Owning an RV is about endless adventures. They offer that sense of being carefree, of having not a worry in the world. Certainly, you made sure that your rig is a home away from home with all the creature comforts you could ever imagine needing on the inside. On the outside, the rig travels on just the right suspension.
And the brakes are of such quality that you’re sure they’ll never fail. Then there’s the cladding, high tech and shiny, light yet strong. This is a rig that is the very picture of sophistication, convenience and quality. But that’s not the end of the story.
SERVICING: IT’S UNAVOIDABLE
Even the best rig has the potential to let you down at the worst possible time. After a year or two of memory-making adventures, you still might find yourself experiencing that relentless squeak or little water leak in one corner, or perhaps the van isn’t braking as well as it once used to do. Or, to your horror, one of your four van wheels overtook you while you drove along the highway at a good pace. It’s a hard thing with which to come to grips. But there’s one thing you might have overlooked that would make it far less likely that your precious rig would leak or spring a fault that could see it end up on the roadside.
Your rig needs a regular check-up and for most of us, it’s a job best done by an expert. Every time you hit the open road, that rig is belted with dust and debris. That stuff will always find a way of smacking into the van cladding and, down below, infiltrating bearings and joints. As you rumble along some interesting yet unforgiving outback track, your caravan is taking an avalanche of vibrations capable of playing havoc with plumbing or interfering with electrical wiring or waterproofing.
Each vibration and dust storm that impacts your van might show the damage it causes any time, this trip or the next. To find out what a regular service is all about, GoRV dropped into RV & Caravan Centre in Ballina, NSW, to speak to managing director Corinna Pinnock. Given Corinna and her team run three centres across New South Wales at Ballina, Port Macquarie and Foster-Tuncurry, they have plenty of experience servicing or repairing a wide range of rigs. They’ve been in the service-repair game for over 25 years.
SERVICING FREQUENCY
Corinna recommends that travellers book their caravan in for a service every 12 months or every 10,000km. She said that service includes servicing all the key underbody areas, including checking the suspension, repacking wheel-bearings, checking and repairing brakes and looking at the chassis’ structural integrity. Then on the body itself, they check for leaks within the van and other potential issues.
Corinna says a service is really about “preventative maintenance rather than being a reactive experience”. This means discovering problems before they are serious issues. According to Corinna, there is some pre-emptive work caravanners can do between annual services. “A moisture meter is a good tool to have in the toolbox because you can check all the corners where the roof meets the wall and actually test if there is any moisture on the inside after rain,” she said.
She says that a moisture reading of more than 15 per cent indicates a leak might be starting to become an issue. That means instead of waiting to discover water damage, the caravanner can proactively look for a potential cause of a leak before it causes any damage. Corinna says owners need to remember that getting a regular service is important for more than just finding leaks.
“If you do big trip after big trip, things like wheel bearings need to be repacked, and so many other things need to be investigated – things like brake drums need to be checked to make sure that they are safe so that when you do apply your brakes they are actually working correctly.” She recommends getting your van serviced professionally before a long trip to check for cracks in the chassis, broken springs, that the brake magnets are working correctly and more.
Regular servicing is not just about eliminating a benign squeak – it is a safety issue. “Those that don’t maintain the underbody and suspension, they’re the ones we find on the side of the road. You want to be able to know that when you go away, you’re safe and the van’s right,” Corinna said. Then, when considering that a regular service might prevent something serious like a wheel coming off your van while travelling, her trademark easy-going nature turns serious and she insists that a service is about “your safety, and the safety of others as well.”
