Powertouch service
Discussions on the benefits and risk of failure for motormovers, raise their heads from time to time on CT. so I thought that I’d publish some recent experience.
We have a Powertouch Evolution, with auto actuation which failed to engage on either side when we came to leave home on Sunday. At home it’s on a tarmac surface, where it’s probably quicker to move by hand, but we were going touring.
Having arrived on site, we rang Powertouch on Monday, who gave some very useful advice on lubricating slides in the engagement mechanism, but it didn’t work. Next, he talked us through identifying whether the fault was in the control board - it was. Then he needed to check our warranty details, which we’d left at home, so he tracked down the unit from its serial number and confirmed that it was a warranty repair. Whereupon, he identified a technician near to us and dispatched a replacement controller to him. The technician rang us later that day (Monday) and arranged to meet us at 9am on site, on Wednesday. When he arrived, he swapped the control panel, checked that everything was working and left, job done in half an hour. We’re pretty happy with that.
While he was with us I asked him a few questions re reliability. Here’s a summary of his comments.
Todays Evolution movers aren’t as reliable as the old ones, but overall they are still pretty reliable.
Auto engaging units are no less reliable than manual ones.
The mechanical engagement parts of auto engage units never go wrong.
Given our telephone advice re lubricating the slides in auto engage movers, they clearly do require a little extra care.
We’d agree that having a fault in the first place, isn’t ideal. But if one does occur, then we’d certainly recommend Powertouch for their helpful, fast and effective service.
Comments
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When we had our Powertouch fitted,(manual) i was advised it was the best to have if there is not a method to keep batt charged,and c/van not used often as it is not unknown to engage the mover then find there is not enough power to move the c/van and release them
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Even with auto engagement is there no way of manually doing it?
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We purchased a Powrtouch Evolution motor mover about 5 years ago for our then Coachman 520/4 caravan. I was a bit unhappy with the slowness of the system to activate but some 12 months later, when we changed our van to a new Coachman 565/4 Pastiche in September 2014 we had the unit transferred to our new van because it was so new still. That was probably the biggest mistake of our lives!
Since that time the the Motor Mover has failed us on almost every other time we have needed it! At first it tended to fail to engage, mainly on the nearside wheel, which made the caravan very good at moving in circles but totally uncontrollable ! Sometimes just for a change it failed to engage on the offside so it went in circles in the opposite direction! Lately however just to emphasise how useless it is, it now refuses to engage on both sides! It switches on, starts to engage and within 2 seconds switches off again!
We store the van in a narrow sloped location, off of a narrow lane. It is essential that when we leave the storage, that we have a functioning motor mover to get back in! Sadly although we have now paid our dealer a lot of money to repair the mover before we can get back into our storage, the repair only lasts for a short time. On every second usage the bl**DY thing fails again!
My wife now wants to give up caravanning after 40 years purely because of the hassle we have almost every time we come home!
Truma don't want to know, the unit is now over 5 years old but its been failing almost every time we've used it for the last 4 years! Its rubbish!
TF
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sorry to hear your troubles but did you have the unit looked at by powertouch when the trouble first began on changing vans when it was one year old and under warranty? but putting that to one side the easiest thing is to now is to buy a new mover?
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I agree re buying a new mower. And I suspect that it will be a manual engagement one!
There have been a couple of lessons learned in this debacle. Powrtouch now tell me that the units require lubrication about every 3-4 months. Thats new too me, Ive not heard it before and it seems totally impractical for most owners. Secondly, and I accept I am at fault here, I have assumed that a quick service of the motor mover would be done at the time of my annual service. I pay £239 for the service, but the dealer insists that they don't touch the MM despite having sold it to me and having fitted it! Lesson Don't Assume!
So in part, the appalling lack of serviceability could be due to a lack of inclusion in the annual service and the lack of 3-4 monthly lubrication. But nowhere have I read of that requirement.
In our particular case my storage point is off a fairly narrow but quite busy lane, through some stout gates and then into position on an upward slope. Because of the narrowness of the lane it is not really practical to reverse the van in, on the car. The van is much too heavy for two 73 year olds to be able to push it up the slope. So a reliable MM is essential to us. Its no good arriving in the lane to find that its not working again. So we always test it before setting off on the return journey and almost invariably it is U/S. So we drop the van off at the dealers and I pick it up when they've got it going again.
When it is working I can get the van inside the small two van compound very quickly, in time to avoid that bus that always seems to come along at the wrong time!!
Corners you are correct, a new and reliable MM is the answer, but its a shame to have to do that in the closing years of our caravanning.
TF
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Well thank god im not the only one who has experianced all of the above problems. I have had the mover from new fitted to our Bailey Barcelona a twin axle which because of where it is stored a motor mover is essential so we went for the best which was the power touch mover all wheel drive auto engage costing in the regeon of 2000 pounds. I can honestly say that in all the time we have had it and all the problems of changing both control units all the drive motors I never feel confident that is going to work without some issues. Having said that warranty and help from power touch has always been excellent. On a break a few weeks ago and whilst moiving on pitch the moters locked phoned head office and was talked throughand the problem was a low battery, charged it up and it was fine.
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We had 2 or 3 Powr movers and the only one that proved troublesome was the auto actuation model.
