New Tow Car

[tonyf]

Well the Mondeo finally arrived late last night on the back of a transporter with 10 miles on the clock - only 1 1/2 days late.

All I need to do now is work out how to fit the tow ball, take the paint off it & sort out if the electrics are fully wired or only road lights, by the feel of things I think there is only one cable inside the sheathing

I must say it looks & feels a nice car to drive but I think I will put a few more miles on the clock before hitching the van up

[expat1]

Hi Tony.

As it's 13pin there will only be one cable at the rear of the socket. The easiest way to check if it is wired for just road lights is to put a multimeter across pins 10 and 11 as 10 is the feed for the fridge and pin 11 is the earth return for the fridge. If you have no voltage initially then start the car and you should get a voltage.If you do then it is "fully" wired. (this is highly likely as it's a on size fits all ford kit for the 13pin socket). The other thing to check is if there is a permanent 12v feed on pin 9. This is what Ford forgot to fit on mine.

Hope this is of help.

[tonyf]

Thanks John, I will check it out tomorrow or Monday hopefully when I can borrow a multimeter

[Roving Rangies]

Tip for the removing of paint off the towball. Do it before its fitted!!

[tonyf]

Well it looks like Pin 10 & 11 are wired as there is a 12 volt circuit there with the engine running.

Excuse my ignorance as electronics was never my strongpoint how do I check that there is a permanent 12v feed to pin 9? as I'm playing with the circuit tester!

I have just beem & connected the car to the van & all the road lights are working so does that rule out the pin 9 question?

[expat1]

Hi Tony.

The pin 9 is for permanat 12v feed to the van and the easy way to check is to put the +ve probe on pin 9 and the -ve probe on an earth point on the car (or you could just connect it to pin 11). If you get 12v then it's a fully wired socket but if not then yet again Ford have forgotten that part of the wiring kit (don't worry it's easy to sort).

Hope that made sense.

[tonyf]

Well the saga continues... (thanks to John [expat1] for his help & advice)

I eventually got to go into Indespension today & they kindly put their 13 pin lighting check board on to my car.
I have road lights
I have a fridge feed whilst the engine is on But I don't have the permanent live on pin 9 as John suspected.

Short term question is if the fridge is being powered from the car whilst travelling I assume the leisure battery won't be flat when we get to site so the motor mover will still work.

The guy at indespension said if we have an al-ko (powered) stabiliser (which we haven't) we would need a permanet live feed off pin 9 for this and also if we wanted to use the caravan interior lights whilst parked up for a break en-route, there was also mention of a micro-chip in the caravan which would decide where the power would go to fridge or battery charger (can't find anything in the Bailey Handbook - confused? I am!

I think I need to visit our caravan dealership & have a quick word with them & then off to the Ford Garage to see what they have to say for them selves

And I still need to take the paint off the tow ball - trouble is I have only done 780 miles in two weeks & really want to but 1000+ on before hitching up to try it out.

[expat1]

Hi Tony.

Also if you have the AL-KO ATC system on your van you need the 12v feed on pin 9 to power it. The "chip" they are talking about is what we all call the "habitation circuit" and is usually a pair of relays which sense the fridge feed and will switch off the 12v systems in the van and divert the permanent 12v feed (yes the one you don't have yet) to the battery charging circuit. When the engine isn't running then the relays switch the 12v feed back to the vans 12v system and the lights etc work again.

As I said before it's not that difficult to fit the 12v feed and to be honest would have cost me about £5 or £6 in parts and about half an hour of my time if the lease company hadn't agreed to pay (£60) to have it done and then argue with Ford later.

Basically you need a length of 20A cable, an in-line fuse holder + fuse and find a 20A feed at the fuse box in the rear nearside corner of the car. Run the cable from this feed across the back of the car and cut it into the orange cable of the pigtail that is plugged into the towing module in the rear offside corner (told you it was simple didn't I).

I have to admit I am very impressed with my Mondy but you really need to get some miles under your belt. Now that mine is run in (62,500 miles) it runs like a dream and regularly returns 50 to 51 Mpg (with full boot and at a steady constant 70Mph).