Your first 30 days with a new caravan
Get every fault written down at handover.
Inspect the van at handover and get every fault written on the handover sheet before you sign.
Insurance live from delivery day, rego and warranty registration inside a fortnight, a practice tow close to home, then the first service.
Updated . 11 min read • Lifestyle
Work through the pre-delivery inspection before you leave the yard and get every fault written on the handover sheet.
Handover day is the last point where a fault is easy to get fixed.
- Re-tighten wheel nuts - at about 100km, then 300km, then 1,000km (the commonly published interval)
- First fortnight - rego, insurance, warranties, first service (insurance live from delivery day, and keep the first trip short and close to home)
Your first 30 days with a new caravan
Handover first
Handover day is the last time a fault is easy to get fixed. Inspect the van properly and get everything written down before you sign.
Insurance has to be live before you tow it off the lot, and rego and warranty registration want doing in the same fortnight.
Tow it empty around home before the maiden trip, then re-tighten the wheel nuts, check the bearings and book the first service once the kilometres are on it.
The month after you collect the van is when small faults get fixed easily, or get left.
None of this is difficult and none of it takes long. It is mostly a matter of doing things in an order that keeps other people responsible for the parts that are theirs.
Handover day
Handover is a job in its own right, and it is the most valuable hour of the whole month. Every fault you find while you are standing in the yard is the dealer's to fix now. The same fault found on the way home is a warranty conversation, a booking three weeks out, and a van you cannot use in the meantime.
Allow two to three hours, book it early in the day, and take someone with you. Run every appliance, test every light, fill and drain the water, and do not let anyone hurry you. If you are being rushed, that is a reason to slow down rather than speed up.
Take the inspection checklist in with you
We keep a full pre-delivery inspection list covering the exterior, coupling and brakes, interior, 12V and 240V, gas, plumbing, appliances and documentation. Print it or open it on your phone, and tick it in front of the dealer.
Open the pre-delivery inspection checklistWhat you should be leaving with
- • The signed handover sheet, with every fault written on it and a date against each fix
- • The weighbridge ticket showing tare weight (what the van weighs empty)
- • The gas compliance certificate and the electrical compliance certificate
- • The caravan warranty document, with the start date filled in
- • Manuals and warranty cards for every appliance in the van
- • A clear photo of the compliance plate, taken by you
- • Registration papers, or written confirmation of what the dealer is lodging and when
Your rights do not come from the warranty
Australian Consumer Law guarantees apply to caravans and sit over the top of whatever the manufacturer's warranty says. They are not something you sign up for and not something a contract term can shorten. The ACCC publishes the position plainly on its own new caravans page, including that repairs have to be done within a reasonable time.
In practice that means you can decline to take delivery. Write the fault on the handover sheet, keep a copy, and leave the van there until it is fixed or the fix is scheduled in writing. Nothing about that is unreasonable, and a good dealer will not treat it as such.
The paperwork fortnight
Three things want sorting around pickup, and one of them has to be done before it.
Insurance, before you tow it away
A comprehensive car policy covers the car. It does not cover damage to the van hitched behind it, so from the moment you leave the yard that is an uninsured asset on a public road unless you have arranged cover starting that day. This is the one thing on this page that cannot wait until the following week.
If the van is on finance, the lender will normally require comprehensive cover anyway, and they will want to see it before settlement. Have the VIN, the purchase price and a list of anything you have added ready when you call, and decide up front between agreed value and market value, because that choice changes what a claim pays.
Caravan insurance explained covers agreed versus market value, annex and contents sub-limits, and the seven questions that sort quotes quickly.
Registration
A new van from a dealer is usually handed over registered, with the dealer lodging the paperwork. Confirm that rather than assume it, and confirm the name and address on the registration are yours and current. Ask for the expiry date while you are there, because a van delivered with a few months left on it will catch you out otherwise.
Buying privately, or bringing a van in from another state, and the transfer is yours to do inside your state's window. Each state and territory sets its own rules and its own timeframe, so check with your own transport department rather than going on what someone told you at a caravan park.
Warranty registration, and the warranties inside the warranty
Two separate things live in that folder of manuals. The caravan itself has the builder's warranty, and some builders ask you to register the van with them to start it. The appliances inside it usually do not sit under that warranty at all: the fridge, the air conditioner, the hot water system and the washing machine each carry their own cover from the company that made them, often with their own registration and their own period.
