Caravan LED road light issues

Colinfb
Colinfb Forum Participant Posts: 1
edited October 2021 in Caravans #1

We purchased a brand new 2021 Swift Challenger X 850 in May this year. The caravan road lights and habitation lights are all LEDs in line with government requirements replacing the less efficient and polluting traditional lamps. After coupling up at the dealers we checked the road lights (including indicators) were working correctly. We drove off (in our Land Rover Discovery Sport) and at the first turn noticed that the Indicator Repeater Light was not illuminating. When we got home we again checked the lights and the indicators were working correctly but not the repeater lights.

Consulting the Swift website we discovered that this is a known (to them) problem. The current drawn by the LED lights is not sufficient to make the repeater work in most modern cars, the solution is to purchase from Swift, and fit to the caravan, a Sargent designed module costing about £41. The fitting instructions were easy to follow, all connections were simple plugs, and it cured the problem instantly.

My only problem now is that of spare lamps. I believe it is a requirement in most countries to carry spare lamps for caravan road lights, I have always done that, but how do I source spare LEDs when there are so many different lights on the caravan?

Comments

  • EmilysDad
    EmilysDad Forum Participant Posts: 8,973
    1000 Comments
    edited October 2021 #2

    I'd guess that if any led's failed in a tail light of your caravan you'd need to replace the whole unit, so do you carry two tail light units just in case? £££££££s That's certainly the case of the side & front markers on my caravan. AIUI, you are only required to carry bulbs that you can replace at the roadside without the use of tools .... and the led's are unlikely to fail

    many cars need a week off work to replace them so they definitely would be impractical to try & replace at the roadside.

  • mmbgeb
    mmbgeb Forum Participant Posts: 2
    edited November 2021 #3

    Please note that these VLM cards do not work reliably, I have a Swift Eccles 580 and Mazda tow car. The card (fitted by my dealer) worked ok at the start bur now fails randomly.

    Sergeant the suppliers suggest i buy a new one as they take no responsibility for the working of these devices

     

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