Don't the years pass quickly?

Don't the years pass quickly?

25,000 miles on the clock and very few problems.

A dripping bathroom tap replaced earlier this year, probably the frost from the Winter months, and recently a couple of LED habitation bulbs have started acting up and been replaced.

The spare wheel now resides in the garage, the under slung cage gone and a decent Gaslow system has been added – we have two Gaslow 11kg bottles that need only occasional filling whatever the time of year.

The starter battery was replaced after my attempt at fitting a B2B device was, unfortunately, not as good as I thought it would be and the battery discharged over several weeks and couldn't be revived – my fault entirely.

No other electrical wiring or device has packed up, the Fiat engine still keeps going and will get serviced at 30,000 miles and basically nothing of any great worry has interrupted our holidays from the reliable Pilote Motorhome.

The garage space is ideal with plenty of room for spare wheel, table and chairs, levelling blocks (rarely used), plastic boxes containing all plumbing connections and tools and room for wine and beer bottles aplenty with space to spare – good size and easy to access from outside or inside.

If you wish to see where we've been then a trip to - www.youtube.com/user/keithchesterfield – will give some indication of our travels.

We're getting there!

We've put a few miles on the clock, a couple of UK weekends and a trip to France, and now almost all the motorhome niggling problems have been sorted out one way or another and we look forward to good times in the Pilote during this year.

A spare wheel has been acquired, a brand new Michelin tyre and wheel (£45 in total), and we've had a metal cage built and fitted in a very accessible position underneath at the back. Now the pathetic 'blow up' kit provided by the Manufacturers is redundant and we can travel confident that in the case of a puncture we can carry on our journey with minimum delay.

 

The Pilote 'own brand' battery has been checked and tested to find how good or bad it is. 'Excellent' was the opinion of those who did the testing and checking and now we can confidently go for a week or so during the Winter without hook-up and can forget about EHU completely at other times of the year.

 

The Combi heater works a treat during the long cold days and nights when we've been away and, although I've not been able to check exactly how much gas we've used, it doesn't seem to be very high usage.

 

We changed all the interior bulbs to LED, it was a combination of halogen and LED, to keep the load on the battery to a minimum. We bought 30 LED bulbs off Ebay for less than £20 and now have plenty of spares just in case we do get problems with the new ones – we haven't yet!

 

The amount of storage space is ample for the two of us – 7 overhead cupboards, a wardrobe, over cab space, two cupboards over the sink/cooker area, three drawers at the side of the cooker, one large cupboard over the fridge/freezer and one under the sink, two cupboards in the toilet/shower area and access from inside the MH to the fairly big garage under the bed.

When we were away during late Autumn in this country and a Winter break in France we took a coat for every type of weather, shoes and boots galore, umbrellas each, and a multitude of towels for wiping the wet and dirty dog.

This extra equipment was still no-where near enough to fill the ample storage space in the Pilote.

The garage quite comfortably takes the high back outside chairs and table, water pipes and electric cables, boxes of 'essential' tools and water connectors, jump leads (you never know!) and other miscellaneous bits and pieces – you'll never know when you'll need that watering can!

 

Our Pilote is the 150 Multi-jet version and the extra 20hp more than the 130 engine seems to give the motorhome just that bit more ooomph when accelerating and we seem to be able to get up into sixth gear at much a lower speed, without feeling as if the engine is labouring, than our previous motorhome.

Out of built up areas we rarely drop down from sixth gear, except for long hills, and fourth and even fifth are quite all right to use without a problem in urban areas.

Without realising it, when on a downhill stretch of a French motorway, we managed to record 80 mph, we slowed down fairly quickly, and the engine certainly had the power to go faster if we'd wanted to.

We usually keep at or close to the speed limit on Motorways, our trip to the Eurotunnel Terminal on the way to France is all except one mile on Motorways and a round trip of 440 miles, and we've recorded a fraction over 26 mpg for the 2,000 miles we've done since we bought the Pilote.

Videos of Aires - and Eurotunnel.

Here is a link to the Videos I posted on Youtube earlier this year – www.youtube.com/user/keithchesterfield

Most of the clips relate to the Aires we visited in June and July but there are also videos of our journey through the Eurotunnel terminals at Folkestone and Coquelles.

The picture quality of the Youtube clips is very poor compared to the original videos.

Definition of the Payload of a Motorhome –

An optimistic figure the manufacturers hide away in the small print section of the Advertising literature and the figure quoted is usually somewhere between wishful thinking and a Hans Christian Anderson fantasy world.

The literature for the Reférénce gives a figure of 3075 kg for the un-laden weight and a Gross vehicle weight of 3500 kg - which in theory gives 425 kg of payload.

