Buy a Hymer, they said...
Discussion
We've got enough clothes that the main wash only needs doing every two weeks or so. We're both lucky enough not to be very naturally stinky so our recycle rate on shirts etc is quite high.
Whenever we need a wash done we'll detour to a site that has facilities. There are sometimes laundry points in hypermarket carpark that take an enormous wash for 8eur, but I could never find a list of them online so we never actually used one.
We hand wash underwear etc, and dry it hanging in the shower. On ours if we open the heater vent in the bathroom fully it gets really quite warm, and is a nice drying room with the skylight open.
We've got a little twin tub washer with us but haven't used it yet.
Whenever we need a wash done we'll detour to a site that has facilities. There are sometimes laundry points in hypermarket carpark that take an enormous wash for 8eur, but I could never find a list of them online so we never actually used one.
We hand wash underwear etc, and dry it hanging in the shower. On ours if we open the heater vent in the bathroom fully it gets really quite warm, and is a nice drying room with the skylight open.
We've got a little twin tub washer with us but haven't used it yet.
we're now well into Ireland had have had quite the time of it.
From the travel side, I can thoroughly recommend the Wild Atlantic Way. Stunning in almost the same way the west Highlands are in Scotland, but much more compact and acessible. Lots of wild camping, which I didn't expect. We've spent a grand total of 25eur in a fortnight on sites, everything else has been wild camp. There's a great app, Motorhome Parking Ireland, that's run by the MotorhomeCraic forum. Well worth the 5eur paid version, tons of things that aren't on searchforsites or campercontact.
One thing I can't recommend about Ireland is doing it in a motorhome. The roads are simply apalling. The motorhome has taken a real kicking, and while it's not broken anything (yet) it's squeaking and bumping in a whole new range of places. There have been lots of B road equivalents where we've barely got above 25mph due to the road surface. In a disposable hire car I can see this being much more fun.
The Hymer is doing OK, the new tyres are working well now I've experimented with the pressures and ended up slightly above the Hymer spec pressure for the fronts.
New leisure batteries are great, and showing just how shot our old ones were even from before we left. I think we could easily do 4 days now with no driving and dull 4-5 amp solar before they run out.
Our major drama has been a gas leak. We stopped to have a map vs satnav moment, and could smell gas. The bottles are behind the right front wheel, so that wasn't really surprising. Got out to have a look and could both smell it and hear it. We have a pair of AluGas bottles, and the left one was leaking from the filler valve. I'll spare you the prevarications and heartache that went on, but suffice to say we are now running a slightly modified single bottle AluGas setup.
I think what has happened is that the float valve that shuts off the filler at 80% has got stuck down and the bottle has over filled. I say this as we've carried on using it (found the leak on a Saturday evening, so not much choice) and it stopped leaking after a day or so as the pressure dropped. We've now made 7 days usage out of that bottle, and it took a good few days for the gauge to drop at all. Normally we'll be through a gas bottle in 4 days.
So now it's empty, I've connected the filler hose directly to the other bottle and will carry on using just that one until we can get them checked out. Given that hardly anyone uses LPG in motorhomes in Ireland, and even fewer use AluGas, I suspect we'll be making a detour to autogas2000 when we're off the ferry in Cairnryan next month. I spoke to them to ask about the leak and they were very helpful. I'm hoping they can check or replace the filler valve in both bottles.
Only other Hymer related news is our first proper "oh sh
t we're going to die" emergency stop, for a maniac woman overtaking straight at us. I spotted it quite late, as I thought there's no way she's going for the whole queue in one. But she did, and fair play to it the Hymer really does stop when you ask it to. Other than the dog being showered in tennis balls as his toy box fell off the bed, the only casualty was my big coffee mug fell over in the cupboard. Testament to mrs006's packing skills.
From the travel side, I can thoroughly recommend the Wild Atlantic Way. Stunning in almost the same way the west Highlands are in Scotland, but much more compact and acessible. Lots of wild camping, which I didn't expect. We've spent a grand total of 25eur in a fortnight on sites, everything else has been wild camp. There's a great app, Motorhome Parking Ireland, that's run by the MotorhomeCraic forum. Well worth the 5eur paid version, tons of things that aren't on searchforsites or campercontact.
One thing I can't recommend about Ireland is doing it in a motorhome. The roads are simply apalling. The motorhome has taken a real kicking, and while it's not broken anything (yet) it's squeaking and bumping in a whole new range of places. There have been lots of B road equivalents where we've barely got above 25mph due to the road surface. In a disposable hire car I can see this being much more fun.
