was not worth it. I out the bike rack on the back burner for a while… and the pound against the dollar slipped in the meantime.

I started looking around again at the start of this year and returned to Thule and Fiamma. Could I make up my own “kit of parts” to do the job? Fiamma while having a great selection of racks and bits didn’t provide anything in the way of a roof bar so back to Thule again. While mooching about their website I accidentally got on to the American area of their site and while looking for mounting feet came across one specifically designed for mounting on to flat roofs. The part was intended for a Fibreglass canopy on a Jeep Wrangler but pictures showed them being used on a number of vehicles and camping trailers. This was exactly the part I needed.

I checked with a number of Thule retailers to see if they had Kit 3113 which was used to mount Rapid Podium Foot Pack 460R on flat surfaces. No one had it, so a quick email to Thule asking if it was obtainable in the UK or Europe was fired off. The answer was a bit surprising. It was an American part produced by the American Division and was not obtainable in Europe.

OK, back to my contact at Worldwide Cyclery in California… did they stock it and could they ship it? It arrived within six days. I also ordered the Foot Pack 460R as it was over £60 cheaper even after paying import duty than buying it in the UK on-line. I now had the means to mount the WingBars(Aeroblade). I just needed to check the size and order these and two FreeRide 232 bike mounts. Before I ordered, I checked the width I’d need. Next problem, The WingBars in the UK were 1500mm wide and in the US being manufactured in English sizes were slightly wider by about an inch. They arrived a few days later from the US!

OK, so now I had all the parts… to the bat cave!

Assembling the 3113 mounting plates

The first task was to assemble everything so I could to a test fit of the whole caboodle on the back of the Amarok before drilling anything… always a good idea! The four Kit 3113’s were assembled first and the four 406R feet were mounted on to them.

Assembling the 460R on to one of the 3113 mounting plates.

Once this was done, the sub assemblies were slid on to the ends of the WingBars.

Once this was done, I could roughly position the two partially completed WingBars across the bed of the Amarok.

I now needed to check the position of the bike on the FreeRide 532 so that would in turn give me the position I needed to mount the WingBars. From the centre line of the mounting plate the front edge of the front wheel is about 550 mm, so the front WingBar needs to be at least 550mm back from the rear of the cab.

However, the Amarok’s sport bars have to be taken into consideration as these stop the front wheel of the bike going too far forward and will help protect the cab.

This presented a problem. The rear of the FreeRide232 protruded back and hung over the rear tailgate by about 350mm and if possible I wanted everything flush. Not a problem, the two bike wheel mounts can be slid forward and backwards to accommodate various size bike frames and the main mounting point… with a little assistance from a rubber mallet and be slid backwards. So in effect I nudged the two main bars forward so they didn’t protrude over the tailgate and the bike still fitted. You can see my mark as I started to move the main mounting plate on the picture below:

While doing the test fitting and adjusting the position of the mountings, I discovered I had a bit of luck. On the Amarok sport bar there are two ABS plastic mouldings that fit round the bars that are designed for mounting spot lights or work lights that just happen to line up and can be used as ‘rub strips’ to stop the front wheels contacting the coated stainless steel sports bars.

I could now measure where I wanted the WingBars to be located and marked out the positions. I wanted the rear cross-bar to be as far to the rear as possible (something planned for the future) and worked out the distance from the front bar which had to be located so the bike rack fitted with the front wheel tucked against the roll bar.

As the sides of the Roll-N-Lock cover had a slot underneath, I’d previously machined 4 pieces of steel to fit in them and pre drilled and tapped the holes. All I needed to do was drill the sides of the Roll-N-Lock cover.

The (supplied) hex bolts passed through and screwed into the steel plates I’d machined. I also added a spreader nut and lock nut underneath… just to be sure! The lock nut wasn’t tightened up to the spreader nut, so if someone tries to undo the hex bolts, they will simply back off a little then spin round.

OK, first one done time to do the other side…

Other side complete a quick test fit of the WingBar…

While pre-positioning the front bar ready for marking out, I was interrupted by Sue… a welcome coffee and hot pie break!

Both rails fitted, it was time to add the covers and rubber strips…

A final position check of one of the racks and time to call it a day as the rain set in again.

The spacing of the bars will give us lots of options for the future to add a top box, ski mounts – these will allow ski’s to be carried angled upwards over the cab (have to learn to ski first though!) or a mesh tray.

I’ll post part two soon showing the bike carrier mounting and go into some of the little pitfalls I have come across.

NEC Show Roundup – it’s all technical…

28 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by Simon Barlow in Caravan Electrics, Electrical, General, Maintenance, Modifications, Technical, Tow Vehicle, VW Amarok

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

13 Pin Plug, Caravan Electrics, Caravanning, Caravans, Maintenance, Modifications, Sterling Power, Travel Trailer, Travel Trailers

This is really a follow-up to my previous post – Smart Alternators: how they affect Caravans and Motorhomes….

While at the NEC show one of my big tasks was to get a number of technical questions answered by the industry players. One of my first stops was to Westfalia and to meet up with Rick Sykes and his colleague on the Westfalia stand. Rick is the national training manager for Westfalia and I was able to get answers to a number of questions that you have asked me and I’d not been able to answer fully. Continue reading →

BlackVue Dash-Cam Fitted…

17 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Simon Barlow in Accessories, Dash Cam, Gadgets, General, Modifications, VW Amarok

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Dash Cam, Modifications, Tow Vehicle

A few days ago I fitted the Black Vue DR650S-2CH 16GB twin camera dash cam to the Amarok. All in all it was a vey easy install taking me less than two hours to accomplish. The longest part was actually tucking the wires in along the edge of the head liner so they can’t be seen. Helpfully Black View supply a little blue tool that helps you do this without damaging any of the interior trim. I also installed the Black Vue Power Magic PRO that allows permanent connection to the vehicles electrical system and gives you the ability to use “Parking Mode” which records continuously when you are parked with the engine off.

If you have considered a dash-cam but don’t know where to start, one of the best introductory guides to Dash Cams that I have seen is by Techmoan.com. Just click on the link to watch it. There are also dozens of dash-cam reviews on His channel.

The electrical side of add the camera was made easy by using “Add A Circuit” fuse holders. (I’ve put links to everything on Amazon at the bottom of the post) Crimp the Add A Circuit on to the correct cable on the Power Magic unit then simply identify which circuit is permanently live in the fuse box, select a fuse, pull it out and insert it into the Add A Circuit fuse holder along with a fuse of the correct rating for the Power Magic and push the Add A Circuit into the space where you removed the fuse from. You will need two as the Power Magic requires a permanent 12 volt supply and an ignition switched 12 volt supply…. and a ground of course.

From the driving position very little of the front camera can be seen.

There are several switches on the Power Magic to set before you install. The first set the minimum voltage the unit will turn the cameras off at, this stops you flattening the vehicle starter battery, the second set sets a time for the cameras to stop recording after 24 hours, 48 hours or you can set it to infinity. There are several combinations and it’s all explained in the instructions.

The rear camera is installed at the top of the window avoiding getting one of the heating elements in view.

A few installation tips….

Try to install the camera so that the lens is as central as possible so you capture as much of the road as possible.
Try to install the front camera so that the area in front of the camera is swept by the windscreen wipers so you can clear the rain.
If you install a rear view camera, try to make sure it is not positioned directly in view of one of the heating elements, but close enough so that the window is cleared when the screen heater is on.