MMM Interchange

[Mel B]

Has anyone noticed the posting on the 'Hints and Tips' bit about MMM Interchange asking us to send in our requests for help ...

 

http://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=11498&posts=1#M111158

 

I've thought of the first question:

 

Why do Fiats/Peogeots and (probably) Citroens judder? :D The person who could answer this categorically would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize! :->

[Derek Uzzell]

It's poor quality-control at the factory manufacturing the engine mountings.

[Randonneur]

We were talking to a motorhome dealer yesterday in Bordeaux and he reckons its all to do with the clutch.

 

And if you were wondering that our French was very good to get that information, he is English, comes from Leeds and was in the French Foreign Legion at the age of 21 and has been over here for 20 years.

[fred grant]

given that the new fiat is almost two yers since launch (yes two yers) me ansums, you wood av thought that if the answer was as simple as sum of u make out then it wood av been fixed by now - wood it not my biddies???

 

they aint taking fred for a ride my luvvers, tho alice may enjoy a bit of a judder, occasionally, who knows?

 

ucantthrothewooloverfredseyes

[Derek Uzzell]

It's convenient to blame the clutch for the Citroen/Fiat/Peugeot vibration-while-reversing phenomenon. The reasoning behind this explanation appears to rely simply on the fact that Project X/250-derived vehicles use a Dual Mass Flywheel (DMF) clutch-assembly, replacing the traditional 'solid' Single Mass Flywheel (SMF) arrangement employed on the outgoing Relay/Jumper, Ducato and Boxer models. As SMF-equipped SEVEL vehicles didn't (apparently) exhibit the juddering trait, the logical explanation for the vibration is that the DMF adopted for X/250 must be the prime suspect.

 

Snag is that there are some large holes in this argument...

 

1. While it's well-recognised that a damaged or worn out DMF will produce unpleasant vibrations, all the vehicles that are doing the juddering are new or near-new. There is no evidence that a DMF in good working order causes vibration - in fact, one of the design roles of a DMF is to reduce vibrations.

 

2. If a DMF (or any sort of clutch design for that matter) is going to produce juddering, it will do it irrespective of which direction the vehicle is travelling. It's not as if the flywheel/clutch assembly suddenly reverses its rotational direction when the vehicle is reversed - it just keeps whizzing round in exactly the same way it does when the vehicle is going forwards. As juddering doesn't occur when these 'X/250' vehicles go forwards, it should be plain that the clutch-assembly is not the cause of the in-reverse juddering.

 

(There was an educational thread on a VW-related forum involving someone's petrol-engined car juddering when accelerating in the lower gears. A VW dealership diagnosed that "it was probably the DMF" and estimated a cost of £1000 for a replacement. The immediate forum response was that, if the car was juddering with the clutch fully engaged, then the likelihood of it being a clutch problem was fairly remote. In fact, the cause turned out to be a fault in the car's ignition system.)

 

3. DMF technology is not revolutionary, experimental or untried. SEVEL, with X/250, have come late to the game and I'm guessing that they are the last European automotive manufacturer to adopt DMFs for their light commercial vehicles. Nearly all Ford Transit Mk 6s from Year 2000-2006 have DMFs and all post-2006 Mk 7s have them. "Interchange's" George Collings told me recently that his 1996 VW LT-based Auto-Sleepers motorhome uses a DMF. None of these vehicles have shown any inclination to judder peculiarly when reversed up a steep incline, neither do their DMFs (assuming they are in good condition) produce juddering going forward. If the DMFs on all these many thousands on vehicles, across the years, have proved satisfactory, why should one expect the DMF's fitted to X/250 to be any less so?

 

The references to hot-smelling and failed clutches in the Fiat-juddering threads are another matter altogether. If a clutch (DMF or SMF) is stressed by engaging it when the motor is spinning rapidly, then it's not going to benefit from that treatment and, given enough stick, will overheat and/or fail. Whether the clutch needs to be used in this manner because the vehicle is uncomfortably high-geared is academic as far as the basic juddering defect is concerned. Similarly, if the driver of the vehicle is employing high revs deliberately to try to contain the juddering and 'cooks' the clutch as a consequence, then that's still not the clutch's fault. In this instance, the main difference between a SMF clutch-assembly and a DMF is that a replacement SMF will cost you an arm to replace, whereas a DMF will cost an arm and a leg.

