On Thursday the long awaited day arrived, after three years of planning we were scheduled to pick up the van. Now living in a town house means that we do not have anywhere to park or store the van, so we had arranged to park the van outside a friends house overnight, before we headed off on Friday morning for the Easter break.
Thursday afternoon was really quiet in the office so I did not feel guilty slipping off at 2pm to go down to Award RV to pick up a pair of Milenco towing mirrors (another long story), picked them up and arrived at LRV in Croydon to pick up the van.
Steve from the workshop went through all the features of the van, just making sure we knew where everything was, and how it worked. In the process I made sure we unlocked and locked everything with a huge bunch of keys. Then we hooked up, and headed out to set the brakes. Everything was working.
Then I headed off to tow the van to our friends, somewhat nervously I have to admit, as the biggest van we had towed before was a Jayco Swan, and that was in the early nineties. My first thought when I was on the road in traffic was OMG this things is HUGE. I was looking in the mirrors and seeing the van going right to the lane marking lines on each side. I should own up here, I am not quite as green as I make out, I have towed trailers with competition cars and boats a huge number of kilometre over the years, but none of it recently.
Arrived at my friends house in Bulleen, and puled the van up in front of his house, never realised how big a slope his street has. The tug was blocking his neighbours driveway, so were un hooked it, that was when we found out we had not pulled the handbrake on hard enough, as 3 ton of van started to head off down the hill towards an SLK350 parked about 5 meters away, PANIC, then grab the drawbar and drag it towards the middle of the road, and hope that it does not jump the kerb.
It stopped, hooked the tug back on, re positioned the van, found some bricks, un hooked it again and all good. OK, now it is time to open the van, search through the keys, but nothing fits the door. What are we doing wrong!
Eventually figure out that I have dropped a key at the yard, now it is 5:30, and all the people at the yard were trying to get away at 4. Thankfully I have mobile numbers, start ringing and leaving messages. Eventually Steve rang me back, and he was aware that they had found a key in the yard, but did not know who it belonged to. More calls and eventually Max came down to the yard, then we set about trying to find where it had been put. I got home at 7pm with the key.
We had arranged to have our first set up in a tame environment, the backyard of our friends guest house in Great Western (20km west of Ararat), thus we can take our time, and try different things without an audience.
Friday arrived, and we finished packing and hooking up in the rain. We decided to go the long way to stick to major roads (wider lanes), so we headed up to the western ring road, then round to the western fwy.
After a nervous start I figured that the nervous feeling of the van moving was being driven by the wind, and it tows really well around 90k, so we stuck on that speed up past Ballarat, through Ararat, and pulled up on the road behind our friends Guest house in Great Western.
The set up was slow, we had just thrown our stuff in, so it took a while to find things, and make sure we did things right. Everything went well, and we are now set up and comfortable, we are slowly building the list of things we forgot, or just did not think off.
We towed up from Melbourne to Great Western, fairly gently, I think our average speed was 84kph, and our average consumption is sitting on 16.1, I have not checked the weight of the van yet, but it has to be around 3 ton, so that consumption up hill, with a head wind is not too bad at all.
After our first night in the van, I have to say we are very happy with our choice of van and tug, now we know all we need to do is learn to make the most of it.
Nelly said
10:46 AM Apr 19, 2014
Glad to hear all (well nearly) is sorted - have fun and hope you see a lot of this wonderful country of ours.
Dougwe said
11:02 AM Apr 19, 2014
Shut the front gate!!
Wow, amaizing, fantastic and how exiting David and Carol.
OK then, you had a shaky start but hey you have started and now just add that experience to all the good ones ahead of you both. I sure hope we get to be neighbours one day my friends. If you are looking for warmer weather it's pretty warm up here in the tropics, um, let me say HOT better describes it at this point in time. I will even try and ask the weather gods NOT to send anymore Cyclones this way until later this year at the earliest.
The main thing is you now have your new toy so enjoy it.
Edit....Ooops, typo (again)
-- Edited by Dougwe on Saturday 19th of April 2014 11:03:20 AM
SnowT said
11:14 AM Apr 19, 2014
hey David, how is the system going so far..?
any issue yet..?
Juergen
werkin said
01:38 PM Apr 19, 2014
Hi Plendo, you are not alone with first time panics, we picked up our van,had the big handover and didn't finish till 4.30 pm so the place we were going to set up for a few days to get use to everything was too far away,so we travelled an hour down the road to a caravan park well the only position they had was so small but eventually after much tooling and forming we finally got it in beside a row of 40 garbage bins great hey but later learnt that if we had taken to bars off we would have been able to back it better another lesson learned, also the towing mirrors we originally bought spent most of the driving time looking at the road( have now replaced with ones we should have put on originally cheaper isn't always best) there were so many small things that weren't gone over in handover that came up oh no what do we do and lots phone calls for help. Now finally ( and I say this with fingers crossed) after 10 months of on road I think we finally have everything reasonably under control but yes still is damn big to tow. But now we take time ,pull over if necessary and enjoy.
we love our new home to bits and are ver proud of it.
have lovely safe travels and I believe that the only dumb question is " why didn't I ask that in the first place"
Might catch up for a cuppa somewhere in the great outdoors
Di and Greg
GaryKelly said
03:05 PM Apr 19, 2014
That's a helluva story, Plendo, and I appreciate your taking the time to post it. All's well that ends well, I reckon, and best wishes for your future travels.
