Hi, just bought a 2004 Conway Cruiser and it's great. Put it up in the garden for the first time today and gave it a good clean and work out what I need as the previous owner's Ex husband stripped it all out of anything useful such as EHU lead, battery, and gas bottles. The front locker is rather large so a couple of thoughts occurred to me:
Could I fit a second matching leisure battery in parallel in there?
Could I fit an underslung type lpg tank in there and fill via Autogas at a fuel station?
All fitted and tested properly, obviously.
I'm looking at a Numax XV31MF from Tayna batteries for the main locker which my research suggests will fit with standard type terminal connectors (no problem as even THEY were removed!!). I would do a lot of non hook up camping and two batteries with a 100w or two solar panels should do the trick? And a decent amount of gas.
I'm new to this type of camping so not sure about how much gas gets used. I had a VW T25 Kamper years ago but don't remember the gas situation in that (just remembered my back locking up after driving it for 3hrs and then it had to go). I'm more used to a 10kg backpack and a bivvy bag under a bush....
More silly questions to follow, but this'll do for now..
Honestly the gas use is low and Calor is cheap to the point that I can't imagine the expense to fit an LPG tank would pay off in any sort of reasonable time unless you use it a huge amount. More importantly though, I would worry that such a modification might be problematic if you want to take it abroad, as ferry/eurotunnel have pretty strict rules when it comes to gas. And lastly, consider that if you're using a fitted LPG tank and you run out of gas, you would need to pack up the whole camper and tow it to a filling station to top up! Either that or carry a spare bottle anyway, which kind of defeats the point.
We camped 6 times/30 nights last year & used considerably less than a whole 4.5kg Calor (about £19). That was mostly on hookup, so a bit of a different question if you're using gas for the fridge (and kettle!) as well - fridge uses maybe 150-200g/day, so as a very rough estimate you can expect a couple of weeks of fridge/cooking from a 4.5kg Calor, so a whole month from the 2 bottles you can carry as standard in the front locker.
If you really think you'll use enough to justify refills then a better, safer, and probably cheaper, option would be to look at refillable cylinders by Gaslow or Safefill.
As for electrical needs, much depends on how heavy your usage is. If you're fairly economical users a 100W panel could probably keep you topped up fine through the summer. Converting your lights to LEDs could be as good as adding extra storage, for less expense. You could do another battery, but just be aware they're heavy beasts, and putting one in the front locker would likely mess up your weight distribution, making you very nose-heavy.
I would be extremely cautious about putting an additional battery anywhere near the gas bottles, A gas leak near a battery would be a lethal combination, almost like a bomb waiting to go off, I dont think a modification of that nature is legal, It would also invalidate your insurance if anything was to happen.
Why not first wait and see how much gas you are going to use . We find one of the standard size bottles lasts about 2 years, A 100amp fully charged battery lasts about 3 days without a hook up, When doing steam rallies for more than 3 days we have a small petrol generator that works out well.
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Topic: 2004 Conway Cruiser LPG tank conversion?
