Oh! ....the six months of problems we had with our Carthago Chic T47 on a Fiat Ducato 160 Multijet.

The Carthago Chic T47 with the Fiat Ducato 160 Multijet

Oh! .....the six months of problems we had with our Carthago Chic T47 on a Fiat Ducato 160 Multijet.

Monday, April 20, 2009
We left the Dealer at Sulzemoos and we took the B177 to Innsbruck which for about 4 km outside Innsbruck goes down a hillside on a 16° slope with several run off's where the Road angled up steep part of the hill with loose shingle to stop running away trucks.

I went down the hill with the motor home like I have every time in the past (including a 27% slope with my last motorhome) except this motorhome was heavier and had a scooter in the back, according to all my calculations was well within the weight limit permitted to be carried. It also had the automatic gearbox and a switch beside the gear lever to place the gearbox in load when it is going up or down the hills and we had this in operation so everything should have been fine.

Brakes almost on fire Near the bottom of the hill I pulled into a parking area, saw masses clouds of smoke coming out of the rear brakes and the front brakes, the handbrake would not work, fortunately the foot brake would still work as that stopped me from rolling on down the hill, we quickly got the wheel chocks which I did not totally trust, so Luda sat with her foot on the foot brake, and we waited until the smoke stopped billowing out.

It occurred to me if the motorhome was 12 months older there would have been sufficient oil floating about for the motorhome to catch on fire, and with the handbrake not working, if it had caught on fire, we would have had to jump from the motorhome, which would have meant the blazing motorhome with careered on down the mountain taking out everything that crossed its path.

So with the brakes cooled down we carried on slowly down the mountain to Vols campground, which we had stayed at previously.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Chic too heavy for Chassis? Now I had time to think about the events up on the mountain and the only conclusion I could reach was that the Carthago body was too heavy for the brakes that was supplied on the Fiat chassis. This is the only conclusion one can reach, when the brakes get red hot going down the mountain is obviously too much weight trying to find its way to the bottom. I later found out that we were within the allowed weight with the Scooter BUT because of where they had put the batteries we were unbalanced with too much weight in the back.

I decided I would have to ditch the motor scooter, and the scooter tray which will remove a substantial amount of weight from the rear of the motorhome even though the Carthago brochure shows you can carry a scooter in the garage.

Now as the scooter was registered in Holland I have to head back via to dispose of it or content with a the importing of the vehicle into another part of the E EC, so we set off Tuesday morning early to get as much of the 960 km journey

Monday, May 11, 2009 Romania
Generator not charging We were having problems with the generator apparently switching off after the motor heated up and stopped running the refrigerator and charging the batteries. We plugged into our hosts electricity and ran the fridge overnight and topped up batteries.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
This morning the batteries were fully charged, the refrigerator was good and cold, and it appeared as if the generator was again working, so we carried on in the direction of Satu Mare only to find that after about an hour our generator had stopped working on us again, so we'll set a text message to Munich and stopping on the side of the road for half an hour to see if that is enough to cool the motor down and for the generator to start again.

Sure enough the half-hour stop was sufficient to get the generator working again and it carried on working for the next half-hour so when we arrived in Satu Mare we started looking for preferably a Fiat agency or failing that a semi-modern workshop, we set parameter is into the GPS and it came up with an option which when we visited found no one could speak English or Russian and then realised this was going to be situation no matter what we found so we had two options, one, carry on and hope it didn't get worse, and it was sufficient charge in the batteries to enable us to live somewhat like we normally do, or two, head back the 1018 km to Munich and have that fixed, which we did.

Thursday, May 14, 2009
Well I must give Hofstetter 100 plus points for service, with other motorhomes we have owned you almost have to make an appointment seven to 14 days ahead for them to look at any problems you have the at warranty or anything else. Not here, however, we were marched straight into the workshop when they got straight on to the generator problem, sitting down and discuss the generator problem. After the technician fully understood or problem we were having, he started testing the voltage out of the generator which proved to be 13.8 instead of 14.5. This meant there (we were told) there was not sufficient voltage under certain circumstances for the electronics to realise the generator was on and consequently the refrigerator did not switch over and the generator charging sign did not appear.

So they rang around the Fiat dealers until they found one that would look us on Monday morning and that would be their responsibility to work out exactly what the problem is and what needs to be replaced.

