Oh Bugger, the Bed’s Stuck

A bed that comes down electrically from the roof. What a great space-saving idea – until, of course, it decides to stop working. We’ve had cause to curse learn a bit about the electric bed in our 2017 Benimar Tessoro 481 motorhome; here are our notes on how to reset the bed when it develops a mind of its own…

The instruction book says that resetting the bed can only be done by a dealer; not very helpful. Luckily our dealer took pity on us the first time we arrived on their doorstep with hangdog faces and aching arms from manually winding the bed up and down, giving us a printed copy of the instructions for future reference. That, together with the reading and messing about we’ve done since, means that we now understand a lot more than we did before about how the thing actually works.

This is the control panel on our Project 2000 Bed. If yours looks like this too, hopefully it will work just like ours.

Basically, the bed is a pretty dim piece of kit…. It keeps track of where it is by counting the turns of the belt shaft as the motor raises or lowers the bed, and if it gets interrupted, it has a tendency to lose count. Initially, ours had no preset positions but seemed to chug up and down reasonably happily. When things went wrong the first time, it appeared to have lurched into some kind of “dead man” mode; it really didn’t know whether it was coming or going.

The first thing that we’ve learned is that it really is best if the bed does trigger the limit switch at the end of every cycle. My feeling is that if you don’t trigger the limit switch for a while, that’s when the bed gets confused and forgets where it’s up to.

Finding the limit switch: Ours is attached to the corner of the bed frame behind the driver’s seat. This is a general view of the foot end of our bed. The cab is to the left of picture.

See the strap holding the bed up? If I peer down between the bed frame and the window, looking towards the cab end of the van, this is what I see:

You can see the strap holding the bed up on the left. The black button-like thing on the bracket in the middle of the photo is the limit switch. Basically, when this hits the plastic moulding attached to the ceiling, the button is depressed and the bed knows it’s time to stop.

So far so good…..

The big problem, of course, is that the limit switch is positioned too low. Before we bought our van, the salesman very clearly reassured us that yes, of course you can leave your bedding on the bed. B***ocks! (a technical term used by those who’ve been fed porkies by salesmen….). The bed instructions clearly state that you can’t leave anything at all on the bed; no bedding, and certainly no ladder. The reason is now clear – with bedding on top, the bed can’t get high enough to trip the limit switch.

Here’s our solution. Trying to move the bracket seemed very fiddly given its position and at the time, we didn’t want to undertake any DIY that we couldn’t quickly undo without trace as our van was still under warranty.

See the small black box at top left of the photo? It’s a piece of hard plastic stuck onto the plastic moulding using double-sided tape so that the limit switch gets tripped that bit sooner. The plastic was cut off some window trim helpfully left behind at our house by a team of window fitters a while back and wrapped in black electrical tape to make it look a bit tidier. It’s lasted three years at the time of writing so I guess we can now call that a permanent bodge….

So – moving swiftly on to the actual resetting of the bed. The instructions include steps for setting up two preset positions. We only use one preset but I set both (with the second a couple of cm below the first) just in case skipping the second one somehow confused our poor dim-witted bed.

The first thing to do is to find the “secret button” which is between the “Up” and “Down” buttons on the control panel. It isn’t marked but you should be able to feel a slight bump on the panel where it is. The instructions involve quite a lot of pressing both the Secret Button and the Down Button….. Where it says “move the bed”, use the normal UP and DOWN buttons.

Starting with the bed at the top (so the limit switch is activated):

1. Turn the bed ON using the key and press the small “Reset” button (you’ll need a ballpoint pen or similar)  
2. Hold the Secret Button and the UP button for 6 seconds until you get a solid green spanner light
3. Move the bed down to where you want the first (higher) preset to be
4. Press the Secret Button and the DOWN button – the UP and DOWN lights should flash
5. Move the bed down to where you want the second preset to be
6. Press the Secret Button and the DOWN button – the UP and DOWN lights should flash
7. Move the bed up so that it’s about 10cm from the top
8. Press the Secret Button and the DOWN button – the UP and DOWN lights should flash
9. Move the bed up to the top position (so the limit switch activates)
10. Our printed instructions now tell us to press the secret button and down button again so the up and down lights flash – but that doesn’t work for us. When our bed hits the limit switch, all the lights go off – the bed seems to realise that the task is complete.
11. Turn the bed OFF using the key – it should now be reprogrammed – then ON again to test it.

The first time I reset the bed I was particularly slow about it and the bed seemed to give up part way through – I didn’t get the flashing light from holding the secret button and the down button. Going back to the top and starting again worked absolutely fine (and with the benefit of a bit of practice I was much quicker second time round!).

The bed now works as follows: If we turn on with the key and press down, the bed scoots straight down to our first pre-set position. The next morning, we turn on and press up and the bed travels by itself (not quite at scooting speed) up to the position we set 10cm or so from the top. We then have to press and hold the up button to take it up the last few cm. As soon as it hits the limit switch, the motor cuts out and the job is done.

Good luck!