The Hymer is doing OK, the new tyres are working well now I've experimented with the pressures and ended up slightly above the Hymer spec pressure for the fronts.
New leisure batteries are great, and showing just how shot our old ones were even from before we left. I think we could easily do 4 days now with no driving and dull 4-5 amp solar before they run out.
Our major drama has been a gas leak. We stopped to have a map vs satnav moment, and could smell gas. The bottles are behind the right front wheel, so that wasn't really surprising. Got out to have a look and could both smell it and hear it. We have a pair of AluGas bottles, and the left one was leaking from the filler valve. I'll spare you the prevarications and heartache that went on, but suffice to say we are now running a slightly modified single bottle AluGas setup.
I think what has happened is that the float valve that shuts off the filler at 80% has got stuck down and the bottle has over filled. I say this as we've carried on using it (found the leak on a Saturday evening, so not much choice) and it stopped leaking after a day or so as the pressure dropped. We've now made 7 days usage out of that bottle, and it took a good few days for the gauge to drop at all. Normally we'll be through a gas bottle in 4 days.
So now it's empty, I've connected the filler hose directly to the other bottle and will carry on using just that one until we can get them checked out. Given that hardly anyone uses LPG in motorhomes in Ireland, and even fewer use AluGas, I suspect we'll be making a detour to autogas2000 when we're off the ferry in Cairnryan next month. I spoke to them to ask about the leak and they were very helpful. I'm hoping they can check or replace the filler valve in both bottles.
Only other Hymer related news is our first proper "oh sh
t we're going to die" emergency stop, for a maniac woman overtaking straight at us. I spotted it quite late, as I thought there's no way she's going for the whole queue in one. But she did, and fair play to it the Hymer really does stop when you ask it to. Other than the dog being showered in tennis balls as his toy box fell off the bed, the only casualty was my big coffee mug fell over in the cupboard. Testament to mrs006's packing skills.Jellyfish said:
I'm sure you've researched the classic Fiat problems but just in case - They have a weakness in 5th gear and it's advisable to use 4th for any kind of descent especially if the revs are low. This lowers the torque 5th gear sees and may save some ball ache later on. A few months ago, I had the gearbox oil changed and 'overfilled', apparently they lift the van on the slant to get more oil in. She was on 50,000 miles anyway so probably a good time to change it, the mechanic said the old oil was clean so that was a relief. Also, when reversing up any kind of incline, you may notice a vibration. Just using the clutch and little to no throttle is supposed to help there. The only other thing I can think of off hand is that that front crossmember under the bumper can corrode badly. They are available on ebay for arund £70 and apparently quite easy to replace.
You mentioned a chip on your motor so you may experience some clutch slip soon, if not already. Mine is the unchipped 130bhp engine and every report i've seen of chipping results in the clutch starting to complain. She is not too good up hills, but I only roam around at 50mph max so no big deal and I am only 3.5T fully loaded. Maybe with a heavier unit, you need the extra pull but if not, i'd rip it out.
Sorry, only just got back to this.You mentioned a chip on your motor so you may experience some clutch slip soon, if not already. Mine is the unchipped 130bhp engine and every report i've seen of chipping results in the clutch starting to complain. She is not too good up hills, but I only roam around at 50mph max so no big deal and I am only 3.5T fully loaded. Maybe with a heavier unit, you need the extra pull but if not, i'd rip it out.
I'd read about the 5th gear problem. I think our gearbox is slightly different. I've read people say that their 5th gear is very long, but ours is only 3-400 rpm longer than 4th. Also reading the manual the fiat "truck" chassis has a different spec for 5th compared to the van chassis. All the other ratios are listed as the same (including the enormous rev chasm between 3rd and 4th) so I presume ours is one with the shorter 5th gear. Still, I shan't be flogging it up or down anything in 5th. The advantage of the shorter 5th is also that 4th is much more accessible for an early changedown as it's so close rev wise.
My only complaint with the chip so far is the fuelling at idle is really clumsy. It runs really rich and it stinks! So much so that we have to put the dash fan on recirculating whenever we're stopped in traffic.
Other than that, the only mechanical complaint is that the aux belt chirps on cold start. But having now heard plenty of 2.8jtd engines start from cold, it seems fairly common so I'm not too fussed.
Anyhow, more general travel update on the way shortly.