Monday, May 18, 2009
Not so much merit however for Fiat, they inspected the generator and said that there was no problems with that and that it preformed within specifications.

They said if there was any problem at all it was with the Carthago portion of the vehicle.

As always very easy and a problem when one buys a motorhome on a Fiat chassis, you the customer like the jam in the sandwich, which of course is all sticky! So back we went to Hofstetter and the service manager spoke to Fiat, Carthago, the local garage and goodness knows who else.New Generator fitted The net result was that they would order a new generator and replace my generator and I had to wait for two or three days or they would rob an existing vehicle of a generator to replace mine. However before the motorhome goes I wanted to see the voltage at the generator produces.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Nine o'clock this morning I was back in the sales area, the staff was about to take the donor vehicle to the garage and I stepped in and looked at the voltage, it was 14 V which was good.

I do not know why I bothered, particularly when I started the motorhome and the voltage reading was 13.2 volts exactly the same as was before he started, and this is with a generator that produced 14 V this morning.

Well obviously I was at the end of the Road, and I was not going to get anywhere on this issue so it was a matter of keeping one's fingers crossed, driving towards the heat and dealing with the consequences once one sees what happens.

So was back on the road, south, back to the spot we left in Romania, but slightly more leisurely in getting their than our drive to Munich.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Generator not charging again Were barely into Hungary, having paid for the motorway vignette for two days and we were several miles outside the city of Gyor when we discovered the generator was not working again so we pulled into a layby, rang Hofstetter in Munich, and they came back and told us to contact the Fiat emergency help and as we were in an area that had no signal and can only receive text messages we decided to drive on to the other side of Budapest stopping in one of the good stopping spots possibly for the night.

We arrived there about 5 p.m. and tested the voltage with the voltmeter at the generator output and were received a reading of 10.62 V. An hour later the generator was still was not working we had 10.84 volts. An hour later still the generator are still was not working and we had a 10.68 volts. At this point I was beginning to suspect the voltmeter was faulty so did not mention the voltages to the Fiat hotline when I first spoke to them and after a lot of discussion they sent me a text saying that they considered that the fault was the responsibility of the bodybuilder and that I should contact them.

Thursday, May 21, 2009
We woke bright and early, start up the motorhome and measured the voltage which came in at 13.51 volts which to me showed there was nothing wrong with the voltmeter, so got on bright and early to the Fiat hotline after pushing all of the right buttons to get an English-speaking person and that I needed roadside help I finally went through to I presume England, and started giving my tale of woe to a guy with a Scottish accent.

He came back with a service station that I should go to and this was the address in Gyongyos.

You imagine my relief when after feeding this impossible name into my GPS being told I was 18 km away from that destination.

So we set off arriving there at 8 a.m., luck was again was on my side finding somebody could speak English, however the generator was working, and was producing 13.51 V, which was of course within Fiat tolerance, but they were sympathetic, but once they found out the weight of the motorhome told me they could not handle it as suggested I drive the 76 km to the Fiat agent in Budapest.

We left with the generator working, and after about 20 km pulled into a layby, switched the motor off and on again and found the generator was not working. This we liked as we were arriving at Budapest to be able to show them our problems.

Fiat say Carthago problem, again In due course we arrived at Fiat Budapest parked in front of one of their workshop bays and went in, and in luck again as the service manager could speak English and we went straight out to the motorhome that was still running, and not charging, so producing a volt meter proceeded to show the voltage and to my shock it was 13.31 V which of course was within their tolerance and when I started showing him at the panel where it was not charging and the refrigerator that was not working I realised that again I was the meat in the sandwich and the only solution was to drive the 800 km back to Hofstetter and let them again work on the problem.

Friday, May 22, 2009
We were over the service department at 8 a.m. and were the third people in line and eventually after changing over the control box in the motorhome, checking the car battery to make sure there was no problems there by fitting a new battery, and by about three o'clock they Another generator fitted said the only thing we can now do is steal a generator from a new vehicle and give you that, I said okay providing the generator on the new car produces 14.5 V.

They bought the donor vehicle over and we measure the voltage at was 14.36 volts which was certainly better than what we had been getting.