Ten minutes at the kitchen table with the folder, the serial numbers and a cup of tea is the whole job. It is also the difference between a claim that gets handled and a claim that starts with someone asking you to prove when you bought it.
Start the folder on day one
One folder, physical or scanned, holding every certificate, receipt, service record and photo from here on. It settles warranty arguments, and a complete history is worth real money when you eventually sell the van.
The first tow, empty and close to home
Do not let the maiden trip be the first time you tow it. Take the van out empty, on roads you already know, on a day where the only purpose is learning how the thing behaves behind your car.
Empty is deliberate. A lighter van is more forgiving of a wide turn taken badly, and the point of the exercise is not the fit-out, it is the length, the swing and the stopping distance.
What to actually practise
- • Hitching and unhitching until you can do it without thinking about the order.
- • Setting the brake controller, then testing it with the manual override at low speed.
- • Braking distance, on a quiet road, deliberately, so you know the number rather than guess it.
- • Wide turns, kerbs, roundabouts and where the van tracks compared with the car.
- • Reversing in an empty car park, then into your own driveway, before there is an audience.
- • A fuel stop, so you find out now whether you fit and where the pumps are awkward.
Then take it to a weighbridge
Loaded the way you will really load it, a public weighbridge will tell you what the van and the car actually weigh, and what is left of your margins. Nothing else tells you that. Everything before it is arithmetic on numbers someone else published.
The three-weigh method is written out step by step in our printable checklists, the payload calculator works out what you have to play with, and caravan weights explained covers what each number on the plate is telling you.
One night, an hour from home
Before the trip you actually bought the van for, spend a night in it somewhere close. Set up in daylight, cook a real meal, run the hot water, sleep in the bed, pack up in the morning the way you would on the road.
Everything that is going to annoy you turns up on that night. An hour from home it is a note on a list. Four hundred kilometres out it is your holiday.
The first pack
Payload is what you are allowed to add to the van: its maximum legal weight (the ATM stamped on the compliance plate) minus what it weighed empty (the tare). It is almost always smaller than people expect. Water is a kilogram a litre, and gas bottles, batteries, an awning, tools, the annex and a full pantry all come out of the same number.
Pack heavy things low and close to the axles. Weight out past the ends of the van, in the front boot or on the rear bumper bar, has the biggest effect on how it tows for the least benefit to you.
Use the ownership checklist rather than a mental list
Our interactive checklist runs the whole ownership arc, from research through the new-owner stage and into ongoing servicing, and it remembers what you have ticked. The pre-departure list on the printable checklists is the one to keep in the van itself.
Water, before you drink it
A new van's tanks and lines have been sitting since the factory. Fill them, run every tap through until the water runs clear and stops tasting of plastic, drain them, then fill again for the trip.
While the system is pressurised, get under the sink with a torch and look at every joint. This is the easiest leak check you will ever do and the cheapest one to act on.
After the first 500 to 1,000km
A caravan beds in. Fasteners settle, bearings take up their working clearance, and every fitting in the van gets shaken by a road surface no factory can simulate.
The intervals below are the ones commonly published by suspension and axle makers in their own maintenance sheets, and a couple of them start earlier than the heading suggests. Builders and component suppliers differ, so treat the handbook that came with your van as the authority and these as the shape of the job.
Wheel nuts
A wheel that has just been fitted settles, and the nuts lose a little tension while it does. Published suspension schedules handle that with a sequence rather than one job: re-tightened at roughly the first 100km, again at 300km, again at 1,000km, then at each service. Use a torque wrench in a criss-cross pattern, and use the figure in your handbook, because the right number depends on the wheel and stud type your van was built with.
Wheel bearings
The common published check is at the first 1,000km, looking for excessive play and adjusting it if it is there. After that the usual interval for pulling them down, inspecting and re-greasing is every six months or 10,000km. In between, put your hand on each hub at fuel stops. Warm is normal, too hot to hold is a problem you want to find at a servo rather than at speed.
Gas connections
A first trip puts a few hundred kilometres of vibration through fittings that were assembled in a factory. Soapy water on the connections at the bottle and regulator will find a leak, and every appliance is worth running once more after the van has been on the road. Anything you actually find is a job for a licensed gasfitter, and only for a licensed gasfitter.