Edit: Just reading back through the first page of the thread about tag axles and axle scrub etc. I've found that the fiat base's lack of steering lock is far more of a problem than the tag axle for manoeuvring. We've not done any damage to grass, gravel etc with the rear axles, probably due to the steering, it just won't turn tight enough to really make the rear axle dig in. I think it probably also helps that it rides nose down, so the mid axle takes a bit more weight than the tag.
The main issue we have is unimaginative site wardens blankly assuming that it's enormous just beacuse it's a tag axle. It's 7.8 metres so barely any bigger than a decent caravan, but it just seems such a difficult concept. Here's your choice of two pitches despite how you could easily fit on anything we have.
Edited by agent006 on Sunday 13th May 11:21
So, a long overdue update. Rather picture heavy, hopefully not too huge.
We 'did' Ireland, and had a great time. I think in hindsight we did it the wrong way round, we went clockwise from Rosslare to Larne, and the scenery and experience got gradually worse as we went round. I think going north to south would be better as the highlights are in the southwest. Also Northern Ireland is much more crowded and, well, British, than Ireland.
Big surprise to us was that we were able to almost exclusively wild camp throughout Ireland. I realise we were out of season, in March, but we stopped in all sorts of lovely places with no trouble at all. Mostly beach carparks, and Wild Atlantic Way 'info point' carparks.
If you are travelling in Ireland then the Motorhome Craic forum has a great wild camp app. It's a fiver a year but has hundreds of spots that aren't on the other apps you'd already be using.
The first biit of 'proper' scenery, just west of Cork:
Winner of best campsite name, Goosey Island in Sneem.
Most westerly wild camp in europe, Blaskett:
Galway, or thereabouts:
We went to the Giants Causeway, which was nowhere near as impressive as we expected. It's also something like £12 each to get in, unless you walk down the coast path from the next town. For almost £25 i'd be jumping for a refund.
Got the ferry from Larne to Cairnryan, dead flat fortunately. Much newer boat but nowhere near as nice as the old one on Fishguard-Roslare was in terms of space and layout.
Had a slight problem here as it was easter Thursday. Managed to book into somewhere in Galloway forest for one night. We were on the way to yorkshire to get the gas seen to, so dotted from Carlisle to Rothbury to Ripon to Thirsk. The weather was ste, we were in paces we didn't want to be. We found this week or two really hard. I know it sounds a bit ungrateful but it is difficult at times, as any lifestyle. Mostly it's fine, and being where we want to be is great but when there's a feeling of wasting time it just gets us both down.
Still, onwards to the gas fitter.
Turns out the filler float valve was stuck open after all, as all the symptoms matched up. Sadly they don't have one in stock, so we left the duffer with them to have a new valve fitted while we did scotland.
Headed up north, for a wild camp just east of Edinburgh. Lovely sunshine and a view down the Forth. Complete mood change! Even spotted a couple of dolphins (porpoises?) just off the beach.
Park and Tram into Edinburgh for the day, then up north through Glenshee to Ballater for the weekend. Campsite is all shiny new as it got washed away in the floods in 2015.
Then via Aberdeen, Tomintoul (only just made the Lecht in 2nd gear!), to a few days wilding in a Forestry Commission carpark at Glen More. Looked at staying in the Cairn Gorm ski centre itself but was a bit too open and exposed for the wind that was forecast.
Had a cracking time in Glen More forest, seems most people don't stray more than quarter of a mile from the visitor centre so a good hike was well worth it. Also got the bike off the rack for the first time since Spain and had a rattle round some of the trails.
From there, a rubbish CL near Inverness, then to a lovely CMC site in Altnaharra. Stunning location, and a great site for not much money. I've come to really like these little club sites with no toilet block. We stayed at Nunnykirk near Rothbury that was the same setup. Bins and service points but no showers or loos. Really peaceful as it stops the incessant trail of people traipsing back and forward to the loo block all day and night.
I'll leave this here, as that's quite enough for one post! Bit of NC500 next and some new discoveries in the south west.
We 'did' Ireland, and had a great time. I think in hindsight we did it the wrong way round, we went clockwise from Rosslare to Larne, and the scenery and experience got gradually worse as we went round. I think going north to south would be better as the highlights are in the southwest. Also Northern Ireland is much more crowded and, well, British, than Ireland.
Big surprise to us was that we were able to almost exclusively wild camp throughout Ireland. I realise we were out of season, in March, but we stopped in all sorts of lovely places with no trouble at all. Mostly beach carparks, and Wild Atlantic Way 'info point' carparks.