So we drove about 8 km to a small village with the very small garage in the mechanic who had never replaced the generator on a Fiat before made short work of swapping the generators over. When it was finished the mechanic asked me to measure the voltage which was still in the 13.6 volt range made the reassuring noises that when the battery was fully charged get the correct reading! I'm not quite sure on his reasoning as the point we were measuring the voltage from was a direct line from the generator, but I accepted his comments and went back to Hofstetter's service department, and they, like I were not happy with the result particularly when by starting the car with the air-conditioner working I would get the generator not charging.

So again they worked on the vehicle disconnecting the motorhome portion and they did manage to get 14 volts with nothing else running, no lights, no air-conditioner, so they were at their wits end and could not think of what else to do.

Problem not solved I thought it was time for the Sales Department to be brought back into the picture and perhaps this problem to be laid at Carthago doorstep and at this point he agreed, and as Thursday was a public holiday in Germany and Carthago was closed on the Friday the next step was to arrange for me to drive the 183 km to the factory.

Sunday, May 24, 2009
About 1 p.m. we set off for the 180 Kilometre Drive to suburb of Ravensburg. The voltage as we left was 13.77 V and when we arrived was 13.10 V with the air-conditioner running and 13.57 V with all light and air conditioners off.

Monday, May 25, 2009
Well Hans from Hofstetter who was going to make all of the arrangements for us at Carthago must have forgotten about us totally and as when we had not heard from him by 10:30 a.m. we decided to go to the service department ourselves and we spoke through an interpreter with the service manager, whose first comment was that it was a Fiat problem, but he nevertheless took the motorhome and disappeared for about three hours and then came back to tell me that they would need the motorhome all day tomorrow to do a complete rewiring from the battery to the generator.

Carthago say problem caused by dealer We have three leisure batteries to supply the power for the living quarters evidently is wired in such a way that only one of these is working. There also is a cutout switch at the drivers seat which is wired with too light a wiring and they asked me who did this? And to the best of my knowledge I told them it was Carthago they basically said No Way, so it looks like this is a problem that was caused by Hofstetter in setting up the motorhome for delivery to my specifications and is just as well we didn't decide to go on the trip to China this year.

Motorhome rewired Tomorrow at 7 a.m. they start work rewiring the vehicle and hopefully at that point the problems with been having will disappear. Tomorrow we will go into Ravensburg while the work on the motorhome and hopefully we will find a internet café for the first time since leaving the Czech Republic.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009
We headed back to the workshop to wait in reception for the rewiring to be finished.

At about four o'clock that finished the total rewiring with the report that now all the batteries were charging where as before, with the way they were wired we only working with the one battery, and not only that the wiring that was used was underweight so consequently there was too much resistance and the whole electrical system and they at Carthago could not understand how anybody could have done such a thing and not discovered it with all of the problems I've been having.

They tell me the motorhome will work fine now, the voltage is only sitting at 13.98 V where as I would like to have a cup over 14 volts but the important thing is that it keeps charging the batteries and that the refrigerator works from the generator while we are driving, the only thing that all solve the question is to get back on the Road again with our fingers crossed.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 12.30pm
Generator not charging, I measured the voltage when the temperature was 32°C and the motor revving at 2000 revs and I obtained a voltage reading of 13.25v which is a long way from the 14.2 V that Fiat said was optimum. Injection system failure Also the “injection system failure” warning light came on and stayed on until we stopped for the day.

Eventually the temperature went down to 30° and the generators started charging again, and we were able to use the air-conditioner.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009
We are at a reasonable hour and the first thing I did when I had the car ready to roll was to check the Voltage with motor cold and A/C off 13.45v 27d air temp, of course the check was done 2000 revs and the warning light which said “injection system failure” yesterday did not come on.

to top right....

Thursday, July 02, 2009
Then we moved on our way towards the city of Konya and about 2:38 p.m. when the temperature reached 35°C we discovered we had the option of either having the air-conditioning working or the battery charging and refrigerator working. We stopped the car and measure the voltage which was 12.84V. For the rest of the afternoon until we stopped 4 p.m. if we wished to have the air-conditioner working the generator would not work as designed.

