Hymer Sunlight Van 1 purchase

[hoosiermark]

Well it finally happened. I contracted to buy a Sunlight Van 1 this weekend. 2018 with 18,000 miles. Obviously I thought price was right for what it is. I had looked at Travato (sp?)and really like the 59K but I could not justify the price at this time. We have not had an RV since 1990 when the children were small so this is basically a new thing for us. The unit has the lithium batteries and the built in generator which pleases me. It also has swivel front seats which should be handy.
I have only seen picture and a short video of it so the purchase is contingent upon inspection next Monday. The salesman says he did not see the owners manuals in the unit but hopefully they are there. If not, I am hoping another Hymer owner on the forum will copy the for me at a reasonable fee and send them to me.
I am not sure how the refrigerator and generator will work with each other or how long it can run off the battery pack. I am buying it from Camping World in Minnesota and they will walk me thru all the stuff but I am not sure they have a good handle on it either since there were not that many of these units made and sold it appears. They did sell the unit which is a plus.
I had looked into a DIY unit and older units but this unit at the price was a better deal. I really like the mileage. That many miles on it means that it did not sit idle a lot which I prefer. I hope to contact the previous owners for some history on where it went and what they have done to it.
I have wanted a class B since I first saw a "turtletop" chevy van in the early 1980s. Now I will have one, life is good! We head up to Minnesota to get it then off to Michigan to watch son-in-law run 50 mile ultra marathon the 17th. Kind of a baptism by fire with it but we are comfortable staying in hotels until we get it home if need be. We will only have minimal camping supplies with it but Walmart is around.

[Tom_Maxwell]

Thanks hoosiermark,

I did finally get that retaining ring to slip off the lines after removing the quick disconnect on the draw down faucet/ shower line. Ordered a new faucet and waiting now. The valve of the faucet was bad. Maybe it froze up at some point. Have not left Florida with the rig and no freezing cold down here so maybe up north after manufacture. Anyhow that faucet will come off if you spend a lot of valuable time and persevere. You're method probably saves time=money for sure.

Tom

[hoosiermark]

Tom, I replaced my bath faucet in January. It is possible but it is a challenge. I ended up breaking off the faucet from the hose to get the ring free. I replaced the faucet with a Moen. It is very similar to the factory one. I think it was abouit $160. The nice thing about it is that it is easy to install and comes with a plastic tool which is great.
I suggest you join Carrado & Sunlight Owners facebook group I posted on it at the time how I replaced it. I also posted about the kitchen faucet drain. I did not have a holding tank for the kitchen sink and I added a drain hose from the sink behind the fridge and back to the drain line by the rear faucet. Now it drains into the holding tank instead of needing to drain to the ground. One guy on the site added a 5-6 gallon holding tank but he gave up the cabinet storage under the sink to do it. Also look at the Hymer Aktiv Owners and wannabees group. They have several experts on there when it comes to the electrical system.

[Tom_Maxwell]

Own a 2017 Sunlite Van One for a couple of years. Mostly short trips. Pro master chassis seems good to go. The conversion quality is something else- one pays for quality and I elected to go for the lower price. Just recently got the water pump to run after finding a bad pin (not seated correctly and pushed out) in one of the electrical connectors. Now a flooding leak at the shower flex hose where it joins below the fauce/tvalve at the sink. Maybe this is why the electrical pin connector was bad- someone at the dealer pushed that pin out while trouble shooting the leak? My problem is the access panel is at the wrong height to get wrenches to the connections. The connector bundle is too fat to go through the faucet retaining ring. Any suggestions as how to fix this?

[NRALIFR]

Thanks. I was just curious what kind of system they were putting on these units. You never know, my next RV might be a “B”.

:):)

[mumkin]

NRALIFR wrote:
Is what you are referring to as an “under hood generator” actually one of Balmar’s alternator/regulator systems? Their “regulators” are actually multi-stage charge controllers, and would be similar to a DC-DC converter, except that they are connected directly to the alternator rather than the starting battery.

:):)

The underhood "generator" is actually a second large alternator such as are used in ambulances. It is set up to charge the house battery system. My rig has standard AGMs, so the regulator is part of the alternator. If there are lithiums, their more complicated system uses the balmar regulator. Originally Roadtrek was getting them directly from balmar. (I even spoke to them when I needed to reset the one on my 170 after I dumped the lithium system and went back to AGMs) The large alternators are provided by Nation's Starter in Missouri and at some point Nation's starting working directly with Balmar and supplied RT with both. Makes more sense that way...

[NRALIFR]

mumkin wrote:

hoosiermark wrote:
What the heck is a balmer? I tried to google it but could not find anything that made sense to me. Is it something to do with solar power?

