problems with electric hook-up

[Richard and Georgie]

Hi just joined bongo fury after recently buying a converted bongo, we went away last weekend and our brand new electric hook up cable didn't power our bongo, however our friends old cable did the job - even more puzzling our brand new cable worked on our friends camper van! Just bought another cable which doesn't work on ours - really need help if anyone has any ideas it would be gratefully received thankyou

[g8dhe]

Sounds like perhaps an intermittent fault in your system, have you checked the Main switch on the Consumer unit, RCD and MCB's, after that you really need to start looking for loose connections within the system.

[Richard and Georgie]

Thank you. 2 questions though. How do we do that? Why would our friends cable work?

[g8dhe]

Well being intermittent means it comes and goes so maybe when you plugged your cable it happened to fail, but after unplugging it and changing over to the other cable, the vibration was sufficient to cause a connection to make again.
The Master switch, RCD and MCB's are in the Consumer unit somewhere normally in a cupboard, operate all the switches trip the RCD with the Test button and generally see if you can cause the power to drop out when NOT expected! After that its a case of opening things up and checking that the individual wires are screwed in correctly etc. or get someone to check out the electrics for you.

[mikeWalsall]

Exactly the same thing happened to me a couple of years back ..

Took my caravan up to the Lake District .. plugged the hook up lead into the sites power supply no power .. the earth (RCD) trip was OK .. checked my lead and one of the terminals had worked lose ..

You should have a 'trip' box somewhere in your bus that looks similar to this picture ... if the lecky ever goes off .. try to remember the last thing that you plugged in .. remove it .. reset the trip switch and re check the lecky supply is OK ..

Some times it's because you have overloaded the sites permitted amps and rather than knocking the sites trip out .. it's knocked yours off instead ..!!

[Jaws]

Welcome to the forum. It does sound like an intermittent fault and those can be hard to trace. My best guess is that your hook up socket wiring is to blame rather than the connecting cable. Is it a new conversion?