Tag Archives: Caravan Restoration

For Anyone Restoring A Vintage Caravan…

04 Thursday Jul 2019

Posted by in Caravan Electrics, Caravan Restoration, General, Modifications, Technical

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

, ,

A short while ago two people contacted me separately asking if I had any information relating to rewiring restoration caravans so that they could plug into a modern 13 pin electrics tow car and take advantage of leisure battery charging and run a modern fridge or coolbox.

This was followed up be someone asking me how they could upgrade a late 1970’s caravan and still incorporate and use the “CAR-VAN” switch to change between using the leisure battery or vehicle battery.

Wiring diagram showing how to wire a vintage caravan to modern tow vehicle electrics

I came up with a couple of drawings that covered the basics to show how they could be upgraded to modern tow vehicles. The one above is a basic ‘front end’ from 13 pin plug back to a fuse block for the road lights and a habitation relay.

The drawing below add in the option of a “CAR-VAN” switch (sometimes labeled as CAR-CARAVAN) which uses the same 40 Amp relay as the habitation relay rather than a chunky high amp switch found in some models. However installing a CAR-VAN switch does have limitations… for example you could not install an inverter.

Wiring diagram showing how to wire a vintage caravan to modern tow vehicle electrics with the traditional CAR-VAN switch

If you want to download these drawings (or any others I have done recently) they are now in PDF format sized A3 and can all be found on the “Electrical Drawings” sub menu below “Document Library“. I kept getting emails asking where such and such a drawing was, so I decided to put them all into one place.

I don’t normally do electrical drawings for specific projects (unless being paid), however if you have something that you think might be of interest to a wider audience drop me an email.