Du And Nica
Free Member
- Sep 1, 2018
- 67
- 56
- Funster No
- 55,962
- MH
- Don't own one yet
- Exp
- Since 2010, with rentals so far, but planning to buy a motorhome in the next few weeks
Howdy everyone,
Following up on our motorhome-buying adventures so far, we hit a major bump here yesterday: after what was supposed to be the last batch of fixes, we were driving the motorhome from their "fix man" garage to the company's main office to make final payment and sign papers etc, and then the "check engine" light went on :-(
We then went to their mechanics garage (which is in a 3rd location) and there they scanned the engine and said the "turbo electrovalve" was bad and needed replacement. They ordered the part from the nearest dealer that had it, in Santiago (Osorno is kinda small/medium city and doesn't have the most "hard to find" items), and it was supposed to arrive this morning but late last night the saleswoman told us they didn't manage to ship it in time :-/
She swears it will be shipped today (and that she will provide us with the tracking number as soon as she gets it, for our peace of mind), and then they will be able to fit it Monday morning. I insisted (and she conceded) that, before final payment, I need it to be revised by the independent mechanic that was recommended to us here in Osorno, so they have an incentive to really fix it well and fast.
The strange thing is, Check-Engine light notwithstanding, the engine seems to be operating completely normal: we not only drove it the rest of the way from the "fix man" to the main office and then to the mechanics garage with absolutely no issues, but also drove it from there to the saleswoman's home driveway (where we camped for the night) with the engine behaving absolutely normal, except for the CheckEngine light and the lettering "Hacer controle motor" ("do engine check" in a literal English translation) scrolling in the panel's LCD display. We heard about engines with "Check lights" on getting onto "crawl mode", but definitely this is not happened here: the vehicle went to 100km/h with no hesitation and kept it there for 15-20mins at least with no noticeable loss of power nor anything.
Has anyone ever seen, or heard about, a fault like that? We're kinda concerned because their mechanic is not a FIAT expecialist (he is a Citroen guy, which we understand uses the same chassis but a different engine than the Ducato 2.3D 150HP we have on ours) so perhaps it's *not* that "turbo electrovalve"... our fear is that this could be just the start of an undesirable cycle of "it's that other part" / order it / wait for it to arrive / test / "it's not that part either" / rinse&repeat, and we would end up being stuck here for longer that we want.
On the plus side, we spent the night in the saleswoman's driveway in a very rural region just outside Osorno, connected to her electricity and with reasonable (but 3G only) Internet, and woke up to the sounds of crickets and birds and some cows pasturing nearby ;-) That is not quite the life we signed on for, but this morning was very close to what we want to wake up to every day ;-)
We hope everything really gets fixed on Monday so we can be on our way back to Santiago and then to Northern Chile -- the motorhome is very cozy, but outdoors it's kinda colder than we like at 50-60 Farenheit (10-16 Celsius, not sure what Units you Brit folks are using right now). One of the reasons we moved into full-time motorhoming is to "follow the seasons" and be as much close to the magic 77F-25C outdoors temperature as possible ;-)
Cheers,
--
Du & Nica.
Following up on our motorhome-buying adventures so far, we hit a major bump here yesterday: after what was supposed to be the last batch of fixes, we were driving the motorhome from their "fix man" garage to the company's main office to make final payment and sign papers etc, and then the "check engine" light went on :-(
We then went to their mechanics garage (which is in a 3rd location) and there they scanned the engine and said the "turbo electrovalve" was bad and needed replacement. They ordered the part from the nearest dealer that had it, in Santiago (Osorno is kinda small/medium city and doesn't have the most "hard to find" items), and it was supposed to arrive this morning but late last night the saleswoman told us they didn't manage to ship it in time :-/
She swears it will be shipped today (and that she will provide us with the tracking number as soon as she gets it, for our peace of mind), and then they will be able to fit it Monday morning. I insisted (and she conceded) that, before final payment, I need it to be revised by the independent mechanic that was recommended to us here in Osorno, so they have an incentive to really fix it well and fast.
The strange thing is, Check-Engine light notwithstanding, the engine seems to be operating completely normal: we not only drove it the rest of the way from the "fix man" to the main office and then to the mechanics garage with absolutely no issues, but also drove it from there to the saleswoman's home driveway (where we camped for the night) with the engine behaving absolutely normal, except for the CheckEngine light and the lettering "Hacer controle motor" ("do engine check" in a literal English translation) scrolling in the panel's LCD display. We heard about engines with "Check lights" on getting onto "crawl mode", but definitely this is not happened here: the vehicle went to 100km/h with no hesitation and kept it there for 15-20mins at least with no noticeable loss of power nor anything.
Has anyone ever seen, or heard about, a fault like that? We're kinda concerned because their mechanic is not a FIAT expecialist (he is a Citroen guy, which we understand uses the same chassis but a different engine than the Ducato 2.3D 150HP we have on ours) so perhaps it's *not* that "turbo electrovalve"... our fear is that this could be just the start of an undesirable cycle of "it's that other part" / order it / wait for it to arrive / test / "it's not that part either" / rinse&repeat, and we would end up being stuck here for longer that we want.
On the plus side, we spent the night in the saleswoman's driveway in a very rural region just outside Osorno, connected to her electricity and with reasonable (but 3G only) Internet, and woke up to the sounds of crickets and birds and some cows pasturing nearby ;-) That is not quite the life we signed on for, but this morning was very close to what we want to wake up to every day ;-)
We hope everything really gets fixed on Monday so we can be on our way back to Santiago and then to Northern Chile -- the motorhome is very cozy, but outdoors it's kinda colder than we like at 50-60 Farenheit (10-16 Celsius, not sure what Units you Brit folks are using right now). One of the reasons we moved into full-time motorhoming is to "follow the seasons" and be as much close to the magic 77F-25C outdoors temperature as possible ;-)
Cheers,
--
Du & Nica.
