After I had got the installation and maintenance manual from the bed manufacturer in Italy, I traced the fault and fixed it. The fault was that the couldn't-care-less moron in the Rapido factory pushed together an 8 pin plug and socket, and couldn't care that one of the pins remained stuck out of the plug body so wasn't touching the other connector. It had to be plainly obvious to the assembly twit, even if he was a Gauloise smoking, red vino-drinking slob just about to go for his two and a half hour lunch break that you can't push together an 8 pin plug and socket without looking at what you are doing. I cut the wretched 8 pin plug and socket out (which in any case did not meet the manufacturer's specifications for current carrying capacity), and soldered each wire to its counterpart, insulating them all with heat shrink sleeving and then insulating the whole connection block. That fixed the electrical fault and I thought hooray I can now use the camper. Then one of the bed shafts which run the width of the bed fell out of its bearing causing that corner of the bed to collapse. Luckily I wasn't driving but that was the last straw. Not wanting to dump this heap of crap on to either a private buyer or an innocent (ha ha!) dealer I did trade it for a different make at Brownhills. It was a Pilote, which turned out to be a very nice van.
The Rapido at Brownhills was the first one in my search that I saw actually working. Before I bought the Rapido I had visited three other motorhome dealers looking for an electric bed-above-the-cab model because it is such a logical use of available space. All three of the dealers I went to had one in stock, but there were three different reasons why they couldn't show me the bed working. All of them such as the hab
battery is flat (well if that's true, go and get a
battery charger then you moron, if you want to sell me a £65,000 motorhome) , I can't find the key and so on were pathetic. What they really meant I suspect was that the beds all had faults and they hadn't got round to fixing them.
One dealer, the "Posh Executive One with Hugemobiles" in Lincoln had a bargain last-year's-model that I fancied. I looked over it with the salesman and said
"I like this. Only thing is, I had an electric bed one before and it was nothing but trouble and in the end I had to get the workshop manual and fix it myself. I will buy this one for cash if you put in writing that if there is any fault with the bed within one year you will refund my purchase cost in full"
Mr Dealer went red in the face, I'm not kidding, and practically shouted at me "No we won't give you your money back, we will fix it. The trouble with electric beds is that people leave their bedding on the bed and raise it to the ceiling. You mustn't do that, you have to take the bedding off before parking it"
I thought what a load of crap. He doesn't know what he's talking about. There is a microswitch at the top position of the bed and if it doesn't switch off when your bed is at the top position, then just lower the microswitch a few inches. You don't have to burn the motor out forcing it to compress the bedding against the ceiling. What's the point of having to make up your bed every day, you may as well buy a camper without a permanent bed.
I'll never have another camper with an electric bed.