Truma Re-Call update

[Bill Ord]

Just to let you know that Truma are truly on the case with the safety re-call. I had my truma C6002EH modified today at Brownhills ,Swindon. the Truma rep. was going to be there to demonstrate how to do the modification and my van was used for demo. The Truma rep. told me that Europe wide 50,000 units are involved. Only 750 are in the U.K. On my Rapido 924F the hob had to be removed to access the heater. Bill Ord

[Brian Kirby]

Remove the hob to access the heater?  That's logical, then!  And Rapido are, in truth, one of the better constructors!  To get to some of these heaters, I suspect half the 'van will have to be dismantled.

I do think it high time a proper external service door was installed on the heater cupboard of all 'vans, without exception.  They have to be flued, so must be placed against an external wall.  They have to be serviced, so should be accessible.  MMM reviews should keep picking away at this, without mercy, until the industry responds.

There, rant over!

[chris]

E-mailed truma yesterday and had a very reasuring prompt reply to say our van was outside the affected area so that is a relief. Chris

[Bill Ord]

Hi Brian, Fully agree with you about magazine tests. On the Rapido 924 the heater access hatch is about as much good as a chocolate teapot. All that can be accessed from the hatch is the temperature sentative dump valve and some 12 volt connectors. The Truma rep. told me that Truma consult and advise with U.K. manufacturers!! Has this worked in practise? My Autotrail Cheyenne 635 of 2001 vintage did not have a Tuma Combi but the separate water and space heaters were reasonably accessable. Bill Ord

[Derek Uzzell]

Brian: The thing with Truma Combi heaters is that they are essentially maintenance-free and, in normal use (and forgetting the wine-vinegar treatment!) do NOT require servicing. I believe that, in the case of Bill's motorhome, Rapido do fit a smallish external door providing access to the heater, but this will be to permit operation of the electrical safety/drain-valve and will only allow 'repairs' if you are lucky. It might be possible to rectify a leaking water-connection, perhaps change a defective pcb, but, beyond that, forget it - the heater will have to come out for attention. One occasionally sees Combi heaters placed in splendid isolation beneath beds where they are very accessible but frighteningly vulnerable to damage from luggage moving around. As soon as you start adding protective bulkheads then accessibility diminishes. Early Rapido 9-Series had 'naked' below-bed Combis; then some bulkheads were added; then the heater was enclosed in a box with just a smallish hole for ventilation. Now jamming them in the corner of an L-shaped kitchen seems popular. For the safety-modification to be made to the Combi in my Hobby, the slatted bed-base will need to be removed - easy enough, just 4 woodscrews. Then a piece of plywood, above the heater and supporting the bed-base, will need to come off - less easy, because the 100 litre water-tank behind the heater's location means you need the poise of a ballet dancer with size 6 feet coupled to the double-jointed fingers of a safe-cracker to remove the fixing screws. Fortunately I have those attributes (and I've done the job before). Having reached this point it should be straightforward to undo the heater-cover's 4 retaining nuts, disconnect the fan-motor, and lift out vertically the complete assembly requiring modification. But, if there were any sort of problem with the underside of the heater, or inside it, then there's no way it could be attended to without de-installing it from the vehicle. Combis are big appliances and, while I fully support the view that motorhome manufacturers should make more effort to follow Truma's installation recommendations, I don't think that huge external access doors are the complete solution. With Bill's Rapido it's choosing to put the heater beneath a fixed kitchen worktop that causes the problem. Even if his Rapido had a suitably-sized external door you still couldn't carry out the safety-mod with the heater in situ as the worktop would prevent it. If there is an answer then it must lie with the motorhome buyer to realise that Combis aren't bomb-proof and that good accessibility to the heater should be a must-have on their purchasing check-list. This is extremely unlikely to happen - in fact having had to have the (retro-fitted) Combi in my Herald removed twice from its enclosure for repair I swore I would never have another. So much for swearing and proof that lightning can strike 3 times in the same place!

[Brian Kirby]

Derek

There is a reference in the operating manual to getting the gas side of the Combi checked every two years, that I had taken to mean a similar check to that recommended by Dometic for the fridges.  Is this just a leakage check then, rather than a burner clean up and general operation check?

I must say the Combi, for all that many revile it, is an impressively tough little unit, being remarkably quiet and, I thought, surprisingly economical and efficient in providing and distributing heat.

The best installation I have seen was at the bottom of a wardrobe, with its own cupboard door for access and a top cover/wardrobe floor that could be unscrewed if necessary. 

Ours, on the other hand, is under the bed in a compartment a bit like yours - but without the comical ply sheet!  Just as well really, because I don't have any ballet shoes and I've never had enough dosh to merit getting a safe so would be unable to crack it!

Final analysis: I just have an aversion to anything mechanical that is installed so that it can't readily be reached for maintenance or repair.

Similar gripe, but there are excellent access doors for fridges that open to expose the whole of the rear of the fridge for cleaning, servicing or whatever, so why aren't they more widely used?  I suppose the answer is to some extent cost, but I think a fair bit more is design laziness.