Plendo said
05:10 PM Apr 19, 2014
Thank you all for your kind wishes, and I am happy to report that things have just got better, everything works exactly as it should, the biggest problem is we forgot to get fly spray, and we have a couple of visitors that are driving us nuts.
Di and Greg, you mentioned mirrors, we initially bought a pair on special at Aldi, and crossed that off the list. Wrong, they vibrated so much, they were more distraction than anything else, so after much research we ordered a set of Milenco XXL from an ebay seller in melbourne, sold 3 10 available the add said. Two weeks later found a phone number, and asked when will you send the mirrors, when I have orders for ten and can get them at a discount! Cancelled that order, then had to find who was now selling them as the importer had changed. Found a set in Ferntree Gully, so had to go there before we picked up the van. The Milenco mirrors are good, well worth getting.
Juergen, you asked how the system is going, brilliantly. Picked the van up with batteries low, so charged on the way up, when we parked we still had weak sun, and were pushing in about 26 amps. The 12volt was well down so suspect not getting much charge from the tow vehicle, but will check that out on the way back. We started today on 26.2V, and it has been solidly overcast all day, so not generating much. Arrived back about an hour ago, and found the charger in float at 28v. Been dumping 40A into the 12V since, and now sitting on 27.1 Cell difference is 7mv, and you would have to be happy with that.
Garry it is nice when you are able to tell a story with some adversity and laugh as you are telling it, I suppose because it worked out well. I must admit I enjoyed telling the tale. Now I need to start to learn to tell stories with pictures, the way some of the long established members here can.
SnowT said
05:40 PM Apr 19, 2014
David your running 2 system right..
Normal 12v system.. for the general low voltage stuff..
24v system for your 240v stuff..
David I think you need to check out the size of the cable your using for the car to van hookup.. You might have to much voltage drop..
-- I might just have a similar system..
I'm going to use the 12v just to handle the control circuits and as a Backup to the low wattage stuff..
- I'm going to run a 12v 5A charger..
Juergen
Hendo said
08:08 AM Apr 20, 2014
Good story, thanks for sharing. That reminded me to try and get all locks keyed alike when we order our van.
werkin said
08:26 AM Apr 20, 2014
Love the dog do you travel with him/her
Wizardofoz said
07:34 AM Apr 21, 2014
Pardon for being ofay with the story Plendo, butfor my sake can you tell me what make and model the caravan and tow vehicle is that you have?
Plendo said
06:41 PM Apr 21, 2014
Hi Ray, we tow a Retreat Brampton with a Land Rover Discovery 4.
We spent two years researching what style of van would suit us, then we set about selecting a manufacturer. We ordered our van in March 2013, and picked it up last Thursday for the maiden voyage.
After the first shake down trip, the only things we would change would be to get the van set up with a common key, and to pay more attention to the balance of the van, it is significantly light on the towball.
aussie_paul said
06:48 PM Apr 21, 2014
Plendo wrote:
Hi Ray, we tow a Retreat Brampton with a Land Rover Discovery 4.
We spent two years researching what style of van would suit us, then we set about selecting a manufacturer. We ordered our van in March 2013, and picked it up last Thursday for the maiden voyage.
After the first shake down trip, the only things we would change would be to get the van set up with a common key, and to pay more attention to the balance of the van, it is significantly light on the towball.
Nice to catch up and meet today as you headed home David and Carol. An extremely nice set up.
Aussie Paul.
cooee said
08:41 PM Apr 21, 2014
Thanks for sharing your first experiences with us
Cupie said
09:37 AM Apr 22, 2014
Great first trip story. I'm sure that like ours, it will be told many times & will stay with you forever. Thanks for sharing.
Our first trip.....
Never having pulled a van of any size before & driving my first 4WD a Patrol, I got the Salesman to drive ours home & park it in what seemed a very tight spot down the side of the house.
All good 'till he managed to 'kiss' the brick fence post as he reversed in. Probably poor directions I suppose. (Still haven't fixed that post 15 years later). Very little damage to the van, & hard to find amongst the others that I have inflicted over the years, but never on that particular post.