If you are travelling in Ireland then the Motorhome Craic forum has a great wild camp app. It's a fiver a year but has hundreds of spots that aren't on the other apps you'd already be using.
The first biit of 'proper' scenery, just west of Cork:
Winner of best campsite name, Goosey Island in Sneem.
Most westerly wild camp in europe, Blaskett:
Galway, or thereabouts:
We went to the Giants Causeway, which was nowhere near as impressive as we expected. It's also something like £12 each to get in, unless you walk down the coast path from the next town. For almost £25 i'd be jumping for a refund.
Got the ferry from Larne to Cairnryan, dead flat fortunately. Much newer boat but nowhere near as nice as the old one on Fishguard-Roslare was in terms of space and layout.
Had a slight problem here as it was easter Thursday. Managed to book into somewhere in Galloway forest for one night. We were on the way to yorkshire to get the gas seen to, so dotted from Carlisle to Rothbury to Ripon to Thirsk. The weather was s
te, we were in paces we didn't want to be. We found this week or two really hard. I know it sounds a bit ungrateful but it is difficult at times, as any lifestyle. Mostly it's fine, and being where we want to be is great but when there's a feeling of wasting time it just gets us both down. Still, onwards to the gas fitter.
Turns out the filler float valve was stuck open after all, as all the symptoms matched up. Sadly they don't have one in stock, so we left the duffer with them to have a new valve fitted while we did scotland.
Headed up north, for a wild camp just east of Edinburgh. Lovely sunshine and a view down the Forth. Complete mood change! Even spotted a couple of dolphins (porpoises?) just off the beach.
Park and Tram into Edinburgh for the day, then up north through Glenshee to Ballater for the weekend. Campsite is all shiny new as it got washed away in the floods in 2015.
Then via Aberdeen, Tomintoul (only just made the Lecht in 2nd gear!), to a few days wilding in a Forestry Commission carpark at Glen More. Looked at staying in the Cairn Gorm ski centre itself but was a bit too open and exposed for the wind that was forecast.
Had a cracking time in Glen More forest, seems most people don't stray more than quarter of a mile from the visitor centre so a good hike was well worth it. Also got the bike off the rack for the first time since Spain and had a rattle round some of the trails.
From there, a rubbish CL near Inverness, then to a lovely CMC site in Altnaharra. Stunning location, and a great site for not much money. I've come to really like these little club sites with no toilet block. We stayed at Nunnykirk near Rothbury that was the same setup. Bins and service points but no showers or loos. Really peaceful as it stops the incessant trail of people traipsing back and forward to the loo block all day and night.
I'll leave this here, as that's quite enough for one post! Bit of NC500 next and some new discoveries in the south west.
Ah, yes, updates. Right.
We're pretty behind the times in this thread now, given it's barely made it into Scotland and we're now somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.
As this is PH, vehicle stuff first. Apologies for all the 'quid', this keyboard doesn't have a pound sign.
Got our gas bottle back from the menders, with a new fill valve fitted. Almost 200 quid lighter though. Still, just in time for a pan European heatwave that means we don't touch the heating for the next 6 weeks.
We had a couple of weeks at 'home' over the bank holiday in May, and got some maintenance knocked on the head.
On the way down the west coast of Scotland, our offside mirror went toe to toe with its counterpart on a G4S sprinter van. Came off surprisingly well, cracked the cover and the unit itself but was still usable. Chap behind in the Scirocco R got a shower of plastic but fortunately no damage. An ebay knockoff replacement for 30 quid was much easier to stomach than the 250 for genuine.
Took the opportunity to have the mirror poles extended and add some proper blind spot mirrors. An absolute revelation. Seriously, if you drive a large motorhome, get some decent extra mirrors fitted. These are a pair off a DAF truck and were about 60 quid for the pair, plus 25 for having some extra pole welded onto the end of the mount.
I'd had a quick look under the motorhome, and the rear chassis extension is in pretty bad shape. AL-KO galvanise the main chassis, but the back section doesn't seem to be. So a fun day of grinding it back and some quality time with a tin of hammerite was on the cards. It's still not perfect as I'm lazy and do sloppy work, but it's better than before.
Similarly the plywood floor underneath was looking a bit ropey not helped by some dimwit matching my description taking a stripe of paint off it with a jetwash. Yes, yes, never use a jetwash, but you try finding somewhere else to wash a motorhome while you're on the road.