Powr identified the parts needed to convert our mover to manual engagement. They would have cost about £100 but that was considerably cheaper than buying a new mover. We didn’t proceed with the conversion as we traded the van in for a MH.
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Yes indeed it is, but at least you can enjoy them more?
Our mover needed some work on it at the last service and it cost £72 labour I think to stop it going round to the left when it was supposed to be going forward.
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We too were told that the engagement mechanism should be lubricated every four months, which was news to us. But following a very close scrutiny of the document online, we found that advice. A similar situation exists with Dometic refridgerators which require an annual service. Neither are included in any dealer’s annual service that we’ve seen.
In a world where people aren’t expected to have their domestic refrigerators serviced annually, nor other electro mechanical devices such as garage door openers, then these leisure vehicle servicing requirements appear to fit into the category of get out clauses. Vanning may be a hobby for many who don’t engage in servicing as a recreation - seemingly, component manufacturers think differently.
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I suppose too it rather begs the question, just what do the big dealers do for the £239 (Single axle £259 twin axle) service? Yes they check the overrun braking system - say 15 mins? The Gas connections perhaps another 15 mins, Damp check? 15 mins?. They will not check the MM despite having sold it to you, and probably fitted it. It seems that they won't check other kit like the refrigerator and the oven. So what do we get for that £240 ish charge? We know that the labour rate is about £60 per hour so that equates to about 6 hours work, - I don't think so! Accepted of course there are overheads to cover re maintaining the workshops etc, but £240 seems to be a hell of a lot, more than I pay for my annual car service.
So my thinking is that we are probably paying to retain the van's warranty. But if that is the case why is servicing not much cheaper for out of warranty vans? Its all very odd!
TF
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Oh Dear, Its Sackcloth and Ashes time for me! The Powrtouch engineer came today and checked, cleaned and tested everything and then asked to see me operate the system, which I did. I switched on and energised the traction wheels to motor forward to engage the tyres, which they did. I then motored the traction wheels back to the retracted position, checked that the yellow flag was in the correct box, switched off and removed the key. At that point the engineer pounced!!
The problem was in my method of operating! What I had never been told was that when the traction wheels motored back to the retracted position and the system appeared to close down, you had to wait a further 10-15 seconds before removing the key to allow the system to reset itself before switching off totally. My failure to do that did not break contact between two parts of the mechanism which then tended to stick together when trying to engage the drive wheels on the next outing.
So I withdraw my caustic remarks about the reliability of the mover, because it does appear to be down to me! I just wish my dealer had told me when fitting it! I also would have though that given the number of times I had trouble they might have put two and two together like the engineer did! Still bottom line, its down to me I think!
TF
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We had a Purple Line motor mover fitted on our last caravan, and we always had problems with it. Sometimes it would work, and sometimes it wouldn’t. When we exchanged our caravan in 2016 we had a Powrtouch Evolution fitted (manual engagement), and it’s so much better. Hopefully I’m not tempting fate, but we haven’t had any problems with it and, usefully, the remote control handset has an outline of a caravan on it so that I know instantly which are the forwards and backwards buttons without resorting to trial and error each time. I suppose I could have marked it on the old one but I never thought of that
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Sadly I think I'm now going to have to call them out again. This time for a totally different fault. Now that the drive wheels are engaging properly and I can actually use the mover to move the caravan, I am getting sudden shut downs, corrected as soon as I use the Red key to switch the unit off and then on again. At first it only happened occasionally but now its every couple of feet. I actually have to leave my wife to look where we are going, whilst I stay beside the battery box to manipulate they key every 10 seconds or so.
For a while I thought we were sorted!
TF
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When we bought our caravan there was a manually engaged Powertouch mover fitted. The dealer told us it had been transferred from another caravan by the previous owner so I have no idea how old it is. I'd guess over ten years by now.
I tried to engage it a few months ago and a pin sheared and only one side engaged, not a major problem on site as I simply engaged each side separately.
I contacted Powertouch and they were brilliant, they posted replacement pins the same day, they were not expensive and I now have a spare just in case. The mover works well and the customer service is first class.
I agree that they need to be greased occasionally and I do that now.
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Probably a bit late to reply to this but we too have problems with our mover.
One problem we've experienced trice now we've traced to the in-line fuse. It's been fitted in such a position that puts it under strain. It's mounted vertically to the wall of a bed box adjacent to the battery box. A thick, rigid cable from the battery is routed under the caravan floor, up through a hole in the floor and is attached to one end of the in-line fuse. What happens is that the bed box moves around slightly relative to the floor when the caravan is in motion. This places a strain on the fuse which is held fast at the bottom end by the aforementioned cable. Eventually, the fuse snaps and contact becomes intermittent, causing the mover to fail to operate. It will fail randomly during engagement, disengagement or actual operation. If you experience any of these symptoms, track this fuse down and if possible, pull one of the cables attached to it gently while watching the green light on the mover's electronics unit (not the remote!). If it goes on and off while moving the cable around, your fuse has snapped and will have to be replaced.
We've now got a second problem that is most likely being caused by a faulty board in the electronics unit. The RH roller unit will not engage. We can engage it manually with the T-Bar and it will disengage using the remote but it will not engage. PowrWheel have told us to lubricate the unit. I'll do that but I don't think it will make any difference. The system is still under warranty so I think they will have to replace the electronics unit for us.
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