It’s ours!

28 August 2019

It’s ours. Officially. On Thursday (Aug 22, 2019) we picked up our new Crusader Excalibur Kingsman from Cameron Caravans.

All we have done so far is to drive it home from the dealer and park it in our driveway. Surprisingly, I managed to reverse it into the driveway on the first attempt. It then took some to-ing and fro-ing to get it straight enough to enable the car to park alongside. Perhaps the most difficult part of positioning the van was negotiating the kerb with the car. That put extra stress on the transmission. Widening the driveway is now on our to-do list. Regardless, we got it in and will probably get better at it with time and practice.

We did notice some unsettling movement of the caravan under braking on the short trip home. This may have been surging water in the tanks or the need to better adjust the brake controller or hitch. We have booked a towing course for us both. Hopefully that will help ensure we are set up correctly. Until we have completed that course no trips will be planned for beyond the city limits. A new brake controller is also under consideration. Preferably one that isn’t installed on the drivers knee panel… in front of an air bag!

Test Run

We have hooked up the power so that we can make sure the electrics are working correctly. Then we’ll hook up the mains water and do the same for those systems, and finally the gas too. The final step prior to an actual trip is to fill it with everything we need and check our weights.

We are a little concerned that someone could simply hitch up and tow it away, so we’ll also be looking into a hitch lock and alarm system. Until then, we are parking the old Captiva in front of it to prevent anyone getting close enough to hook up. That’s probably paranoia, but we spent a lot of time and money getting to this point. On that front, we must thank Megan’s dad, Bob, for helping out with the final funding, as we’ve had little interest while trying to sell the Captiva (see our ads on CarSales, CarsGuide and AutoTrader).