Servicing of Fiat motorhome

The electric bed lowering electrics I had on a Rapido were interesting. I fancied the concept of having a bed over the lounge which makes perfect sense. When you are lounging you don't want the bed space taking up length of motorhome and when you are in bed you don't want the lounge so to make the one area of real estate do both jobs is a wonderful concept. The bed is designed by Concept 2000, an Italian company. The motorhome was assembled by Rapido in France. Badly. The wiring to the bed motor has 8 conductors which connect via an 8 pin plug / socket with the chassis wiring. The Gauloise smoking, vino swigging idiot that pushed the plug into the socket had to have seen that one of the pins had not pushed together, it was sticking out of the plug body. You can't push an 8 pin plug and socket together without looking at what you are doing. Brownhills had three attempts to find the fault and failed (They are a Fiat Professional dealer). They left me to contact Rapido who passed me on to Concept 2000 in Italy where I had several very convivial conversations with the designer of the bed and he emailed me the installation and operation workshop manual (which you mght have thought that Brownhills would have) and as a result I was able to find the fault and fix it. Then the axle shaft the bed runs on came out of one of the bearings and the bed collapsed.
As for motorcycles I have had a few Moto Guzzi bikes and they were fine, I had no problems. Unlike Kawasaki. I bought a new one, 15 months later it packed up. Fortunately it had a two year warranty. The dealer had to change the whole wiring loom and the voltage regulator. The reason is that the regulator was situated just forward of the rear wheel so it gets sprayed with water. More astonishingly the electrical connectors are made of steel, not copper so they had all just dissolved away. With a new wiring loom and regulator the bike stayed in the dealer and I bought a different make. Up with that disgusting design I will not put. Same with Rapido, never again.

In Fiat and other commercial vehicle defence I would say that a few years ago I had dealings with a couple of major motor manufacturers. The commercial side of manufacturing is quite separate from the domestic side and as a consequence the commercial Fiat and Ford and Peugeot and Renault I believe are made to a higher spec than the domestic ones. I am happy to have a Ford based motorhome but I wouldh't want to own a Ford car. If you take them both apart you will see the difference in quality. What annoys me most about all these sensor faults is that the supposedly All-Knowing Computer That Must Be Obeyed is frequently wrong. It reports the camshaft position sensor as being faulty when in reality it is the chain tensioner solenoid that is stuck. You (or the less educated garage) change the camshaft position sensor because The Computer says it is faulty and the fault is still there. This is the main reason I won't buy a new motorhome again, though I could afford one. The expense of chasing faulty computer diagnosis is unnecessary if you have an older vehicle without so many computers. It just means you can't drive your motorhome into Greener-Than-Thou cities.

Morning
I collected my motorhome from HTC Reading, they found no fault with cruise control even after driving it around for a week. Left HTC to return to Westbury via M4 hit a pot hole cruise dropped out, reset hit another pot hole cruise dropped out again, turn round at first Swindon junction back to HTC. They plugged in their diagnostic machine guess what no fault found. They suggested it was the ABS sensing different wheel speed due to pot holes. 
Going away for a month to the Outer Hebrides in May. HTC told me that the Fiat breakdown cover is OK for the Hebrides, let hope so, as it appears no Fiat professional on islands.

It makes you fume, doesn't it Richard? I would get on to Fiat warranty department and ask them politely to authorise reprogramming of your ecu, or get the problem solved if it isn't that. I recall doing this when I had a discoloured headlining on a 1 year old Ducato based camper and they were very obliging. They ask you which dealer you want it done at (HTC don't sound up to much to me, they didn't bother suggesting a reprogram by the sound of it), Fiat give you a big long warranty claim number which they also give the dealer, you book it in and get the job done. It sounds from your description that HTC seem to think it is acceptable for a pot hole to dislodge the ABS, which in my ever so 'umble opinion is a load of old tosh. For one thing they by implication are saying that Fiat never test drove their prototypes over their own bumpy test track before putting the vehicle into production. That's rubbish, of course they did. Secondly the ABS compares wheel rotation over a longer period of time than a pot hole jolt takes. A 150 millisecond jolt would not disorientate the ABS system, the wheels would have to rotate a lot further in order for any change in reading to take place. In any case if the ABS was faulty it would light up every time you turn a corner.
Best of luck with the holiday, get used to resting your right foot on the accelerator.

richard smith wrote:Morning
I collected my motorhome from HTC Reading, they found no fault with cruise control even after driving it around for a week. Left HTC to return to Westbury via M4 hit a pot hole cruise dropped out, reset hit another pot hole cruise dropped out again, turn round at first Swindon junction back to HTC. They plugged in their diagnostic machine guess what no fault found. They suggested it was the ABS sensing different wheel speed due to pot holes. 
Going away for a month to the Outer Hebrides in May. HTC told me that the Fiat breakdown cover is OK for the Hebrides, let hope so, as it appears no Fiat professional on islands.

The cruise control problem, sounds like it could be the Cruise control cutout switch up near the brake pedal ,or more than likely when you hit a pothole the pedal jumps / moves and it the cut out switch, it may be the pedal return spring is not holding the pedal back on its stop assuming the return spring is not broken or missing , I'm not familiar though what holds the pedal in return position on a new Fiat

Thank you tony50 for your suggestion, will check and se if their in free movement in break pedal.

That sounds very plausible. Look up above the brake pedal and hopefully there will be a switch on a threaded fixing which you can loosen off and move further away from the pedal. That's how they used to do it in the olden days for brake lights, I don't know if it is the same now for cruise control but it's worth a look.