Ultimately, the real culprits, I'm afraid, are us.  In the rag trade there is a concept called "hangar appeal".  If a garment looks good on the hangar it'll sell, and many are bought without trying them on or looking too hard at how they were put together. 

So with motorhomes.  It seems we buy with our eyes and not with our heads.  The manufacturers have noticed this and concentrate more on what looks good than on what is practically and technically desirable.  I was recently looking at the Hymer/Eriba Van.  Nice looking, compact little vehicle.  However, the gas locker access is via the underbed boot.  Saves an external trap, of course, but I can't imagine how many backs will "go" trying to manipulate 26kg or so of gas bottle in/out of that locker!

Notwithstanding, it has to be admitted the manufacturers do a pretty impressive job on the looks most of the time, and that the techy bits are generally accessible - even if you do have to indulge in contortions to get at them.

[Derek Uzzell]

Bill: "The Truma rep. told me that Truma consult and advise with U.K. manufacturers!!" Some years ago, having seen at Shows some bizarre installations of Truma products in motorhomes, I asked Peter Leivers (then Truma(UK)’s Service and Training Manager) whether motorhome converters liaised with them at the design stage. I don't recall his exact reply (probably something on the lines of "Dream on") but I well remember the general hilarity among the other technicians who overheard my question. Brian: Truma's instructions that "The testing of the gas system must be repeated every two years" will (as you've surmised) relate to a leakage test of the type commonly carried out as part of a habitation service. As I said before, there's nothing to maintain in a Combi and to rectify any internal problem - for example, the burners becoming clogged - will require removal and dismantling of the appliance (and, in the case of dirty burners, replacement of the burner-assembly as cleaning is impracticable). The only thing a Combi-owner can do that might enhance the long-term reliability of the heater is to protect the external air-intake/exhaust-outlet during any extended periods during which the heater is out of use. For sidewall outlets a Truma cowl-cover is available. There's no cover made for roof-mounted outlets, but DIY improvisation would be simple enough. When I joked about accessing the top of my own motorhome's Combi I may have given the impression that I thought Hobby had been bloody-minded with the heater's installation. This was not my intention. The plywood that needs removal to gain uninhibited access to the heater's upper surface is not a 'sheet', just a 20cm wide piece that crosses the foot of the bed. It forms part of an extremely strong perimeter-frame structure that supports the bed-base and must lend great rigidity to the walls/bulkheads to which it is screwed. The Hobby has a 3-piece bed, with a lengthways split mattress and a narrow foam 'filler' that slots in at the foot. It's the 20cm width of the plywood that makes access to its fixing-screws awkward, but the piece needs to be that wide to support the filler. Hobby's build sequence almost certainly involves installing the perimeter-frame, then installing the heater and then adding a protective bulkhead. But it's the subsequent addition of the 100 litres fresh-water tank next to the bulkhead that complicates matters. Life would be easier if one could stand next to the bulkhead to undo the plywood piece's fixing screws, but the water-tank prevents this. If Hobby had been prescient and able to predict that Truma would need to modify batches of Combi heaters then they might have used a different fixing technique for the plywood. As it is, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for Hobby to have assumed that, once the heater was in place, it wouldn't need to be touched for a long time. If paranoia strikes me when I've got the plywood off I'll modify the fixing method so the fixing screws are accessible from above. One godsend is that Hobby's construction methodology involves screwing not gluing, so disassembly and reassembly of furniture can usually be carried out without causing damage. My Herald had its retro-fitted Combi in the wardrobe-base with its own access-door and with the wardrobe-floor above removable. With this arrangement (and a bit of luck) carrying out Truma's safety modification should be straightforward, but its primary drawback is that it makes efficient operation of the heater problematical. Combi's are recirculatory heaters - a fact conveniently ignored by some motorhome manufacturers it seems - and for them to work efficiently they need to have a large aperture that opens into the motorhome's living-area so that they can 'breathe' in plenty of warmed air before blowing it out through the various hot-air outlets. When a Combi gets shoe-horned into a wardrobe-base the fan-unit invariably ends up in a back corner (an inauspicious start). Then, because holes in furniture aren't particularly pretty, the motorhome constructor minimises the size of any 'breathing apertures' available to the Combi. The heater really needs to be back-to-front in its cupboard with the fan-unit next to a big hole in the cupboard's door. Snag is you can't actually install a Combi in a wardrobe like that, so the end result is often a very hot, under-ventilated heater panting for air. It's amazing that the things work so well given what they are subjected to. When Swift began to fit Combis I recall seeing at a Show a wardrobe-base installation where the 'floor' above the heater was made of paper-thin ply. (I pressed it gently and it fell on top of the heater.) The only 'breathing apertures' that were apparent were narrow slits where the cupboard door and wardrobe floor fitted badly and a gaping gas drop-vent hole beneath the heater itself. So much for recirculation!

[Brian Kirby]

Derek: thanks for the info re the Truma gas installation.  I had thought it was a bit more than that!

Still, under the bed keeps the tootsies nice and warm at night and, since the low temp dump valve is just alongside, it also keeps that nice and warm when its nippy outside.

Sleep tight!