We had a great party/BBQ (just practicing for happy hours I suppose) underway with a group of friends who came over to see the latest 21'6" state of the art Jayco. A few hours later, no one was in a state to drive the salesman back to the yard, so his boss, who lived nearby had to come to rescue him.
A good & memorable start.
But then I remember the next trip up to Hervey Bay on the shakedown trip. By the time we got to the outskirts of Brisbane my hands were sore from gripping the wheel so tight! Then after getting over that I was well up the highway & not wanting to have a queue up behind me I just moved with the traffic, the 4.2 EFI Patrol did it easily but the bugars were still passing me. I glanced at the speedo & found that I was doing 110km/hr!!! Not a smart thing to do at any time & certainly not on the first trip. These days I just float up & down from 85 to 90km/hr. comfortable in the knowledge that I can go much faster if I choose.
But I think that I like your story better. Enjoy your time on the road.
On Thursday the long awaited day arrived, after three years of planning we were scheduled to pick up the van. Now living in a town house means that we do not have anywhere to park or store the van, so we had arranged to park the van outside a friends house overnight, before we headed off on Friday morning for the Easter break.
Thursday afternoon was really quiet in the office so I did not feel guilty slipping off at 2pm to go down to Award RV to pick up a pair of Milenco towing mirrors (another long story), picked them up and arrived at LRV in Croydon to pick up the van.
Steve from the workshop went through all the features of the van, just making sure we knew where everything was, and how it worked. In the process I made sure we unlocked and locked everything with a huge bunch of keys. Then we hooked up, and headed out to set the brakes. Everything was working.
Then I headed off to tow the van to our friends, somewhat nervously I have to admit, as the biggest van we had towed before was a Jayco Swan, and that was in the early nineties. My first thought when I was on the road in traffic was OMG this things is HUGE. I was looking in the mirrors and seeing the van going right to the lane marking lines on each side. I should own up here, I am not quite as green as I make out, I have towed trailers with competition cars and boats a huge number of kilometre over the years, but none of it recently.
Arrived at my friends house in Bulleen, and puled the van up in front of his house, never realised how big a slope his street has. The tug was blocking his neighbours driveway, so were un hooked it, that was when we found out we had not pulled the handbrake on hard enough, as 3 ton of van started to head off down the hill towards an SLK350 parked about 5 meters away, PANIC, then grab the drawbar and drag it towards the middle of the road, and hope that it does not jump the kerb.
It stopped, hooked the tug back on, re positioned the van, found some bricks, un hooked it again and all good. OK, now it is time to open the van, search through the keys, but nothing fits the door. What are we doing wrong!
Eventually figure out that I have dropped a key at the yard, now it is 5:30, and all the people at the yard were trying to get away at 4. Thankfully I have mobile numbers, start ringing and leaving messages. Eventually Steve rang me back, and he was aware that they had found a key in the yard, but did not know who it belonged to. More calls and eventually Max came down to the yard, then we set about trying to find where it had been put. I got home at 7pm with the key.
We had arranged to have our first set up in a tame environment, the backyard of our friends guest house in Great Western (20km west of Ararat), thus we can take our time, and try different things without an audience.
Friday arrived, and we finished packing and hooking up in the rain. We decided to go the long way to stick to major roads (wider lanes), so we headed up to the western ring road, then round to the western fwy.
After a nervous start I figured that the nervous feeling of the van moving was being driven by the wind, and it tows really well around 90k, so we stuck on that speed up past Ballarat, through Ararat, and pulled up on the road behind our friends Guest house in Great Western.
The set up was slow, we had just thrown our stuff in, so it took a while to find things, and make sure we did things right. Everything went well, and we are now set up and comfortable, we are slowly building the list of things we forgot, or just did not think off.
We towed up from Melbourne to Great Western, fairly gently, I think our average speed was 84kph, and our average consumption is sitting on 16.1, I have not checked the weight of the van yet, but it has to be around 3 ton, so that consumption up hill, with a head wind is not too bad at all.
After our first night in the van, I have to say we are very happy with our choice of van and tug, now we know all we need to do is learn to make the most of it.
Shut the front gate!!
Wow, amaizing, fantastic and how exiting David and Carol.
OK then, you had a shaky start but hey you have started and now just add that experience to all the good ones ahead of you both. I sure hope we get to be neighbours one day my friends. If you are looking for warmer weather it's pretty warm up here in the tropics, um, let me say HOT better describes it at this point in time. I will even try and ask the weather gods NOT to send anymore Cyclones this way until later this year at the earliest.
The main thing is you now have your new toy so enjoy it.
Edit....Ooops, typo (again)
-- Edited by Dougwe on Saturday 19th of April 2014 11:03:20 AM
any issue yet..?
