Caravan indicator puzzle
Here's a real puzzle. We tow our 2013 Sterling Eccles with a 2010 Ford Galaxy. The Galaxy is fitted with a Witter towbar with dedicated electrics that Ford had to "switch on". Everything has always worked. We've just bought a 2013 Volvo XC70 and had a towbar fitted by Volvo again with dedicated electrics. When we plug the caravan into the XC70 a "indicator bulb failure on trailer" message appears on the XC70 dash, the caravan indicators don't work nor do the caravan reversing lights. Everything else does work (brake, fog and side lights, constant live, fridge, battery etc). We know someone with a 2010 Bailey so we plugged the XC70 into that and everything works including indicators and reversing lights. We plug the Galaxy into the Sterling and everything works. So there's some sort of incompatibility between the XC70 and the Sterling. Neither car nor the caravan has LED lights. Anyone got any ideas?
Comments
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I would go back to the dealers who fitted it and get them to sort it. It is odd that everything works with the Bailey though. Perhaps swift may have an idea as well. I had a 2013 XC70 and never had a problem with my 2013 Lunar or 2016 Swift and that too was fitted by the Volvo dealer .
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Must ask this question in order to try to diagnose. When testing your car on the other caravan and testing the other caravan on your car, are you using an adapter in order to make the connections to these, or are all the testing combinations done with direct plug-in connections i.e. no adapters used?
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The first thing that springs to my mind; assuming that all the above testing combinations are direct plug-in jobs i.e. as said, no adapters used and assuming they are operating on the 13 pin euro-plug and not 12n/12s combinations. The first thing I would do is link (bridge) euro-plug connections 12 and 3 together inside your caravans' euro-plug. Some modern tow-car modules now detect a connected trailer via euro-plug pin 12, if your XC70 uses this facility, this could explain why the caravan is OK when connected to the Galaxy and not the XC70. when you connected the other caravan to your XC70 and it worked OK, this could be that the said caravan has euro-plug pin 12 bridged to pin 3?
Just a quick thought
Snowy
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No they don't, pin 12 is allocated for a towcar to detect a connected trailer, pin 12 is linked to pin 3 within the trailers europlug in order to earth out pin 12 on the towcar so the towcars ECU is able to detect a connected trailer so it's able to activate changes to allow for towing etc. This method is slowly becoming more common on modern vehicles. I have not just made this up.
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