We had been looking forward to this for months and months – our first Christmas break away in Lulu!
With our planned ‘Twixmas’ departure for Church Farm Cottages Caravan Site, Lower Gresham, Norfolk (www.churchfarmcottagesnorfolk.co.uk) only two weeks or so away, we decided to treat Lulu to a full service of her (not working!) Webasto diesel heater. We thought it worth splashing out as the heater has probably never been serviced in its 14 year life,
It is probably something that Kev could do over a weekend with the help of YouTube, dry weather, tools and beer! However, for some reason, the designers of our Trigano Tribute campervan had decided that the best place to install said heater was in a stainless steel box under the van itself!
To make the job just a little more interesting the box is then bolted to the chassis directly above the handbrake cable and also in the dead centre of the van.
After siting and working under jacked up static caravans in all conditions, Kev is wary about working under an ‘unsupported’ vehicle. Ideally we would need a garage with a pit or 3.5 tonne ramps or our own, drive on ramps so he could wiggle his athletic frame under the van. Decent weather would also be a winner. Not a lot to ask for really?
As the weather forecast was against us, Kev booked Lulu into the only local Webasto engineers available to us for the following Monday.
All for saving some £££
In the meantime a fellow member of the Facebook Trigano Tribute Owners Group (www.facebook.com/groups/tribby/) posted that they had had a similar issue. They had made their own ramps from 38mm x 225mm scaffold boards. Genius!
Kev is a builders Merchant. Scaffold boards to him are about £9 each! He bought two boards, cut them into 1200mm, 900mm, 750mm and 500mm lengths. Screwing the different lengths on top of each other he made two ramps that would raise Lulu about 175mm of the ground.
This gave Kev plenty of room to work underneath Lulu safely.
All for saving some cash, if Kev managed to get the heater off himself it would save about three hours garage labour charges! He planned to remove the heater on Saturday afternoon once he had finished work. Once the heater was off he could take the heater into Shorts Auto Electricals on Monday AM for the service.
True to form it lashed down all day on the Saturday and three hours laying on his back on our farmyard was not going to happen!
Kev goes for it!
Sunday morning dawned cloudy but dry and cold. Kev set to work. Reversing Lulu onto the ramps and chocking the front wheels, he crawled underneath. After two hours of swearing, banging, fettling and swearing, the heater was off.
He did remember to take plenty of photos along the way so that he could remember how it all went back together though!
We dropped the heater into the engineers on Monday morning and headed off into Carmarthen for our annual Christmas retail therapy session.
Not two hours later we received a call from Shorts. They also needed the Webasto fuel pump off Lulu. FFS!!! – they could not have told us before?
We were back home, Lulu was on the ramps again and the fuel pump was off by 12.30!
To be perfectly honest, the fuel pump looked beyond any help at all so we called Shorts and sent them a couple of photos.
Our beyond help fuel pump
They agreed that the pump was indeed shot. We told them to supply a new pump as well as to complete the service on the heater. Good job we saved those labour charges – Kev’s eyes were starting to water!
A couple of days later, the unit was ready to collect. Kev popped down during his lunch break and parted (grudgingly) with £600 and collected the heater and pump.
Plans fall apart at the very last minute
We planned to re-fit the heater to Lulu either on the Saturday or Sunday. At the very least, our first Christmas in Lulu would be a warm one! This would also leave us three of four days before Christmas. Plenty of time to clean and pack Lulu in readiness for our trip on the 29th. Then Mark Drakeford (First Minister of Wales) appeared on TV that afternoon.
With two or three hours notice, he put the whole of Wales into tier 4 – effectively shutting us all in for the foreseeable future.
We tried to think of all ways of ‘sneaking’ across the border (think ‘The Great Escape’….Tom, Dick & Harry…..) but two days later Norfolk was also placed in a tier 4 lockdown. So that was the end of our festive adventure to the East coast and our first Christmas in Lulu.
The site owners at Church Farm Cottages were obviously really understanding. They offered to either refund our deposit or hold it for a further booking for next year. Looking forward to whenever we can get there – been wanting to go to that coast for a long time. Maybe our first Christmas with Lulu will be next year?
Time not wasted though!
We have managed to do a couple of jobs on Lulu in the meantime though.
Kev refitted the heater on the 30th. It works and has a shiny new exhaust!
The leaking boiler dump valve (https://duncombesroaming.com/category/travels-with-lulu/november-2020/) is now fixed with the help of a new ‘O’ ring
We have also insulated our fresh water tank with some Superquilt offcuts that Kev had lying about in work https://www.superquilt-insulation.co.uk/.
There was also an area of bare metal roof in Lulu’s over-cab locker. This was always covered in condensation in the mornings. So we treated that to some brick insulation https://www.lbsbmonline.co.uk/fillcrete-brickfill-movement-expansion-joint-filler-roll and more Superquilt and hopefully that has fixed that issue.
We have received some great new stickers from Marianne and Chris of Tread the Globe (TREAD THE GLOBE – Travel Responsibly Eat Adventure Dive). The first lot were lost in the post between Turkey and Llandeilo!
We’ll add these to our sticker wall asap! Thanks guys!
That’s all for now folks!
Hopefully, we will all be back to some form of normality soon – please!
Until we do –
We hope that you had a happy Christmas and we’ll see you on the road in 2021.
Stay safe all,
Mags, Kev and Marley
XX
P.S
Heater was reinstalled today – 3 hours – and it works!!!
Enjoyed reading this Mags – it all looks like a Labour of love – no long now hopefully we will all be able to escape further afield other than Llandeilo