sign of the times.

as with new house ownership, snags on new vans seem to be an " acceptable " fact of life. i would love to report here a fantastic review of my Nuevo without gremlins. sadly this is not the case. we seem to potter from one niggle to the next. i hasten to add these are not confined to AS  or Fiat. indeed looking through other reports of camping vehicles, niggles are the order of the day!
just to name a few of ours. delivery weeks and months later than promised. radio not working. not connected at factory. solar panel not working.  not connected at factory. drawer fronts falling off. wrong leisure battery fitted at factory. battery flat after 3 camp nights. van air con not working on first use. wonder where this will lead!  still waiting for new battery. the unsurprising thing is nobody gives a flying fox!
 hopefully happy days are around the corner!
Doug.

Sorry to read you having a run of bad luck with your van, your not alone on here.
Boaby

Imho, a lot of the niggles are caused by unnecessary over complexity, both in the core vehicle and the habitation stuff.

A good example is Whale water filling. All that complexity uses a hole in the side of the vehicle. Mine has one. It's connected to the water tank direct....

A lot of the electronics are unnecessary and when they fail, often take other things down with them, think limp mode. Once in that, then it'll stay in limp until the sensor causing it is found. If the sensors aren't there in the first place and it doesn't even have limp mode, then reliability is much more likely.

This is precisely why I have an older van, you cant even plug a code reader into it, doesn't matter, it has no codes!!!

A computer controlled 3way fridge with automatic energy selection! At the end of the day it's a box which is cold inside. Fault codes on an LCD display....

I could rant on, I'm not against progress, I am against impracticality.....

Just done 2200miles in all sorts of terrain, zero issues, single function DC compressor fridge. New to me, worked perfectly, no LCD codes panel on it!!

quite agree IanH . a number of our friends have sold their " latest models ", and bought 20- 40 year old vans. seems a real shame that genuine good quality is pot luck. happy days.
Doug

doog1948 wrote:as with new house ownership, snags on new vans seem to be an " acceptable " fact of life. i would love to report here a fantastic review of my Nuevo without gremlins. sadly this is not the case. we seem to potter from one niggle to the next. i hasten to add these are not confined to AS  or Fiat. indeed looking through other reports of camping vehicles, niggles are the order of the day!
just to name a few of ours. delivery weeks and months later than promised. radio not working. not connected at factory. solar panel not working.  not connected at factory. drawer fronts falling off. wrong leisure battery fitted at factory. battery flat after 3 camp nights. van air con not working on first use. wonder where this will lead!  still waiting for new battery. the unsurprising thing is nobody gives a flying fox!
 hopefully happy days are around the corner!
Doug.

We had a similar experience to you for the first 4 months and then things settled down.  Ours weren't just snagging issues, it actually stopped us using the van with the water pump, EC700 and Truma all playing up.  I had just retired so I had the time to keep taking the van back to the dealer who was an hour away and the A-S Service Centre who was a couple of hours away.  If I had not been retired, I don't think I could have coped.  For all of this we do enjoy our van and don't have any aspirations to replace it.

IanH wrote:Imho, a lot of the niggles are caused by unnecessary over complexity, both in the core vehicle and the habitation stuff.

A good example is Whale water filling. All that complexity uses a hole in the side of the vehicle. Mine has one. It's connected to the water tank direct....

A lot of the electronics are unnecessary and when they fail, often take other things down with them, think limp mode. Once in that, then it'll stay in limp until the sensor causing it is found. If the sensors aren't there in the first place and it doesn't even have limp mode, then reliability is much more likely.

This is precisely why I have an older van, you cant even plug a code reader into it, doesn't matter, it has no codes!!!

A computer controlled 3way fridge with automatic energy selection! At the end of the day it's a box which is cold inside. Fault codes on an LCD display....

I could rant on, I'm not against progress, I am against impracticality.....

Just done 2200miles in all sorts of terrain, zero issues, single function DC compressor fridge. New to me, worked perfectly, no LCD codes panel on it!!