Friday, July 03, 2009
We start of the motorhome at 11.30am and the air temperature was 35°C and the interesting thing it is that of the charger started working immediately we started the motor, and this was with the air-conditioner working, and it continued working for the next three hours until we reached our destination and presented no problems even though the temperature remained between 32 and 35°C. I wonder does this mean one has to wait until the temperature gets up to the level before we can start the motorhome?

Saturday, July 04, 2009
This morning was 23° so there were no problems with the charging with the air-conditioner running Generator not charging until about 12 noon when the temperature got such we again had not sufficient voltage for charging.

Carthago too heavy for Fiat? Our next destination was Nevsehir and from there was a short drive to Göreme where going up a type of cobblestone Road at one end of the open Museum at the point where the slope must have been say 15° going around the corner the wheels just spun, a smell of burning rubber, so we had to go backwards down the hill until we could turn around. Obviously this motorhome is designed for motorway running throughout central Europe and certainly not in the boonies where we are inclined to go.Last year with the Hymer we did 24° with no problems Of course in retrospect, this was because of where they had put the batteries we were unbalanced with too much weight in the back.

GAS We had a problem with the gas today, it showed up on the consul as “gas out” we filled up and only one cylinder was empty so again a problem with the delivery instructions and the lack of good English with the instructor!

Sunday, July 05, 2009
When we started off the temperature at 23°C so when we started the motorhome the generator light on the consul came on immediately. The temperature reached a high of 31° and a low of 14° and we had no problems with the generator.

Monday, July 06, 2009
We got started in about 10 a.m. with the temperature at 25°C and finished driving today with the temperature at 37°C, no problems with the generator, I have reached the conclusion that when we start the motorhome in the morning, the temperature of the air is not important because it can be on the high 30s, and the generators start immediately. The other criteria appears to be that when the motor gets very hot, and the day is also very hot, this is when the voltage on the generator goes down to the low voltage mentioned above and this is also the set of circumstances that will switch warning light on which says “injection system failure”

I will not record when the generator it is working as it should and if the we travel into the high 30s and we get this problem again then I will record that.

Generator not charging
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The temperature moved up to a top of 38° today and for two hours until the temp dropped, again we had the choice of using the air-conditioner or having the generator charging the batteries and running the refrigerator.

SecuMotion Valve The gas has stopped working again, I believe that must be something wrong with the valves, I filled up with gas again and it took 3 L so there were 39 L in the cylinders when it gave the get out signal and stopped working. Congratulations on your new motorhome! The gas will run the refrigerator and the stove together, however if you switch on the hot water everything fails. This would appear to be the problem of the Truma SecuMotion Valve, switching off if it gets an extra gas flow!!!! AVOID all stupid automatic systems!

10 July 2008.
Injection system failure warning light came on at 2pm and stayed on until we stopped for the day.We had done about 300km on a hot day.

Generator not charging
The temperature moved up to a top of 36° today and for two hours until the temp dropped, again we had the choice of using the air-conditioner or having the generator charging the batteries and running the refrigerator. At this point of time, after this being the fourth time I have recorded this, I am going to assume this will happen under these conditions at all times!

12 July 2008
Gas not working The ongoing problems with the motorhome keep on going on and on, it did not get hot enough today for the generator to stop working, but now the gas valve is becoming more and more reluctant to let any gas through so the refrigerator is working for short periods of time and then the button has to be pushed again!

What this effectively means is that we cannot use gas, so we cannot cook, heat water, or use the refrigerator.

We had two options, one to try and find the valve, or the other to leave Turkey and obtain one elsewhere. So we drove to Ankara, no luck so we decided to move on North about 170 km to a city called Bolu which had a population of about 120,000 which certainly was a better size town that Ankara with 3.6 million. So off we went.

When we arrived I went in to a gas bottle shop with the photographs, of course no one spoke English, but he produced a Turkish made gas valve, which looked identical to the early English pressure reducing valves, so they all came out and looked at the motorhome, and the English Gaslow cylinders, as luck would have it the Turkish valve screwed straight on to the Gaslow cylinder, then we just had to get a hose from the valve to the pipe, one of the six men, that are always required to do any work here in Turkey, appeared to be in this particular business, so he went to work connecting up the hoses while the other men watched, spoke to other men that stopped to see what was happening, drank tea, and were all very supportive.

