Have you missed me.......

[richc]

Hi all

Well 1st 2 weeks in the demountable completed in sunny cornwall (well sunny / windy / rainy and stormforce at times)

The camper and truck perfomed well, FinAde is right the old L200 is a little underpowered to haul these demountables around as we found on cornish hills (including Porlock Hill, which I would not have attempted without the availability of low box)

The heater in the truck is great - the little trumatic had temps up to 29 in the truck and higher in the luton bed area.

We had 2 part used cyls, a 3.9 calor and a camping gaz but we found a very helpfull little camping shop that took the camping gaz in for another calor so I didn't keep having to change the regulator.

The water system we had problems with, its a container on the left of the door. It filled fine, but when on the road, with all those steep hills it lost its contents, we eventually worked out that the breather pipe was the problem, being at the back whenever we went uphill the back of the tank filled and then exited via the breather/overflow so another little job to valve that properly.

We need shelves and proper stowage for some stuff but it did work well

And how did the solar panel work out I here you say.........

Well it was charging the battery great for the 1st few days, then it stopped. I hecked everything and came to the conclusion that a connection had come loose, it would have to wait till i could borrow a ladder

We finally stopped at this quirky campsite that used to be a cycle museum and I borrowed a ladder and found the problem. Neither connection to the van was connected...... because the solar panel wasn't on the roof anymore ! . Thinking back, we had one very stormy night in a pub carpark at gullards head - it must have left us then, we did actually check the car park that day just to see if had lost anything

So when I replace the panel, it will be with 2 smaller ones to reduce windage methinks

Rich

[Mike]

Sounds like you had a great time and all those little problems that come to light can all be solved. Shame about the solar panels though.

[FinAde]

Welcome back, glad you made it in one piece.. Now you mention the loss of water on hills I realised why the breather pipe on ours had been tied off when we bought it. Will have to keep that in mind as we struggled to fill the tank without splashback so untied it

Well done for doing Porlock hill... I used to drive up and down there in my old Maestro and was regularly freaked out seeing caravanners attempt it

[richc]

Sounds likenyou had a great time and all those little problems that come to light can all be solved. Shame about the solar panels though.

One of the points of the trip was to find issues, and were pleased to find that they were all fixable.

Yeah the solar is a bit of a pain but I look on it as an opportunity to have 2 at slightly different angles which may ive even greater returns, heck its only money....

Rich

[richc]

Welcome back, glad you made it in one piece.. Now you mention the loss of water on hills I realised why the breather pipe on ours had been tied off when we bought it. Will have to keep that in mind as we struggled to fill the tank without splashback so untied it

Well done for doing Porlock hill... I used to drive up and down there in my old Maestro and was regularly freaked out seeing caravanners attempt it

Walking out of Symonds Yat east (forest of dean), found a guy who was doing his most to knacker the clutch on a landrover discovery and cursing the salesman who sold it to him to pull his caravan.

I politely asked if he knew what the other gear lever was for and he just looked blank , so I got him to put it in low range and told him to start of in 3rd.... he looked at me like i was a madman but did it and the disco _ very heavy caravan climbed out easily. Wonder if he ever worked out how to get it back into high range. In my industry we called this an RTFM incident (read the F***in manual)

Porlock in a maestro - in fact driving a maestro, you must have been bad a in previous life

Rich

[FinAde]

I was only 17 It locked up on me once going down Porlock and I didn't keep it long after that.

[martinjdover]

Rich

Glad to hear the trip went OK (excepting the solar panels). You left it a bit late in the season for your first outing - but at least the weather wasn't too cold.

We never found our Apollo/L200 rig that underpowered to be honest. Obviously it was never going to be a sports car (though we did have that blowout on our hot-lap of Le Mans) but we took ours to some hilly areas and she kept going OK - I only remember having to use low box when I picked up some duff diesel in Scotland. It was rather interesting trying to negotiate Edinburghs hills when she was only running on two and a half cylinders!!!

The Defender is "tweeked" up to supposedly 140bhp but really struggles on steep hills in the Alps. She is a lot heavier than the Mitsi and significantly less aerodynamic!! It is rather frustrating being overtaken by loaded artics on the hills!

I cant remember any issues with the water system on our Apollo but ours was built in about 1999 so may have had a different system.

Martin

[rubberrat]

Nice to hear that you survived! Bummer about the panel, but I guess they are much cheaper these days. Maybe a power chip would help your truck?

We did Porlock hill a few weeks back. I was still wary after a near 'miss' coming out of Lyme Regis a couple of years back when we had our old truck with 105 bhp - I knew that if we got stopped going up then a restart would have been out of the question.
New(er) Chev has 140 bhp which seems plenty, although another 60bhp on top wouldn't go amiss - and sailed up Porlock although I had a finger hovering over the low-box button! (we've done Alps - both sides and Greek mountains this year)

We stayed at a lovely campsite called Sunny Lyn and the roads to that, even the slightly more 'cara-van * friendy' ones (signed) seemed impossible for a 'tugger' with those switchbacks.

I asked the site owner how on earthy they got those things in there, but she didn't know, they just 'appeared' at the gate (probably red in the face and needing a change of underwear).

That would be a brilliant place for a 'Mr Clutch' franchise I recon.






* see what I did there!

[FinAde]

Having a full tank of water probably didn't help with power on the hills. Maybe it was shedding it to lose weight

Been doing some research and advice is to put water in once you get to site to help keep the weight down whilst travelling. That is providing you're not roughing it ! Never got the chance to try the L200 with the Apollo empty of water but it ought to make a difference.

[zildjian]

These days I've given up overloading it with water to start off with, usually just find a forecourt nearer destination and top up there, failing that on site with a tap and container,
water weighs such a lot,
actually Now I think we also do that with the shopping too
I pre-chill the fridge the night before before for the trip down there, thats about all