2026-02-14
I woke early this morning due to having a window just above our heads at my parents place, which meant it was bright at about 5am. Since it wasn't raining, I wandered outside to see if I could work out what this cable/hose that was dangling under the caravan was. It quickly became apparent that I'd need to get under the van for a closer look, so it was back inside to get dressed in work clothes. I crawled under the van and traced the cable to a hole in the floor under the water pump.
The end of the cable looked a bit like the cross-section of an electrical cable, without the wires, making its purpose more nebulous.
Back inside the caravan, I traced the most likely cable up from under the floor near the water pump, out to the back wall and behind the fridge. Then outside, I remove the fridge vents from the side of the caravan and followed the likely cable further. It disappeared up near the roof. I'm still none the wiser as to what it is for, or if it is even important. An email to the dealer is on the cards.
It was about this time that Dad got up, so I grabbed a ladder to see why the TV aerial cable was sitting in a big loop on the roof. Since we don't have a TV and don't intend to use the aerial, I tidied the cable by velcro'ing it to the aerial. At least it won't get snagged by low tree branches now.
By now, breakfast was on the go, so we went back inside and discussed the day's plan of attack for the mover installation. After we'd eaten, I unpacked all the bits for the mover (a Purpleline Quattro Titanium caravan mover) and we re-watched the installation instructions video. It looked easy enough. About four hours later, we had the mechanical portion of the install done. The motors were mounted, cross-beams in place, and it could be engaged and disengaged from either side of the van.
Lunch was then needed, and then we began on the electrics. This involved a fair bit of crawling under the van, stuffing cables in to split hose, routing said split hose along the chassis and across to the front of the van (where the battery is). Special consideration of where the battery was located was made, from both under and inside the caravan before drilling a 25mm hole tthrough the floor to push the cables up in to. Each cable was numbered to match the numbers at the motor ends so that it could be wired to the controller the right way around.
That was pretty much it for under the van, so inside we went. Lots of discussion around exact placement of components, and then a lot of cable cutting and terminating with various size ring ends for the various terminal sizes. Around 5:30pm or so, we had everything wired up and neat.
Then came the moment of truth, did it work?
I prepared the van for moving, raised the stabiliser legs, turned off the A/C, disconnected the mains power, removed the wheel chocks, and turned on the mover electrics and remote. Everyone stood around at a safe distance to watch, and the van moved! It could turn, go forwards, backwards, etc, until it stopped, and the remote flashed red and green indicating an error.
I went inside and there was a burnt plastic smell. Great! What had we just destroyed the electics?
As it turns out the fuse had blown, which was kinda impressive as it was an 120A fuse. We stopped to organise dinner, somewhat dejected that things had gone wrong. However, a while later, Dad checked his video of the test and noticed that we'd missed one very important step - THE HANDBRAKE! The motors were powerful enough to overcome the brake, but they clearly pulled way more power than normal doing so, and the fuse did its job. So tomorrow we need to head out to find a replacement fuse (and spare) and then test the system again to be sure that was it.