Is your car SAFE? Important Motorhome checks you want

Planning a motorhome journey? Earlier than you allow, be certain your car is protected with these important motorhome checks.

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Important Motorhome Checks earlier than a Highway journey

When you’re a new motorhome proprietor, it may be formidable to know what you might want to do earlier than every highway journey. 

A lot as I’d like to, I can’t give a selected record of pre-trip and departure checks for each single doable car you could be doing a highway journey in- not least as a result of I don’t know that a lot about autos!! 🙂 

So this put up is courtesy of Mr WB and is a normal guidelines of issues we have a look at earlier than our large Motorhome highway journeys. Whether or not you’re travelling by Motorhome, Campervan, caravan or automobile, the guidelines will probably be roughly comparable.

After all, in case you are hiring your motorhome, you received’t have to fret about it at this stage. HOWEVER, the data is price a fast learn by way of, in order that you understand what to search for while you choose the rent car up. For everybody else, let’s dive in.

Here’s a record of important issues we examine on our Motorhome earlier than our Highway journeys:

• If the car hasn’t been began for some time, begin the engine and provides it a run, simply to make sure!
• BRAKES. Test your brakes and brake fluid. Please. Halfords do a free brake examine and after our horrible expertise of driving down a mountain in Switzerland with none brakes, we examine ours commonly!

• Tyre tread. Our tyres are at the moment okay on our Motorhome- however we’re about to do a HUGE journey over 6 weeks (Helllllooooo, Norway) and so we’ve chosen to switch them earlier than we go. In case your tread may be very low and also you’re about to set off round Europe, contemplate doing the identical. When you’re going for a few weeks and your tread is okay, try to be positive till you get again. When you’re unsure, ask your native storage.
• IMPORTANT- motorhome accredited tyres are NOT the identical as regular automobile tyres, even when the sizes are the identical. On our first motorhome, we had three tyres cut up on the seams as a result of normal automobile tyres had been placed on earlier than we purchased it… and we didn’t know sufficient to examine. If doubtful, ask your storage to verify you’ve the proper tyres fitted.
• Tyre Stress
• Windscreen. Test for chips, cracks or different imperfections. You might be coated by insurance coverage in Europe, but when it cracks utterly, it’s going to eat into your vacation time. Higher to get it sorted now and never have to fret about it.
• Lights. Be sure all of your lights, indicators and so forth are working. It’s scary what number of motorhomes and caravans we’ve seen with indicators or brake lights which aren’t working accurately. Don’t give the European police a straightforward purpose to positive you. (And people fines are on the spot!)
• Washer fluid
• Oil
• Water ranges in radiator in case you have an older motorhome/ campervan.
• Adblue
• Battery- in case you are in any doubt in regards to the starter battery or home battery (or some other battery you’ll have), get it checked and change if mandatory
• Test awning
• Test hydraulic legs in case you have them
• Be sure all inside lights work- change bulbs as mandatory and contemplate carrying a pair for spares
• Test batteries in smoke alarms and CO2 detectors- after our motorhome caught hearth we’re insistent on these items
• Change on inside electronics and guarantee every thing is working
• GB Sticker- be sure to have a sticker fastened to the rear of your car.
• Headlamp adjustments- as a result of the English drive on the opposite aspect of the highway to the remainder of Europe, our headlights level the incorrect means. That you must connect headlight stickers with a view to adjust to EU regulation.

Do your Important Motorhome upkeep BEFORE your vacation

One in every of our greatest motorhome suggestions for newbies is: in case you have jobs which you KNOW want doing, like a defective bathe/ rest room/ faucet, one can find it a lot simpler to repair it within the UK than looking for components in Europe. The hose sizes we use right here within the UK usually are not the identical as the remainder of Europe, and it’s rather a lot simpler to seek out your native motorhome/ caravan store and ask for what you want than it’s making an attempt to do it in signal language out of the country!

Having mentioned that, the Europeans love motorhomes/ caravans and there are outlets and suppliers everywhere. Ought to the worst occur and you might want to repair one thing urgently (like, say… you rip the faucet off your freshwater tank and lose all of your water!), then you may often discover one thing to assist repair the issue till you come back to the UK, even when it’s not the right answer. So don’t fear an excessive amount of about damaging your car while abroad. (We’ll cowl insurance coverage on a day very quickly!)

Different issues to examine on a motorhome: Trailer or bike rack

You probably have a trailer/ bike rack, be sure to give that some consideration too.

• Test to make sure bolts haven’t labored unfastened on bike rack
• Test towbar and all electrics
• Test straps for fraying
• Test tread on trailer tyres
• Grease wheel bearings in trailer
• Test brakes if it’s a braked trailer
• Look over covers (we use covers on our motorbikes) to examine for rips/ holes/ injury
• MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PROPER NUMBER PLATE and a GB sticker for trailer.
• Test fixings on roof bins/ exterior baggage carriers to make sure they’re nonetheless correctly fitted.

ESSENTIAL MOTORHOME CHECKS- TASK LIST:

• Full your record of car checks
• Ebook in any MOTs, tyre checks, battery checks and so forth.
• Test any trailers/ bike racks/ exterior baggage holders

We hope you discovered this convenient. When you did, be happy to share it on social media so others can discover it too.

Final replace on 2023-11-18 / Affiliate hyperlinks / Photos from Amazon Product Promoting API

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