With the paint on and fully cured, we could now think about putting things back on the caravan. The honour of going on first went to the road lights. On checking through the whole system, the original seven pin socket on the A frame didn't look good, we didn't trust the fifty year old wires, the rear light units had paint on them from the previous "garden rake" paint job, and their internal reflectors were rusty. We therefore removed everything and bought new.
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| Paint & rust on original lights. |
In the late 60s, caravans were wired like cars, in that a power cable went to the light, which in turn was earthed to the caravan body, through which the return current passed. This results in the usual problems with poor earths.
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| Clear panel coloured with red film. |
The rear light units are still made (search ebay for Britax 9020), albeit with a slight change; the modern ones having a clear panel at one end for number plate illumination. This has no use on our Viking as they face the wrong way and the number plate has its own lamp.
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| Clear section showing on end. |
Options to colour this clear panel include red nail varnish (which tends to come out with stripes where the brush strokes overlap) or lens repair tape. This tape is transparent red tape used to temporarily fix broken tail lights, but it costs £4 for a metre. I only wanted about 4 inches, so I bought a sample of self adhesive coloured window film through e-bay for 99p. Job done!
New thin wall 16 amp, 7 core trailer light cable was installed, being routed inside a bed base and through trunking within the closet wall. Every bulb is now a light emitting diode (LED). The return path for the current is now all through wire.
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| Wiring |
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| Use grommets where cable passes through body |
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| Junction box connecting multi-core cable to rear lights |
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| Light unit |
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| Lens fitted |
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| More paint on places it shouldn't be. |
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| Dismantled & cleaned before adding -ve wire & LED. |
The front marker lights are the only original parts remaining; these have been cleaned, polished, modified with a return wire and fitted with LEDs (38mm C5W festoon - a tight fit, probably should have got 36mm). The rear number plate illumination now comes from a chrome plastic reproduction Lucas L467 unit with a 39mm C5W festoon LED.
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| Number plate lamp |
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| Car connected for light test |
Light test. Tail, brake, indicators, hazards & brake again.
Three days before Christmas, we were ready to test the system. I am pleased to say that when I connected the 12n socket to the car, all the lights worked, and without any dimming of the tail lights when the indicators are on! We had Christmas lights!
The rear reflectors are Bluemels items and have turned out to be rarer than the mythical waste products of a rocking horse!
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| Reflectors masked |
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| Reflectors and other parts sprayed with primer. |
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| Fully painted & masking removed. |
Again, they had suffered from the wandering paint brush of a previous owner, and the plastic triangles were showing their age with crazing and slight damage around each circular reflector. We cleaned all the paint off but did not risk removing the discs for fear of breaking anything, so the reflectors were masked and then we sprayed the triangles white with rattle cans (twice, due to the paint reaction mentioned on page 14); the same Rust-Oleum paint we used on the inside of the door. Rest assured, these have been bolted very securely to the caravan! It turns out these may not be original equipment for the Viking, as upon refitting, we found too many holes, none of which lined up properly!
The brackets holding the number plate and its light to the body had been removed for painting. Upon reinstalling them, using the original holes, I noticed they were at different heights, resulting in the number plate sitting at an angle. Inspection revealed the factory had drilled the holes in both brackets off-centre, so one sat higher than the other when mounted. One bracket was removed, new holes drilled in it and refitted, allowing the number plate to sit straight.
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