A Caravanning Blog that makes a good read.

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Details supplied by Peter Staples.
 

Tyron Bands - Warning

Notts DA's own caravan "useful information" sleuth, Peter Staples, has unearthed this little nugget for us.

Whilst Peter was recently reviewing a caravan talk forum, he thought that we should all be aware of this piece of information:

“A Caravan dealer fitted Tyron bands at my request, he also fitted a tyre sealant as a sales gimmick. I went to look at my caravan a couple of days ago (in storage) and was surprised to see 1 tyre flat, not a major problem I THOUGHT so I took the wheel to a local tyre service who informed me that the sealant had rusted away the Tyron band which was now useless. Also they will not repair punctures when tyre sealant has been used; I made contact with Tyron who confirmed that sealant should NOT be used.
The caravan dealer is now fitting new tyres and bands free of charge”

This certainly does make you think..... !!

Note: There was a trader at the Goose Fair Meet doing a bit of trade with Sealant. I hope none of our people suffer the same fate.

Peter Staples.
 

NDA Cocoon leader retires
I am sorry to report that failing eyesight has forced the retirement from caravanning of the elder statesman and founder of Notts DA's self proclaimed
Cocoon group. Often nicknamed Mr Grumpy by his friends, but actually a fun loving old stick, Mr Don Sherratt and his lovely wife Betty will be unable to grace us with their company in the camping fields from this season. I am sure, like many more of our retired campers, you would love to see them visiting
us whenever they are able.

New Year Photos - message
We hope that all of you attending the New Year Celebrations at Newark had a great time and you are now recovered from the partying! We told many of you that we would put the photos taken throughout the event on the Notts DA Website which we still intend to do in the near future. However, our website does not have the capacity to put on all of the photos taken of you in your finery on New Year’s Eve, and also not in a resolution that would allow you to take good quality copies, so it has been decided to produce a disc which we will either send out to you or, for Notts DA Members, distribute at one of the forthcoming events or socials. This may take us just a little longer than initially anticipated but we are working on it and hope that you will be patient.
Thank you very much and we look forward to seeing you all for the 2012/13 New Year Meet.
                                                                                                                                                                                                            Click to enlarge

A message to Notts DA from our Goose winner at Goose Fair Meet

Our Christmas Social - a few pics -

Blocked Gas Regulators (courtesy Peter Staples)

I had an interesting conversation with an engineer recently on the subject of Blocked Truma Gas Regulators

Because of OIL contamination he suggested the following procedure……………………….

The fault is very much the oil contained in every gas cylinder we buy.

A caravan fitter who had attended a course on Gas Fitting was shown during the session a glass gas cylinder and the oil was seen to be at the bottom of the container. If the cylinder was shaken the oil turned the gas brown. If left to settle again the gas became clearer as the oil settled back to the bottom.

His advice was "Wait for 10 minutes before opening the gas to the caravan when you arrive on site and never travel with the cylinder open". LPG is an oil by product and contains in suspension a certain amount of oil, which the likes of Calor do not remove.
It collects in the cylinder and gets shaken up as you travel and some gets into the pipe work or regulator when you open the gas control.

Calor used to clean the cylinders when returned for filling, but the "Green" lobby complained and Calor were forced to leave the cleaning until the cylinder came up for pressure testing, every 10 years. Now, however, the pressure testing has been increased to 15 years, so more "Heavy Ends" in cylinders. (’Heavy ends’ are the trace quantities of higher molecular weight hydrocarbons and unavoidable oils present in the bulk gas that do not evaporate off with normal cylinder use and gradually build up due to multiple refills in the period between regular cylinder inspections).

Thinking that stainless steel "pigtails" will cure the problem is wishful thinking, the blockage happens even in full stainless steel installations.

Truma have spent in excess of 1/2 a million pounds investigating the problem and replacing regulators and have found that the regulator is not the problem, the gas is.

Peter Staples.