Have Ted show you and explain it to you. The Balmar company makes a little controller that handles the underhood generator's charging to the lithium batteries. If it is installed inside of the fender (down near the UHG, which hangs quite low next to the passenger wheel), that isn't a good thing since it can cause early corrosion to the connectors.

Balmar makes charging systems primarily for the marine market.

Is what you are referring to as an “under hood generator” actually one of Balmar’s alternator/regulator systems? Their “regulators” are actually multi-stage charge controllers, and would be similar to a DC-DC converter, except that they are connected directly to the alternator rather than the starting battery.

:):)

[Mote]

hoosiermark wrote:
Follow up: I ended up taking the unit to Beaver Motors where the facebook group says the experts are for the problem I had. They diagnosed that the inverter was bad. So they replaced the unit with a good used one they had and it has worked fine for two months. Per the instructions from the home page of RV.net I sent my experience to CW. A few days later Shawn from corporate contacted me and they wanted a copy of the $840 bill I paid. They investigated and told me they would pay for it. Then I got phone calls to verify my home address and my email. Both of which were on the initial communication. It sure sounded to me like the run around and stall tactics before the final shoe dropped and they denied the claim. Finally on Monday I called Shawn up and told him that this was crazy, if they were going to deny it, just get it over with. He assured me that the mix up was on their part and the check would be in the mail, yea right! Well on Tuesday, the mail man brought me the check. I know I read on this forum CW bashing, I for one will stand up and say they treated me right. I bought the unit "as is" but they were to point out all the working and non working features. I strongly believe that when they ran the AC with shore power every thing worked and they simply failed to check that the AC would work on generator since every thing else worked. Now everything worked fine and we have gone on two trips and are very happy.

Howdy fellow Hoosier,
We're not to far from you.
Hope you enjoy your new camper and maybe we'll see you at one of the local state parks next summer.

[mumkin]

Good to hear that it all worked out in the end. Nice to hear that Camping World took care of you, but it seemed to have taken a significant amount of ... nudging. LOL It shouldn't be that hard, which is why I like dealing with my small family dealership.

There will still be a learning curve. But the good thing about the FB pages is that you can almost always find someone online for quick help... or their extensive file sections.

[hoosiermark]

Follow up: I ended up taking the unit to Beaver Motors where the facebook group says the experts are for the problem I had. They diagnosed that the inverter was bad. So they replaced the unit with a good used one they had and it has worked fine for two months. Per the instructions from the home page of RV.net I sent my experience to CW. A few days later Shawn from corporate contacted me and they wanted a copy of the $840 bill I paid. They investigated and told me they would pay for it. Then I got phone calls to verify my home address and my email. Both of which were on the initial communication. It sure sounded to me like the run around and stall tactics before the final shoe dropped and they denied the claim. Finally on Monday I called Shawn up and told him that this was crazy, if they were going to deny it, just get it over with. He assured me that the mix up was on their part and the check would be in the mail, yea right! Well on Tuesday, the mail man brought me the check. I know I read on this forum CW bashing, I for one will stand up and say they treated me right. I bought the unit "as is" but they were to point out all the working and non working features. I strongly believe that when they ran the AC with shore power every thing worked and they simply failed to check that the AC would work on generator since every thing else worked. Now everything worked fine and we have gone on two trips and are very happy.

[mumkin]

You really need to go over to Facebook where there are many users of this system and they can walk you through the dos and don'ts of running them. I stayed with AGMs because I'm just not into long learning curves anymore. LOL The only detail that I can pick out of your description with confidence is that you can never run the AC and microwave at the same time.

I would suggest that you also join the Aktiv Owners and Wannabees because they are mostly all Hymer owners and they have totally deconstructed these systems, put them back together with the changes needed... and they need quite a few changes... and are very helpful. There is also a group just for the Ecotrek systems. Since I don't own one, I haven't joined it.

[hoosiermark]

Finally got into the inverter a little deeper. The inverter works with the TV and the microwave. When the AC is kicked on, it starts up and then ends up with the inverter showing an alarm code. I am not sure if I should hit the ecotrek reset button sometime in the sequence or not. I start with the ecotreck battery switch on, then the inverter on, then checked it with TV and it works. Then I try to power up AC and get the alarm. Tech is to contact me Thursday so we try and wait patiently.

[hoosiermark]

Yes Eco trek wsaa turned on. Inverter worked fine after a little bit with Microwave. So when we were done I shut it off. hour later showing 13.4 on digital read out I hit inverter. I hear beep beep then beep. wait a little longer and turn AC on with wall thermostat. It starts up and then quits 20-30 seconds later.

[wohtex]

Do you have your EcoTrek turned on? By the way I solved my no charge problem from the UHG, there are two in line fuses by the Balmer, both were corroded, cleaned the fuse holder and put two new fuses in, one is 1 amp the other 10 amp. now my UHG works fine.

Bill

[wohtex]

Do you have your EcoTrek turned on?

Bill