help please!!

[nicola_374375753]

We are very new to caravanning, and have just been out for the weekend in our compass rallye 500/5 1999 - problem is there is no car to caravan switch - does it charge up automatically when hooked up or am I missing something as our battery was very dead by Sunday morning!! Please help

 

[swpostie]

Hi Nicola,

There isn't always a car to caravan switch - our 2000 Elddis Cyclone doesn't have one.

It should still charge the battery when you're towing as well as when you are hooked up.

You should be able to tell from the battery voltmeter whether the battery is charging or not - anything over about 12.8V is charging, and it should be up around 14V.

Did it used to charge or was this your first trip?

Our battery charger is in the seat box, attached to the battery box. I think there may be a switch on it to switch it on and off (but I really don't know for sure, I just think I may have read it somewhere! Though, why you'd want to switch it off is anyone's guess!)

Presumably you were getting mains voltage for your fridge as that will only work on 12V when you're towing and the engine's running.

You might also check that everything's switch on in the 12V and 240V circuits and all the fuses are intact.

I'm trying to write everything I can think of but we've only been caravanning about 6 months and haven't had this problem!

Hope these vague ramblings of another amateur go some way towards helping you!!

 

[nicola_374375753]

This was our very first outing and everything was going better than I expected for 2 first timers messing about in a field !! Mains voltage was all there and everything else worked fine - we'll have to go back to the dealer for them to look at it then ..... just wondered if we'd missed something that would be very obvious to someone else!! Vague ramblings very much appreciated!

 

[Jimbob1]

Hi Nicola,

Nicola if you have questions like you are asking post them on the Technical section of this Forum and you will then get some very helpful answers good luck and enjoy your caravan.Jim

 

[MagsAlan]

We too have only been caravaning since April. We recently had a problem with our indicator not working and thought we should check the fuse. We spent 2 days looking for the fuse box, only to discover, upon reading the manual again, that there isnt one. We have one of those trip switches instead. lol. turned out we had a loose connection in the plug thingy that you plug into the car and that was causing each new bulb to pop. Now we're panicking over things we ought to be doing for the winter, like charging the battery - does it stay on board while you attach the charger?, do we use a solar charger? We're off to the NEC at the weekend so hope we'll be able to ask someone there.

It is a pretty steep learning curve but im sure we'll get there in the end

 

[AnnKeith]

Hi we are new to the caravan life also your 1st trip was sept. we'd gone to storeage area filled van with bits & peices, thought we would try the fridge; but yes you guessed we couldn't get any control light's to work. so saw a couple bringing back their unit so i went over & asked for help. the nice gentleman told me unless hooked up to car or mains it wouldn't work.

i felt a little silly; so i asked as many questions as i could think of.

also when we got to 1st site we hadn't a clue on how to put up the awaning but couple in next van helped us. we found very one help full.

anyway we are hooked to caravaning & so are our 2 springer spaniels.

good luck with your problem & enjoy

ann from sheffield

ps our next outing is this weekend off to scarborough for 3 nights so we'll see what things we need help with lol.