Finally it was testing time, and we tested the stove, the water heater and the refrigerator, all appeared to be working fine, so hopefully that is the end of that for a while.

It was then and to pay for it, and all of that work including the parts came to 29 Turkish lira, which was less than €15.

22 July 2008
The “injection system failure” warning light came on and stayed on until we stopped the the next day day.

Friday, August 07, 2009
Smell of Gas? Ever since we have had this motorhome Luda has smelt what she describes as gas when the refrigerator is running on gas. When this was raised with Hans the salesman he said impossible, however I believe it was possibly Luda's choice of words to describe the smell and Hans knowledge of English.

I have not been able to smell a thing, until after we had the problem with the pressure reducing valve and now I can smell what I would describe as the exhaust from the gas heat exchanger of the refrigerator. Perhaps the valve that I bought in Turkey is 50 mb and the refrigerator runs on 30 mb, time will tell, it also tell if this makes a substantial difference, and it does not cover the situation of Luda being able to smell the gas from day one. This morning Luda smelt the gas from the stove and admits that is not the smell but that it is probably the Gas exhaust that she can smell.

We decided to do something about the gas exhaust from the refrigerator, so the only realistic solution was to drive several hundred kilometres to Sulzmoos and get the dealer to fix it.

On Monday at the maintenance section bright and early and told them of the gas smell from day one, showed then the pressure reducing valve that had stopped working, showed them the television screen that had fallen apart, and the satellite tuner that was falling off the wall.

Yes they admitted there was gas exhaust being vented into the motorhome, and it took them about two hours to fix this, they replaced the faulty pressure reducing valve, glued to television get-together and screwed the tuner back to the wall.

Thursday, August 23, 2009
Major Rewiring I arrived in Sulzemoos on Sunday, nine o'clock appointment with “my” salesman. I had made this appointment some three to four weeks ago, in writing, confirmed with text messages, so he had a list of all of my problems, and I asked to speak to the person that has the authority to make decisions. The text message came back saying that “he” was the person.

So that was good so at nine o'clock I arrived and we started discussing the problems, it soon became obvious he had neither contacted Carthago or his boss, because the answer to every question was that it have to either talk to Carthago or his boss!

I always remember Lisle Ramsey speaking on sales people and people that handle detail, this man was a sales person and salespeople are notorious for being unable to handle detail.

We are talking about my experience going up a hill and experiencing the wheels spinning and having to back down the hill in Turkey with busy traffic. His comment was “this was impossible”! He said that some of the larger Carthago's have frontwheel drive and NOBODY has ever complained to him of this problem. It's interesting how often sales people tell you that you are the only one to ever experienced this problem and you know damn well that lying their teeth off!

In spite of me giving them 3 to 4 weeks notice he left me after 15 minutes to attend to a sale, I thought to hell with this and I did the unforgivable and interrupted him while he was talking to his client, I was told 10 to 15 minutes. So I wandered next door and spoke to the sales person there about purchasing a motorhome, he was wanting to sell me a large one with a front wheel drive and I asked him if that would go up steep hills with a load in the back, he came straight out and said no way in fact he said going up a not so steep hill on a wet day you still may get spinning. I thanked him very much and went back to “my salesman” and repeated this comment and was told the guy did not know what he was talking about.

He then went off to speak to his boss about some of my details and when he left his boss, I asked could I speak to him, well he couldn't say no, so I sat down and spoke to Marcus and found that he was most concerned, extremely practical, and tackle one of the problems at a time to see if it could be solved.

The first problem was the low voltage, their previous solution to this problem was to change the generators, and as soon as we got into temperatures of 36°C the generators stopped charging. Into the motorhome there was a device called an electronic battery separator, is an electronic device that is controlled by the ignition and switches the batteries to parallel when the car battery voltage is over 13.5 V and switches off when the engine is off or the ball to each is lower than
12.2 V.

My problem all the time has been that the generator voltage has been less than 14 V and consequently when the performance drops due to hot weather there is not enough reserve to keep the generator charging.

They took the car away and looked at the wiring on the generator side, the replaced one wire that previously went to the battery charger via the starter motor and took the wire straight from the generator to the battery Charger, this gained them .6 V which is adequate and would solve all of my problems, in theory!