But what they don't calculate, and put in the 'blurb' that we rely on, is the Mass in Running Order (MRO) which includes the un-laden vehicle at 3075 kg plus 75kg to cover the weight of the driver, plus 90 per cent full water and fuel tanks and the engine coolants.

This now reduces the original figure of 425 kg payload dramatically. After having the MH weighed at two different weigh-bridges the payload quoted by Pilote and re-iterated by the Dealers of 425 kilos (66 stones) seems wildly optimistic.

With the regulation quota of water, fuel, gas bottles, solar panel, spare wheel, one driver and no other extras fitted there is only 160 kilos (25 stones) of payload remaining.

Add a my co-pilot/relief driver and our dog and that reduces to 70 kilos (11 stones) and is much less than the quoted figure in the Brochure which should, in theory, have left around 355 kilos – not the diminutive 'real' figure we actually have.

When we have put on board food, clothes, leisure table and chairs, TV and aerial, EHU cables, water hoses and other essential items there will be very little spare capacity before being overloaded.

As the vehicle has five seat belts for the driver and passengers it seems highly likely that the MH will be well over the 3500 kilos weight limit allowed when at full carrying capacity.

Three extra adults would add at least 210 kilos, children about half that, to the weight carried and would almost certainly be overweight.

I'm not too worried about the payload being so small on my Pilote but anyone else thinking of buying one of this model would be well advised to check what is, or isn't, the capacity before purchasing.

MMM magazine possibly sent all of the families out on the long term test in an over loaded, and therefore illegal, vehicle.

Any feed back about my interpretation of the Pilote payload calculations welcomed.

Irritating minor points!

A few points that seem to indicate that Motorhome designers never actually take the completed vehicle out for a day or two to try and see if everything in, and fitted to the MH, is as practical as it should be.

There seem to be some items that really should in my opinion be fitted as standard (Smoke alarm, Carbon Monoxide alarm and fire extinguisher) but none of these safety features were with the MH when we took delivery – they are fitted now!

Did MMM send the 'long test' families away on holidays without any of the three items or have they taken them out of the vehicle after the tests?

The toilet roll holder was behind the toilet and almost impossible to reach, when perched on the seat, unless you're extremely supple - i.e. - contortionist!

The toilet seat wouldn't lift up and stay up because it was stopped from getting beyond the vertical by the toilet roll on the holder.

The light switches just inside the habitation door were the 'wrong' way up but all other switches in the MH were the correct way.

The height given by Pilote in their literature is 2.85m – yes, it is from the top of the rear of the MH but the roof lights add another 5cms giving a total of 2.90m – it may not be a lot of extra height but it's still something to be aware of.

Anything else fitted to the roof, for example TV aerial, will need checking for extra height.

One of the 'testers' mentioned the difficulty with positioning the MH when dropping off waste water and to stop having a similar problem I've added a plastic pipe underneath from the waste water outlet to the side of water release handle and clipped it in place.

This now allows much more flexibility when parking to drop off waste water.

On the dashboard there are brushed aluminium trimmings which reflect in the windscreen causing a 'U' shaped and two 'V' shape lines more or less in the driver and passenger eye lines and are an irritation when driving – they've been covered with black Electricians tape.

The Remis blinds rattle on each cab door and seem to have no obvious way of stopping them make a noise.

The folding shower doors are secured by a thin plastic strap that is clipped at each end – this allows the doors to rattle – a piece of sponge wedged between the doors and the wall are a short term solution – a clip or clips will be a longer term answer.

Inside the compartment that houses the battery, fuses and electrical boxes (beneath the seat behind the drivers seat) there is plywood board, about 450 x 400 mm, which should have been secured by clips to other boards to ensure it remained held in place.

But some bright 'spark', either manufacturer or dealer, has run a cable behind the board instead of over it, despite there being a 'cut out' to allow the cable to go over it, and that ensures the board cannot be aligned correctly with the clips and just flaps about noisily.

 

A quick and simple reroute of the cable and the problem noise is sorted out and the board is now movement free.

Some door and cupboard catches were rattling as they were not as well set as they should have been – they are now correctly aligned and do not move about and rattle.

Slowly but surely the minor irritations are being sorted out!

Take delivery

We took delivery of our Pilote Reference P716 LPR on Friday 11^th October, after a five hour delay at the Dealers, and despite the following moans and groans about basic and irritating problems catalogued below I'm very pleased with the Pilote.

The MH had been on a long term test with MMM (Motorcaravan Motorhome Monthly) magazine and we bought it with around 6,000 miles on the clock.

It looks the bees knees, drive well, decent 'oomph' in the performance with the 150 engine, very good size cooker and fridge/freezer, the general layout is user friendly and I'm sure we'll learn to really enjoy the MH once the minor, but irritating niggles, are sorted out.