Places to Stay, Things to do.

I spent most of last weekend crawling around in and under my Pajero and my Jayco reorganising the lighting wiring and the electric brakes wiring. I also added in the signal and earth cables for the yet to be installed caravan rear vision camera.

I have purchased a wireless reversing camera for my rig but when I was testing it I discovered that the wireless signal was not strong enough to get through the caravan to the display. That makes it less than useful so I had to do some re-thinking. There are a couple of options available. I could run an extension cable to link the wireless transmitter module from the camera to the front of the caravan. Or I could get a different type of wireless camera and test to see if that one can get from the back of the caravan to the display.

Just so happens that I got a quadcopter for Christmas from the kids and my wife. It has a wireless camera on it and a FPV screen. With this I was able to get a strong picture on the display through the caravan and the car. This proved it was possible now to choose a camera. Much searching online resulted in the purchase of a small waterproof wifi camera. Only needs 12V DC to run and nothing else attached to it. Let you know how it works in a couple of weeks when it arrives.

Back to the wiring.

The 4 sq mm cable I bought from the electrical warehouse only just squeezes into the back of the flat plug but it does fit. I couldn't parallel it with the original cable so I'll find out if the brakes work OK. It is very interesting that in my last post about choosing the right cable size I talked about installing the correct size but at the first hurdle I fell. The calculated correct size doesn't fit.

Fortunately the rule of thumb for copper conductor of 6 x sq mm in this instance says that the amperage can be 24A continuous. The cable I ran in for the camera is rated at 17A according to the nice young man I bought it from but he was unable to tell me what the cross-sectional area of the copper was. I suspect 3 sq mm which will be perfectly fine.

I have tidied up the connections under the caravan, they were all hanging loose and the earth (white) and auxiliary (black) were in in blue point style blocks. The remainder were in a multi-terminal strip block but not attached to the caravan. I have added two more multi-terminal blocks and screwed them to the underside of the caravan. Much cleaner and less chance of a wire breaking due to vibration and stress.

In my crawling around the back of the Pajero I discovered that the black wire is actually supposed to be the reversing light signal not the auxiliary 12V. Since it has been hijacked for other nefarious purposes I have spliced into that one for the link to the camera. It should only turn on when reverse is selected. I have added a run for a switch on the dashboard so I can turn on the camera manually to check what vehicles may be behind me while travelling. It's not compulsory but I think it could be useful.

I attempted to fit a replacement 240V outlet on the van but found that the item supplied was in fact an inlet not an outlet so there is a delay until the correct unit can be sourced, picking it up tomorrow.

Next weekend, clean out the wheel bearings, check them for wear and check the electric brake units. Might take some photographs for you.