Malibu Molly

This is the setup we have inside the gas locker at the rear left of the van.  Because the right side bottle is easier to access, it's the one I use the most.  After the fill up on Wednesday they should both be showing full.  That means the gauges should have the black line right around on the thickest green area.  I took these pictures today after we got back from Choose Leisure. Right bottle - full Left bottle - not full! Very odd.  All I can assume is that it was one of the connections to the left bottle that was leaking gas into the van. It's heavier than air and under the bottles there are vents to allow the gas to drop through and into the open air. I have used the left bottle in the past for the hob but when filling it's supposed to fill both bottles without any manual intervention. As we usually have electric hook-up on sites and aires, we generally only use gas for the hob to cook on.   I couldn't smell gas when I oppened the back doors and the...

Up early and off to Choose Leisure again.  Overnight I had left the front and rear Heki rooflights open, not ideal for insurance purposes. The alarm is set so that might have been useful. Of course. With all that fresh air there was no gas smell.  When we arrived we opened to rear doors where the locker is, we could all smell it.  So off it went to the workshop.   Some two and a half hours later it came back. They couldn't find any problems and they did a gas check all around including the hob.  I couldn't smell it after that. After we have become paranoid I have ordered a gas sniffer from Amazon to arrive tomorrow!   At the moment Brooklands with the Caravan Club is on!

After last weekend away when it was freezing we had the heating on for most of the day and night.  It was on low when Reggie was left on his own, he has a fur coast already, and off when we were away from the van completely. It seems we used up nearly  whole 11kg bottle of LPG!  The gauge goes from thick green around the a thinner green to red to give an idea of how much gas in in the bottle. Ours was deep into the red! So yesterday we went to Dover BP to fill the bottles.  The other bottle was slightly used and still in the green. We filled up with 14.55 litres. According to Gaslow the 11kg bottle should hold 21 litres. When we had finished to fill both bottles they should show were full on the gauges. By the time we had finished there was a pretty horrible smell. They pit a scent into the gas so that you can smell it! It didn't go away.  We have not had this problem before when filling the other vans we used to own. By the time we got home it was worse. I rang...

The van has lots of storage under the bed.... We seem to have filled it ll up and we are going for a weekend! Some of the storage boxes contain stuff that is for the van and for us when we go walking etc.  When we go away in the summer we will have to find room for the chairs, and they are quite big even when packed away. Plus a lot more clothes to last three weeks away! The Taylor Made screen cover is in the black bag on the bottom under the floor.  It's massive! When in the bag it's easy 5ft tall.  I managed to fod it in half and it is still a pain the the ass!

With a weekend trip away to Suffolk approaching, we got Malibu Molly out of secure storage  again.  We have plenty of LPG in the two bottles in the back locker, but I wanted to ensure we had enough diesel to make the journey up to East Anglia. Our first stop was once again to the White Cliffs and the newly re-imagined motorhome parking. It had been raining for a few days and one storm after another was coming off the Atlantic! It was wet.  The spaces this time were a little full, one with a car, two with a large pile of gravel and tarmac plus a massive puddle, and one with a Belgian registered Adria campervan.  We squeezed in between the car and the gravel pile/puddle. After a walk up to see the cattle that are on the cliffs as part of the nature scheme we settled down in the comfort of the van to look at the view with a flask of coffee. Claire wanted to go to the shop and walked over. It closed at 4pm. It was 4.01pm.... Home via petrol station at Tesco! ...

After 20 months of owning Molly, the 2019 Elddis Autoquest 175, we decided to down size (again) to a 6m Malibu van conversion. The van has the long name of Malibu Charming 600 GT DB.  The DB means it is fitted with a transverse double bed in the rear with storage underneath. We took over ownership on November 12th. We named her Malibu Molly. It does sound like a variant in a range of Barbie dolls!

Today after some shopping in Canterbury we had a little drive to Choose Leisure the motorhome and campervan (RV) dealers. Over the last few weeks, and maybe months since April, we have lost a lot of faith in Marquis, the motorhome dealers, and Elddis, the manufacturers of Molly the Motorhome. The full story will come out later when we have finally resolved the damp and the water ingress to parts of the body work and roof. We had talked about it when we were in Spain. Maybe once the damp had been fixed under the 10 year SOLID warranty we'd look to get rid of Molly and by a campervan rather than a coach built. So for the last week or so we have been looking, off and on, on the internet for local dealers with vans for sale. Should we stay with Elddis and go for a van, or move to a different manufacturer? We saw a few different styles and sizes of vans at the Norfolk Campervan and Motorhome Show in July. There were some layouts that appealed to us, and of course we have quite a few dif...