I agree with the sentiment but we use our vans differently and what's important to one isn't to another.  A good example is Whale water filling.  On most of the sites we use I cannot easily get the van to a tap to use the hose so being able to fill the tank from a water barrel rather than a watering can is important to me.  I'm also not keen on driving the van around with a full water tank.  We have a self-levelling system that many would regard as unnecessary but we like it and I like the flexibility of the traditional 3-way fridge.  But where I do agree entirely is the EC700 and the Truma Combi.  Both are far too complicated and susceptible to failure and when they do go wrong they stop the van being used and are costly to repair.

Modern vehicles - expensive crap! I don't expect that to go down well with some but to my mind the KISS principle should apply.

My 1981 Honda CB650 which I have owned from nearly new has never let me down ONCE in 43 years of regular use. I doubt that could be said for a new vehicle today in 43 years time.

From my days of doing breakdown work including new car contracts nothing surprises me. It seemed the more complex things became the worse it got not helped by dealer ignorance. They didn’t have to face the customer at the roadside and deal with the stress it caused.
A certain car manufacturer was sending cars out on the road with batteries that lasted less than a year. Rather than the dealers face the customers we were told to change the batteries at the roadside.
At one time the person behind the reception desk had come off the shop floor and understood the customers needs not just how to push buttons and take the keys off customers.
Not directly link to the original post but considering the price of motorhomes they should be fit for use. Yes you are bound to get teething troubles but the problems I hear of are mostly technical problems. Isn’t technology supposed to be the advanced way of doing things, fit and forget.

Bargee - I would have thought the fuse panel would be useful, sell it on ebay.
Did you find any little fires going on in the EC700?

It's also a lesson, seen so often on here, never to buy a brand new van. The OP is an unfortunate example, we see it so, too, often on here.

What has happened, not suggesting for a moment this will apply to the OP, is that the thing spends the first two years back and forth to the dealer, who may, or as likely not, be able to fix it or do it badly 

At the 2 yr point the owner gets fed up with the thing and sells it, sadly, now that it's probably fixed!

So a two yr old makes more sense, to me, than brand new.

Actually,a 22 yr old (van!) makes even more sense!!

IanH wrote:.........

Actually,a 22 yr old (van!) makes even more sense!!

Well, it makes more sense if you like fixing faults, and you can fix faults. I recently bought a 1999 Pollensa with rain dripping through the kitchen roof vent. OK, no problem, get a new roof vent, dig out the rotted wood, fit a new frame, fit new roof vent. Simples, and expected. Next, look at last year's MOT advisories. So remove the prop shaft and replace the gearbox rear oil seal. While under there, recollect that Ford invented the disposable engine, disposable gearbox and disposable rear axle. Otherwise known as 'sealed for life'. Which if you do what Ford says, is a Very Short One. Remove gearbox sump pan (it's an automatic), drain what passes for oil, better recognised as black treacle - since Ford don't provide any drain plugs on anything - and fit new gasket and refill with new oil. Similarly remove the rear axle diff cover, drain treacle, fit new gasket, refill with new oil. Look underneath the entrance door and find the folding step was fixed to the rotten floor. That explains why it was 'very flexible' when getting in and out. Make up some bracketry and new flooring to fix it properly. Prior to going away, check the gas hob burners. One barely lit, another worked about half power so remove all the jets and clean them out with a carburettor jet drill of tiny dimensions. Now they burn bright. Success, so we can go away in it. On holiday discover that the fridge did not work on gas. Dismantle the gas burner, clear out all the rust dust, prick the jet with a sewing needle (having left the set of carburettor jet drills at home), and off it goes, repair done. One of the two latches securing the sliding bed seat in place wasn't constructed properly meaning the sliding latch disappeared in between the bed frame and the bed, so research with a bread knife was in order. Back home, dig out the sliding latch from its hiding place and weld on a piece of metal that should have been fitted 25 years ago.  On holiday the Carver Cascade water heater seemed a bit smelly. Wifey says "I can smell burning". Well I can't so that's that, you must have a funny nose. Wonder why the heater tripped itself off. Get home and find black soot from smoke emanating from the water heater flue. Dismantle and repair water heater. Wonder why the Transit's performance was worse than a double decker bus. Stuck turbocharger, £800.
But as with a brand new camper, once everything is fixed, it will be fine!

