Sunday saw me heading south on a reconnaissance for the 2026 club fishing competition. I took the camper trailer, intending to spend several days checking out the beaches and potential campsite.
Jan packed some food for the trip, including one of her delicious homemade beef pies. As it was a brief trip I didn’t bother running the trailer freezer. All the perishable food went into the fridge.
At the risk of repeating myself, the source of the trailer 12V electrics is a 120Ah lithium battery which can be charged from the 4WD when moving and by solar panels when static. It can also be charged using a 240V lithium battery charger when mains power is available. I have an App on my phone which can monitor the battery state of charge.. There is also a display panel on the back of the trailer.
Before leaving I checked there was power from the 4WD to the trailer. Everything looked fine.
At 11AM I stopped in a roadside rest area and turned on the small 12V oven in the trailer setting the temperature to 180deg and the timer for an hour. In went the homemade pie. Another stop at noon for a delicious piping hot pie.
Mid afternoon I reached the secluded and sheltered campsite I had booked in the National Park. After erecting the trailer awning and rooftop tent I went for a local walk to check the long drop toilets. Clean and with paper!
For some unexplained reason I decided to check the trailer battery state of charge around 4PM. Horror…..! The battery was displaying only 4% capacity and urgently needed recharging. I quickly connected the solar panel to put some charge back into the battery but then found myself moving the panel every 10 minutes as I chased sunlight through the trees. 5 Amps from the panel wasn’t going to suffice. I reconnected he 4WD and ran the engine for an hour to get the battery back to 18% charged. A very inefficient use of the vehicle.
Any thought of cooking with the 240V trailer inverter and induction hotplate disappeared. I would be using the two ring gas camp hotplate. Except it wouldn’t light. Actually there was a minor explosion when I attempted to use a naked flame. Now I had two problems and no means of cooking food. Because it was a brief trip I hadn’t packed any tools. However I did have my Leatherman multitool and was able to dismantle the gas cooker. The subsequent investigation revealed what was wrong with the cooker. When I first fitted it into the trailer kitchen it had been bolted in place. Recently I removed the cooker to formica the kitchen and when I reassembled it I’d inadvertently failed to connect the gas jets correctly. It was a simple fix and I was again able to cook. Later I discovered there was a camp kitchen with free gas hotplates.
I headed to bed that evening wondering if there would be any power left in the battery. 5AM had me up and checking the battery. It was back to 12%. Do I run the 4WD engine or keep moving the solar panel. I opted for the latter. Then logic set in. The battery voltage reading was 13.3V That seemed high for a battery nearly flat. My thoughts were interrupted when Mr & Mrs Stumpy wandered through my campsite giving me a cursory glance.
I suspect this is who I will be on reincarnation. Legs so short I’ll have to drag myself around on my belly.
Back to the battery. The voltage suggested the battery was 80-90% charged but the display showed 12%. I decided to believe the voltage reading and assumed the App percentage state of charge was corrupt. This would mean I wasn’t short of battery capacity.
Having decided I knew what had happened it was time to check the fishing. I had miles of beach to myself
The aim wasn’t to catch any fish. I wanted to do another trial with my diy drone fishing line dropper.
I flew the drone 300 metres off shore and then lost my nerve wondering if the trigger to drop the line would work. It did! I could have probably flown it another 200 metres and also use the drone camera to look for a good location. However I’m taking small steps any building my confidence.
The following morning I packed up the campsite and connected the 4WD to the trailer. That’s when I noticed the 12V connection between the vehicle and trailer seemed very soft. Something to investigate at home.
Once back home I connected the 240V lithium battery charger to the trailer. It wouldn’t charge! Was the charger defective? No! The multimeter showed it was sending 14.2V. Then I checked the input plug on the rear of the trailer. It was full of “crud”. The plug is supposedly water and dust proof. However being on the rear of the trailer it is exposed to a large amount of fine dust.
After cleaning the positive and negative pin connectors I reassembled the plug filling the back with silicon sealer in an effort to prevent water and dust entering. I also placed a piece of duct tape over the front of the connects and underneath the hinged cover plate.
Next I turned my attention to the 12V socket on the rear of the 4WD. This is when I realised I’d done several things that had come back to bite me.
I tend to overengineer things and the wiring I’d installed between the 4WD battery and the socket was well oversized. I vividly remember wriggling around under the vehicle threading these thick cables through the chassis rails and fitting a 120A rated plug. A year later I was replacing the 120A plug with a smaller 50A as the vehicle alternator wouldn’t supply anything greater than 35A. The original cables wouldn’t easily fit into the 50A plug. But I made them. I was also too mean to fit the new plug into a dust and waterproof box. As a result of my actions one of the pin connectors had slipped back inside the plug which had resulted in an intermittent connection between the 4WD and trailer. Additionally the open plug had become congested with dirt and the terminals had corroded.
Yesterday I bought a mounting block for the 50A plug. Cleaned the terminals. Fitted the plug into the mounting block and added silicon sealer to make the block as water and dust proof as possible.
Hopefully this will resolve the three problems I created.
