Had the Jetta down at the VW dealers today to have the towbar electrics checked out after the van light failure problem.
Could find nothing wrong with the towbar electrics at all so it looks as if it is down to the caravan,or perhaps the 13-pin plug.
Have e-mailed the dealers to sort out returning it to be looked at.
Ian
got a problem with my bailey caravan..and my bmw tow car..every time i plug van into car all ok until brakes are applied,then all hell brakes loose..apparently it is the extra brake lights on the bailey (the 2 at the top)that is causing the problem..it has blown the relay on my wiring specific electrics..apparentley bailey is aware of this problem but as yet done nothing about it ? ..been told if you remove the bulbs from the 2 high level brake lights..or replace with leds this solves the problem..only got this news today..bought a bailey last week and all this happened while away with van this weekend..no problem with my sterling i traded in..going to contact bailey..hope this makes sense..
ReplyDeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteWelcome to BOB.
Seems to be a few problems with lights when you start to look.
With ours all can be OK then the problem arises and then it goes away again so I don't think anything is actually "blown".
I hope it is under some sort of warranty as a relay for a BMW sounds like a lot of money.
Sadly I can see a lot of BMW blaming Bailey and Bailey blaming BMW,hope you get it sorted.
Ian
hi pal,been on the phone to baileys tech dept today,they are blaming *german* car manufacturers,.specific wiring harnesses..apparentley they send an electrical pulse every few seconds through the system,checking for faults etc..the problems lie in the rear high level brake lights..they say you can either..A run with side lights on whilst towing..Bremove the bulbs altogether from the high level brake lights(not a legal requirement)..or C replace bulbs with LED bulbs.theese only draw 1 watt of power instead of normal bulbs 21 watt..baileys phone no is 01173052939..really helpful..but won't accept any blame for fault..lol
DeleteDave,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that but I don't think this is our problem as we don't have any rear high level brake lights on the Orion.
Secondly there are are times when it all works fine.
This only started on our first trip this year,the three trips we did last autumn after purchasing the van there was no problem at all.
When we went down to Norfolk the other week it all performed fine,on the way home it was a PITA.
I still suspect the 13-pin plug.
Just out of curiosity I thought I had read somewhere that LED bulbs caused problems with caravan towing electrics ??
Will keep the blog posted of any outcome.
Thanks for your input.
Ian
Problems with our lights today. All OK except our Brake Lights on the caravan. The car ones were fine. Somebody else hooked up onto our Orion, and we found the brake lights worked fine with their car, so the problem is our Passat.
DeleteWe called out Caravan Club assistance, who traced the fault to a bad connection. A wire had come adrift the car side of the connector block. He fixed it up with some tape and said it would be fine for our journey today, I was less convinced. I tested it again, and unfortunately the brake lights still didn't work, so we had to abandon our Bank hols trip. I suppose at least we know what it is, so I can call the man who fitted it to fix it for us (under warranty I hope).
Well we bought a nice new watering can to fill up the toilet cistern, and we had plenty of practice at hitching/unhitching and pulling the caravan out of its parking bay and even reversed it back in!! Maybe I don't need to get a front tow bar after all.
Dave,
ReplyDeleteMuch the same problem we appear to have got and in much the same place and on a VW car.
Ours is still under warranty as well.
Ian