I'm not entirely sure if it's got some sort of underseal on it, but I figured a tin of ronseal preservative would at best make it look a bit better and at worst do nothing. Ends up somewhere in between the two, looks OK and hasn't made it obviously worse.
Once back on our home campsite, we could give it a proper wash. No silly rules about washing here, lots of fulltimers on site so washing and maintenance are fine. Cleaned it with Silky cream cleaner, which did pretty well. Then over the top with some Colinite wax. The paint is still pretty dull and it's really suffered from having not been washed since November. We'll have to be more on the ball with washing from now on. It could really do with a proper polish but I haven't the energy right now, or frankly the money for more maintenance.
The van has picked up an odd clattery injector type noise. We managed to run out of fuel in Canterbury on the way to our latest tunnel, and it seems to have knocked something on the wonk. Still drives fine, just noisy on part throttle. A bottle of injector cleaner has made no difference at all. From a quick read up, it may be a fuel pressure regulation issue. I'm going to ignore it for now as power and Mpg are both fine.
We also had a wheel bearing let go halfway up Sweden. 4200kr later and we were fixed, luckily only off the road for a day. This is the same wheel bearing that was replaced barely 10,000 miles ago for the last MOT. So I guess crap parts, or the plain old wrong part fitted, or fitted badly.
Other than that, mechanically uneventful.
Travel type update next.
We're pretty behind the times in this thread now, given it's barely made it into Scotland and we're now somewhere north of the Arctic Circle.
As this is PH, vehicle stuff first. Apologies for all the 'quid', this keyboard doesn't have a pound sign.
Got our gas bottle back from the menders, with a new fill valve fitted. Almost 200 quid lighter though. Still, just in time for a pan European heatwave that means we don't touch the heating for the next 6 weeks.
We had a couple of weeks at 'home' over the bank holiday in May, and got some maintenance knocked on the head.
On the way down the west coast of Scotland, our offside mirror went toe to toe with its counterpart on a G4S sprinter van. Came off surprisingly well, cracked the cover and the unit itself but was still usable. Chap behind in the Scirocco R got a shower of plastic but fortunately no damage. An ebay knockoff replacement for 30 quid was much easier to stomach than the 250 for genuine.
Took the opportunity to have the mirror poles extended and add some proper blind spot mirrors. An absolute revelation. Seriously, if you drive a large motorhome, get some decent extra mirrors fitted. These are a pair off a DAF truck and were about 60 quid for the pair, plus 25 for having some extra pole welded onto the end of the mount.
I'd had a quick look under the motorhome, and the rear chassis extension is in pretty bad shape. AL-KO galvanise the main chassis, but the back section doesn't seem to be. So a fun day of grinding it back and some quality time with a tin of hammerite was on the cards. It's still not perfect as I'm lazy and do sloppy work, but it's better than before.
Similarly the plywood floor underneath was looking a bit ropey not helped by some dimwit matching my description taking a stripe of paint off it with a jetwash. Yes, yes, never use a jetwash, but you try finding somewhere else to wash a motorhome while you're on the road.
I'm not entirely sure if it's got some sort of underseal on it, but I figured a tin of ronseal preservative would at best make it look a bit better and at worst do nothing. Ends up somewhere in between the two, looks OK and hasn't made it obviously worse.
Once back on our home campsite, we could give it a proper wash. No silly rules about washing here, lots of fulltimers on site so washing and maintenance are fine. Cleaned it with Silky cream cleaner, which did pretty well. Then over the top with some Colinite wax. The paint is still pretty dull and it's really suffered from having not been washed since November. We'll have to be more on the ball with washing from now on. It could really do with a proper polish but I haven't the energy right now, or frankly the money for more maintenance.
The van has picked up an odd clattery injector type noise. We managed to run out of fuel in Canterbury on the way to our latest tunnel, and it seems to have knocked something on the wonk. Still drives fine, just noisy on part throttle. A bottle of injector cleaner has made no difference at all. From a quick read up, it may be a fuel pressure regulation issue. I'm going to ignore it for now as power and Mpg are both fine.
We also had a wheel bearing let go halfway up Sweden. 4200kr later and we were fixed, luckily only off the road for a day. This is the same wheel bearing that was replaced barely 10,000 miles ago for the last MOT. So I guess crap parts, or the plain old wrong part fitted, or fitted badly.
Other than that, mechanically uneventful.
Travel type update next.
Edited by agent006 on Sunday 3rd June 17:07
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