 

None of the above hasn't been said before, in one way or another, in one or other of the 'juddering' threads, it's just that the quantity of discussion on those threads (the biggy in particular) has become so massive that it's difficult to avoid repetition and contradictions.

[Clive]

I suspect that if the DMF flywheel were replaced by a solid one you would just swap one set of problems for another set of problems.

 

Its similar I guess to swapping the older Fiat lump with the dodgy / fussy outside the main box 5th gear arrangement for the current Fiat lump with a different problem that also results in bits of the gearbox falling apart.!

 

I believe the "cure" will encompas many items including clutch, gearbox ratio,s in reverse, gearbox sturdiness, engine suspension and pivot point and all things connected with the dynamics of the vehicle. How many of these will be able to be incorporated retrospectively into current problem vehicles remains to be seen, but I guess not many.

 

No doubt in the fullness of time Fiat will bring out a "new" vehicle with all THESE problems sorted, but no doubt with another new batch of problems hitherto unseen.

 

I am afraid its why personally I would never buy a Fiat based motorhome.

 

I have also looked carefully at how many of the sub assy mounting brackets, bonnet stays and small bits and bobs on a Fiat compare in a side by side comparison with the same bits on a VW or Merc. We did this together with others at one of the Warners shows where we had the vehicles lined up alongside each other with bonnets up. I am afraid that if you want minimum weight the Fiat wins hands down, but if you don,t want the bits to crack and fall off (as they do) then forget the Fiat.

 

In the end you get what you pay for.

 

C.

 

 

 

 

[Derek Uzzell]

It's far from uncommon to replace a failed DMF with an SMF. Ford approve the practice for most Transits with 2.4litre and 2.0litre diesel motors and Valeo manufactures a wide range of SMF-for-DMF kits. The design of the Valeo products is claimed to provide the 'cushioning' benefits of a DMF and (presumably!) the motors that are converted in this way don't suddenly begin to shake themselves to bits. The main advantages seem to be short and long term cost savings for the vehicle owner.

[colin weston]

Well expressed Derek. I agree with your reasoning.

[AndyStothert]

Yep,

I'm with Derek on all that after driving all these judderers. And yes, the thread is a tad confused now.

Any advice welcome?

[flicka]

Mel B - 2008-04-18 5:54 PM

 

 

I've thought of the first question:

 

Why do Fiats/Peogeots and (probably) Citroens judder? :D The person who could answer this categorically would deserve the Nobel Peace Prize! :->

 

Surely Mel that would include all owners of the new model. Tthe Nobel Peace prize to the person who comes up with the solution :D :D

[Derek Uzzell]

flicka:

 

It's strange that the juddering defect has found its way into production versions of vehicles derived from Project X/250, given the extensive testing programme manufacturers carry out.

 

It's strange that people appear to be surprised at the Italian base-vehicle manufacturer's dismissive attitude to customer complaints as its reputation for customer unfriendliness is well known and long-standing. (It's the main reason why there's as much chance of me being elected Archbishop of Canterbury as me buying a motorhome based on a chassis from an Italian (or French) manufacturer.)

 

It's strange that it has seemingly proved so difficult to obtain a clear focus on the root cause of the problem. I would have thought that, by now, it should have been possible to eliminate those components unlikely to be contributing (eg. the clutch), but that doesn't appear to have happened. As long as the cause of the defect remains shrouded in mystery there's no way of making even an educated guess at whether it can actually be cured in those vehicles currently afflicted. (As all work carried out so far on juddery vehicles has, apparently, been unsuccessful in improving matters, the answer may well be No.)

 

However, the strangest thing of all (for me) is that a small number of motorhome owners of these vehicles have said that they don't exhibit the defect. As vehicles are built nowadays with minimum manual input, I could understand that faulty design might result in an unwelcome characteristic showing up in every vehicle, or that a quality control fault with a component might produce a few duffers amongst a majority of good ones. But to have a few perfect 'smoothies' amongst a rash of 'judderers' is very peculiar indeed.

 

Andy:

 

I doubt that there's a genuinely satisfactory way to 'de-confuse' the several threads on this subject, as the underlying structure of the forum doesn't allow it. As I suggested earlier, a new Master Thread could be initiated that cross-refers to all the present other judder-related ones, each of which would carry a "No more posts to this thread, please" message. On reflection, I think it would be sensible if only you contributed to the Master Thread and that anyone wishing to comment did it via PMing or e-mailing their comments to you for addition to the Master Thread if you felt it appropriate. Can't really see this working however, as people are hopeless at conforming to rule-based things at the best of times, even if they have the inclination to do so.