Water connections
Vibration finds the fitting that was only nipped up. Fill the tanks, run every tap hot and cold, then look under the sink, behind the toilet and around the pump with a torch while the system is pressurised. A slow leak inside a cupboard is cheap on day 30 and expensive on day 300.
Screws, catches and sealant
Walk through and open everything. Cupboard catches, drawer runners, the entry step, the roof hatches. Outside, run your eye along the roof and window sealant for anything that has lifted. These are small jobs while the van is new and still the builder's problem.
Torque figures are not universal
The correct wheel nut torque depends on the stud size and grade and on the wheels fitted to your van, and published tables carry a warning to that effect. Get the figure from your own handbook or from the wheel supplier, use a calibrated torque wrench, and work in a criss-cross pattern. Guessing it by feel is how studs get stretched.
Booking the first service
Australian builders commonly put the first service at 1,000km or three months, whichever comes first, and then annually or every 10,000km after that. The figure in your own warranty booklet is the one that counts, and it is worth reading rather than assuming.
Manufacturer warranties are frequently conditional on those services being completed and recorded, sometimes at a dealer or an approved agent. Book it on the day you collect the van. Service departments fill up, 1,000km arrives faster than three months for most people, and a service booked late is the sort of thing that turns into an argument at exactly the wrong moment.
Worth doing at the same time
- • Hand over your written list of everything from the shakedown night, in one go, rather than in three phone calls.
- • Ask them to record the wheel nut torque figure for your van so you have it in writing.
- • Get the service stamped and the invoice into the folder before you leave the counter.
- • Put the next interval in your phone calendar while you are standing there.
Consumer guarantees under Australian law sit alongside the manufacturer's warranty rather than inside it, so a lapsed service does not delete your rights. It does, however, hand someone an argument, and the whole point of the first month is to leave no arguments lying around.
Common questions
What should you do first after picking up a new caravan?
Before you leave the yard, work through the pre-delivery inspection with the dealer and get every fault written on the handover sheet. Then in the first fortnight: confirm the registration is in your name, make sure insurance is live, register the caravan warranty and the separate appliance warranties, and book the first service. Do a short practice tow close to home before you commit to a real trip.
Do you need caravan insurance before you tow it home?
Arrange it to start on the day you take delivery. A comprehensive car policy covers the car, not damage to the caravan hitched behind it, so from the moment you leave the yard the van is an uninsured asset on the road. If you bought it on finance, the lender will normally require comprehensive cover as a condition of the loan anyway, so it needs sorting before pickup rather than after.
When is the first service due on a new caravan?
Commonly at 1,000km or three months, whichever comes first, and then annually or every 10,000km. Builders differ, so the interval in your own warranty booklet is the one that counts. Manufacturer warranties are frequently conditional on the scheduled services being completed and recorded, which is why the first service is worth booking on the day you collect the van rather than when you remember.
How soon should you re-tighten the wheel nuts on a new caravan?
Early and more than once. Published suspension maintenance schedules treat it as a sequence rather than a single job, with the wheel nuts re-tightened at roughly the first 100km, again at 300km and again at 1,000km, then at regular service intervals. Use a torque wrench in a criss-cross pattern and use the figure your handbook gives, because the correct torque changes with the wheel and stud type fitted to your van.
Should your first caravan trip be a long one?
No. Tow it empty around local roads first to learn the length and the braking distance, then do one night somewhere within an hour of home with the van loaded the way you would really load it. Everything that is going to annoy you shows up on that first night, and being close to home turns each of those things into a note on a list instead of a problem.
Do you have to register the warranty on a new caravan?
Check the paperwork, because two separate things are usually involved. Some builders ask you to register the van with them to activate the manufacturer warranty, and the appliances inside it (fridge, air conditioner, hot water system, washing machine) generally carry their own warranties from the companies that made them, with their own registration. Australian Consumer Law guarantees apply either way and sit over the top of any warranty.
We do not stop at the purchase
Most of this site is about choosing: the weights, the payload, the specs, the side-by-sides. That part finishes on handover day and the owning does not, so this guide is the start of the other half.
The ownership checklist carries it from here, through the first year of servicing and out the other side to the day you sell it. Everything in the first 30 days above is already on it.
Where to go next, depending on where you are up to.
- •Not collected yet: the pre-delivery inspection checklist.
- •Tracking the whole journey: the interactive ownership checklist.
- •Kitting it out: essential caravan accessories.
- •Crossing a border on the first big trip: the interstate towing law checker.