# Hooray! My Delaware is sorted at last………hopefully.



## Landyman (Apr 3, 2010)

After 18 months my new Delaware finally seems to be sorted.
The long delay is not entirely the fault of Auto-Trail or our dealer, we are away so much that they can only get their grubby hands on it when we are home for a while.
There have been a few niggles that have been ongoing for a while but nothing to stop us using the van or spoiling our enjoyment of it too much, so they have had to wait until we can let the dealer have it for a few days. In the past I have foolishly turned up at the service department for an annual service or a small rectification and handed them a list of things that they hadn’t expected, with the consequence that the jobs have been rushed or not fully investigated. This time I went through the list when I booked it in and let them keep the van for several days or as long as they wanted. I also wrote ‘chapter and verse’ about the faults knowing that ‘sods law’ says that the faults will disappear as soon as an engineer gets hold of the keys.
There were a couple of small things that they had ordered parts for earlier in the year that had to be completed but there were three main problems to fix.
1) The central locking on the habitation door was intermittant. It had been checked before but sods law kicked in and it was NFF on the previous service.
2) The radio was as much use as a ‘chocolate fireguard’. On a previous occasion a fitter had said that he thought the centre pin on the radio aerial was broken but nothing had been done to follow it up.
3) Despite two identical 110ah batteries, fitted when we bought the van, plus a factory fitted solar panel our batteries never seemed to last for long. In the past we have mainly tended to use sites with hook up with the occasional few days on aires or airfields. This year we have spent much more time on aires and found that after a few days we have to move to a site with electric to boost the batteries.
Those original batteries were Elecsol, which I thought were supposed to be top class leisure batteries but have since been told by people that are far more knowledgeable about these things than I that they may not have been all they were cracked up to be. 

After three days we collected the van to find that everything has been completed. 
The central locking now locks, every time so far.
The batteries have been replaced with Banner units (as recommended by the previously mentioned industry experts as well as the Caravan Club in their recent tests)
The complete radio head unit (Radio, TV,Sat-nav, Bluetooth etc) has been replaced with an updated 2013 unit and for the first time the radio worked well all the way home.

Simpsons of Great Yarmouth, who are always very pleasant to deal with, now have a very happy customer. 
Now we just need an excuse to get away for a few days to really test everything out.

Landyman.


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## tonka (Apr 24, 2006)

Do you know if they changed anything on the HAB door lock..
Our's along with many others I suspect is very hot and miss.
I put it down to the steel contact that keep going rusty, Autotrails answer seems to be clean the contacts but in my view it's real penny pinching and they should be made of copper....


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## Landyman (Apr 3, 2010)

tonka said:


> Do you know if they changed anything on the HAB door lock..
> Our's along with many others I suspect is very hot and miss.
> I put it down to the steel contact that keep going rusty, Autotrails answer seems to be clean the contacts but in my view it's real penny pinching and they should be made of copper....


Not sure what they did as one rarely gets to talk to the guys who did the job and, as it is under warranty, there is no detailed invoice.

While we were there we chatted to a couple who also have a Delaware (only a few weeks old) who had the same fault. They said it was easily rectified and the dealer, Simpsons, knew how to fix it. Apparently it is to do with rods that run down through the door and also has something to do with the electric step mechanism.
Whatever they did it seems to have fixed it.


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## Tezmcd (Aug 3, 2009)

a bit off topic but I love your avatar

We live about 3 miles from Bruntingthorpe where they restored the Vulcan

We are lucky as our house has open fields between us and the airfield - saw her doing practice flights on a few occasions.

Glad you got your Delaware all sorted


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## Landyman (Apr 3, 2010)

Tezmcd said:


> a bit off topic but I love your avatar
> 
> We live about 3 miles from Bruntingthorpe where they restored the Vulcan
> 
> ...


Thanks.
We came up to Brunty quite a few times when the old girl was there, on a couple of occasions we helped with the test flights. We are off to her new home at Doncaster (RAF Finningly) in two weeks time for a members day in the hangar.
Kate & I are proud to be volunteers who work with the team at airshows around the country to help keep her flying......the last all British four engine jet in the air.

Oops! Off topic again.

Landyman.


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## Barty28 (Feb 19, 2013)

*Your radio*

Hi Landyman,

What was the problem with your radio?
We have a 2012 Autotrail Mohawk and we lose the station we are listening to all the time and it doesn't automatically retune.


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## Landyman (Apr 3, 2010)

Basically the unit was rubbish. The new one that has now been fitted is a huge improvement. Even the remote controll has been improved and the whole thing is much more controllable. We have just driven from Suffolk to Derbyshire and the radio worked 100% all the way without re-tuning. That has never happened before. If you are still under warranty get your dealer to change the whole unit to the new version and don't take no for an answer. 
Let us know how you get on. 

Landyman.


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