Bargee-
Normally, in everyday life if I see something free I grab it. In McDonalds or any other eatery, if they have a pot of wooden sticks for stirring a drink I grab a handful, stick them in my pocket and take them home and put them in the 'adhesives' drawer along with the superglue, araldite, threadsealer, copydex, chemical metal and so on. This is because wooden sticks are useful for stirring things like araldite and glass fibre.
However, I will forego your generous offer of an EC700 and fuse board. Not because I live a million miles from you, actually I live about 7 miles away. I forego your offer because those items are less useful than the free wooden stirring sticks you get from McDonalds.  
Actually in reality I already have them and have modified them so that they work. However I still think it's stupid having the main power on/off switch for the whole vehicle electric supply on a small 'can't tell if it's on or off' switch under a bed. It is either left on, draining the supply battery, or left off and the owner has forgotten that it exists, causing the owner to scratch around trying to find out why nothing at all works. It doesn't even light up when it's on, or change a non-powered flag behind a window to change from red for off to green for on. I have been caught out by it being off, chasing round with a multimeter trying to find where the volts have gone.

Well, sometimes true GG.

But the effort in my case was put in right at the start, and, yes, it was a lot.
However that work is now paid off.

Its just done 2200 miles with zero faults, only been fed diesel, not used a molecule of oil, a wee bit of screenwash but that's acceptable!

6 countries in 3 weeks, cruising when on motorways at 2kph below speed limit, only exception being only 120 in a 130, that's just a bit fast for it.
Got from sea level to 3000 ft then sea level to 4400 ft and back to sea level, zero issues no brake issues either I don't use them on long downhills.

Brand new dc only compressor fridge worked perfectly and is far and away the best fridge we've ever had. Connected direct via fuse to LB which is also connected to solar via fuse. Also brand new split charge relay (200A one from 12v planet) charging LB when motoring, so zero power issue either. Only used 6 ehu in the 3 weeks......

2200 miles door to door, 27.5mpg carefully measured and always tank full to tank full.

What's not to like (btw mine has drain and fill plugs!!)

Ian - my last post was tongue in cheek. I have a plan. I'll pm bargee and see what we can do.

well the saga continues. into the dealer to have snags done and a new battery. duly sorted. then onto the no air con. they think there's " some "gas in the system but not enough to work. over to the workshop for checking and regas. can't regas as they don't have the right sort! tried Fiat but nearest branch with gas is in London! tried kwik fit and their machine promptly broke. and so it continues. all you can do is smile!

doog1948 wrote:well the saga continues. into the dealer to have snags done and a new battery. duly sorted. then onto the no air con. they think there's " some "gas in the system but not enough to work. over to the workshop for checking and regas. can't regas as they don't have the right sort! tried Fiat but nearest branch with gas is in London! tried kwik fit and their machine promptly broke. and so it continues. all you can do is smile!

I see you are in Canterbury? Have you tried Choose Leisure, not sure if they have air con regas equipment as it’s quite specialised, but I know they have two big workshops with a number of service bays, worth checking with them? 


Choose Leisure
Howfield Lane / A28 
Chartham, Canterbury 
Kent CT4 7HG

Our last van was an Elddis 115 (sunseeker) we had two very minor problems with it from new.

although at year five we did have water ingress (fixed under warrantee) 

Simple switch panel was it's best asset. lol

the Nuevo has been plagued with 12 volt problems finally sorted but I had to find the answer.

On the only buying used, that's okay, but sometimes vans get sold because of their problems and sold unresolved.

Also, if no one bought new, the industry would collapse and used vans would just get older.
Pete

CC. thanks for the reply, and yes it was choose leisure who sold me the nuevo but their refrigerant is the wrong type according to the workshop engineer. seems odd as this gas type has been in general use since 2017. still i hope kwikfit can refill the aircon and test for leaks. rang today and they assure me the equipment is now fixed! will report progress if any.
doug

been into kwikfit for regas and vacuum check. takes an hour but hopefully ok.
now to see if the dealer will reimburse the £145 it cost! fingers crossed.
Doug.

dealer has agreed to accept the regas cost.
Doug.