The next step was to weigh the motorhome and see what load was on the front wheels and what load was on the back wheel's. There was none of the bullshit about the front wheels spinning, they said if you have too much weight in the back, of course the wheels will spin on a steep hill.

After doing the weighing and the calculations they decided that they would prefer to see a larger margin between the front and the back and they made the suggestion of moving one of the batteries from the rear to the front.From the orginial Carthago design

I thought about this over night and decided to scrap the three existing 80 ampere making a total of 240 ampere and replace them with 2 X160 ampere and place both of those behind the front seat. To the new layout

The workshop manager was very pleased, and said your wheels now will never spin, of course I will believe that after several steep hills.

Another side effect was that they removed 21 metres of battery cable which was going backwards and forwards between the two sets of batteries and the generator and all the other electrical devices, this is to me defied all logic and engineer that did this design needs to finish his degree or perhaps start to study for the degree.

Because of all this extra wire the voltage converter that converts 12 V to 230v was never able to run the coffee machine because too much current was lost in the un -necessary wires, now Luda will be up to have coffee every morning, and use her hairdryer.

Gas Valve replaced The other problem we had was the Truma SecuMotion which is a gas regulator that has to be fitted to all motorhomes build after January 2007, it is a device that if you have a smash and the gas starts flowing will automatically switch the gas off. The people of Hofstetter told me that gas in Turkey, Greece or Russia, (I'm sure that they meant to add the Ukraine, Belarus and all the Russian Stan's) for some reason, which they tried to explain, will not work through this valve, and the vehicle is not legal, they said, with out this type of valve.

After a lot of discussion for about 30 to 45 minutes looking at all the options that I had if I had a failure and again with this valve in a place like Russia or Turkey they decided to give me a dual control pressure reducing valves then I could screw on in the place of the existing one and it did not have the SecuMotion valve, that had to be added but I could use the valve without adding the SecuMotion to get me out of my problems. I added to this while I was in the UK in with two more simple valves so now I should be OK.... touch wood!

However reading the information that arrived with a emergency valve they gave me, gave may be a generous word because I'm sure I will pay for it, states with the heaters directive 2001/56/EC, which looks like a law that has been passed by the EEC giving all those politicians something to do, says that if you do not have this valve you need to close all gas cylinders while driving in enclosed some special stickers on the cylinder box. This incidentally is something we did the first year with the Hymer and then found we were the only ones doing it, and when a gas hose burst because of the opening and closing of the cylinder box, we stopped doing this, which of course we were entitled to do as the car was older than 2007.

They solved all of the other problems that I had been having and the end result is a motorhome with the weight proportion and wiring the way it should have been instead of being wired by a five-year-old from kindergarten.

August 30, 2009
Hidden fuse blown I arrived in Calais, booked the ferry tickets, when I got back I saw some flashing lights on the Carthago control panel which told me the house batteries were low on voltage, and then I start up the motor and saw that the battery charger once again was not working. I thought about it recently extensively overnight and decided to put off the sailing until Tuesday morning and spent Monday morning trying to get the problem sorted out.

So first thing this morning I went to the ticket office and put off my sailing for 24 hours and then had 8:30 a.m. got on the phone to Hofstetter and over the next two hours and seven phone calls, by eliminating the variables it came down to a set of fuses in front of the driver's seat under the floor, in a remote place that you'd never think of looking for, for fuses! Yes one of them, was burnt out, thank goodness for the good volt meter I bought at the beginning of the trip because of all of the other problems.

As it happened the 50 amp fuse that was blown is not a normal fuse but I did have a 50 amp fuse of a different sort from the Hymer and with the aid of a pair of pliers that worked. Looking at the fuse once I had removed it I noticed one side was a fraction loose which makes me wonder if it received some damage during installation because it is most unusual for a 50 amp fuse to blow for no reason.

Sunday, September 06, 2009
I Discover the safety auto switch that lowers the Satellite disk and raises the jacks is no longer working so a email to Sulzemoos to see if it is a fuse and is so where or did they forget to rewire this bit with the extensive rewiring

At the time of writing I am still waiting to see what Carthago are going to do about all of these problems and extra kilometers I have had to drive let alone the days I have wasted trying to get the bad design problems fixed. This year I drove 32000 Kms over this route click here

That is all for this year..... and let's hope that is the end of all the problems!