Juergen
Hi Plendo, you are not alone with first time panics, we picked up our van,had the big handover and didn't finish till 4.30 pm so the place we were going to set up for a few days to get use to everything was too far away,so we travelled an hour down the road to a caravan park well the only position they had was so small but eventually after much tooling and forming we finally got it in beside a row of 40 garbage bins great hey but later learnt that if we had taken to bars off we would have been able to back it better another lesson learned, also the towing mirrors we originally bought spent most of the driving time looking at the road( have now replaced with ones we should have put on originally cheaper isn't always best) there were so many small things that weren't gone over in handover that came up oh no what do we do and lots phone calls for help. Now finally ( and I say this with fingers crossed) after 10 months of on road I think we finally have everything reasonably under control but yes still is damn big to tow. But now we take time ,pull over if necessary and enjoy.
we love our new home to bits and are ver proud of it.
have lovely safe travels and I believe that the only dumb question is " why didn't I ask that in the first place"
Might catch up for a cuppa somewhere in the great outdoors
Di and Greg
Thank you all for your kind wishes, and I am happy to report that things have just got better, everything works exactly as it should, the biggest problem is we forgot to get fly spray, and we have a couple of visitors that are driving us nuts.
Di and Greg, you mentioned mirrors, we initially bought a pair on special at Aldi, and crossed that off the list. Wrong, they vibrated so much, they were more distraction than anything else, so after much research we ordered a set of Milenco XXL from an ebay seller in melbourne, sold 3 10 available the add said. Two weeks later found a phone number, and asked when will you send the mirrors, when I have orders for ten and can get them at a discount! Cancelled that order, then had to find who was now selling them as the importer had changed. Found a set in Ferntree Gully, so had to go there before we picked up the van. The Milenco mirrors are good, well worth getting.
Juergen, you asked how the system is going, brilliantly. Picked the van up with batteries low, so charged on the way up, when we parked we still had weak sun, and were pushing in about 26 amps. The 12volt was well down so suspect not getting much charge from the tow vehicle, but will check that out on the way back. We started today on 26.2V, and it has been solidly overcast all day, so not generating much. Arrived back about an hour ago, and found the charger in float at 28v. Been dumping 40A into the 12V since, and now sitting on 27.1 Cell difference is 7mv, and you would have to be happy with that.
Garry it is nice when you are able to tell a story with some adversity and laugh as you are telling it, I suppose because it worked out well. I must admit I enjoyed telling the tale. Now I need to start to learn to tell stories with pictures, the way some of the long established members here can.
Normal 12v system.. for the general low voltage stuff..
24v system for your 240v stuff..
David I think you need to check out the size of the cable your using for the car to van hookup.. You might have to much voltage drop..
-- I might just have a similar system..
I'm going to use the 12v just to handle the control circuits and as a Backup to the low wattage stuff..
- I'm going to run a 12v 5A charger..
Juergen
Love the dog do you travel with him/her
Pardon for being ofay with the story Plendo, butfor my sake can you tell me what make and model the caravan and tow vehicle is that you have?
Hi Ray, we tow a Retreat Brampton with a Land Rover Discovery 4.
We spent two years researching what style of van would suit us, then we set about selecting a manufacturer. We ordered our van in March 2013, and picked it up last Thursday for the maiden voyage.
After the first shake down trip, the only things we would change would be to get the van set up with a common key, and to pay more attention to the balance of the van, it is significantly light on the towball.
Nice to catch up and meet today as you headed home David and Carol. An extremely nice set up.
Aussie Paul.
Great first trip story. I'm sure that like ours, it will be told many times & will stay with you forever. Thanks for sharing.
Our first trip.....
Never having pulled a van of any size before & driving my first 4WD a Patrol, I got the Salesman to drive ours home & park it in what seemed a very tight spot down the side of the house.
All good 'till he managed to 'kiss' the brick fence post as he reversed in. Probably poor directions I suppose. (Still haven't fixed that post 15 years later). Very little damage to the van, & hard to find amongst the others that I have inflicted over the years, but never on that particular post.
We had a great party/BBQ (just practicing for happy hours I suppose) underway with a group of friends who came over to see the latest 21'6" state of the art Jayco. A few hours later, no one was in a state to drive the salesman back to the yard, so his boss, who lived nearby had to come to rescue him.
A good & memorable start.
But then I remember the next trip up to Hervey Bay on the shakedown trip. By the time we got to the outskirts of Brisbane my hands were sore from gripping the wheel so tight! Then after getting over that I was well up the highway & not wanting to have a queue up behind me I just moved with the traffic, the 4.2 EFI Patrol did it easily but the bugars were still passing me. I glanced at the speedo & found that I was doing 110km/hr!!! Not a smart thing to do at any time & certainly not on the first trip. These days I just float up & down from 85 to 90km/hr. comfortable in the knowledge that I can go much faster if I choose.
But I think that I like your story better. Enjoy your time on the road.