 

What is really needed is the Forum Administrator to act as a working partner as that's where the necessary control of the forum lies. When the Warners forum was motorhomes-only, with a much smaller population, Peter Sharpe used to take a very active role and a partnership arrangement might have been practical then. Nowadays it almost certainly isn't.

[Rowan Lee]

FIAT = Fix It Again (An)Tonio

 

A nice man I met at the last NEC show came up with that one.

[fred grant]

bring back sharpey - fred says me andsums.

 

eed sort the bedgers out.

 

fredkillerfred

[dshague]

talking to white van man . he as a 07  peugeot  with only  4000 miles on clock just does local deliveries now and then.      i was asking him about juddering . he said never had that problem but needs  to take van in  to dealer as  a engine mounting as gone  engine shaking like mad .

[colin]

I think I should add this reply as I'm the one pointing finger at DMF's.

I should say that IMO it's a combination of DMF and engine mounts, this opinion of mine comes from experience of making other vans judder when heavly loaded and experience of DMF failures. DMF's seem to have two failure modes, premature clutch failure and failure of DMF itself which causes juddering, now I'm not saying DMF is failing in reverse but it is setting up some 'harmonics' with engine mounts, proboly excagerated by only having clutch partialy engaged during reversing or different 'use' of clutch when reversing.

[flicka]

I assume ithe problem is applicable to all the Secvel built vehicles so affecting the Peugeots & Citroens, but more apparent on the Fiats due to the volume of Motorhomes based on that badge version.

 

A local Citroen dealer is offering savings of £8k on the LWB and £5k on the MWB commerial vans, he has in stock.

Wonder if he knows something, as discounts of this size usually only occur when a major revamp or new model is due to be announced.

 

Despite all the manufacturer's testing prior to launching a major new model, they rarely iron out all the problems. So as usual my "new" vehicle late 2006 was based on the "old" base vehicle, which had been around long enough to be sorted.

>:-) :D :D

[colin weston]

Having worked in the motor industry most of my working life, primarily in engine development and emissions control, I was a frequent user of vehicles at weekends for assessment. (Most people viewed it as a 'jolly').

However, putting the vehicle into the hands of various users in 'real-life' situations often subjected the vehicles to conditions and situations not encountered during other, standardised, testing. Most component testing is carried out initially on test rigs, then progressing to systems testing such as engine endurance tests on a test bed and finally whole vehicle testing. Whereas whole vehicle testing used to be carried out on the road or a test track, the vast majority is now simulated on a chassis dynamometer. I would expect that this type of whole vehicle testing would be carried out with the vehicle at GVW, or maybe slighty overloaded, as one needs to test worst case. Is a reverse gear schedule included? I have no way of knowing. Is a reverse gear schedule up a steep gradient included? I doubt it. One would like to think that when Fiat decided that they wanted to make their new vehicle more suitable for motorhome conversion they would have considered that most motorhomes travel at near their GVW most of the time. Does anyone in Fiat have any real experience of motorhome useage? The other problem in organisations is that experienced engineers retire or are pensioned off and the wheel is reinvented. It is difficult to comprehend that no-one in the Fiat, Peugeot or Citroen organisations noticed all the water on the top of the engine when they did the testing. Maybe they did all the testing indoors! One of the tests usually carried out is a 'Monsoon' test whereby water, with a fluorescent dye, swamps the vehicle to test for water ingress to the interior. Perhaps their test criteria doesn't cover the underbonnet area. I am amazed at the gap between the sides of the bonnet and the wing. The only other vehicle I have bought which was fairly new in production was my 1995 Rover 600 but that was 'engineered' by Honda. Now 13 years old with 80,000 miles it has at least another 10 years. Problems? None.

[onecal]

Hi all,

In Italy last week and keeping my ear to the ground it looks like a lot of changes is going to be made to a new model.

Everyone is hitting around the problems and every one knows it is a collection of faults including some electronic ones thats causing all this.... with these models.

I feel very sorry for all who have the problems but the problem will be solved More than likly by some mechanic-Tech, (motorhome owner) himself than Fix It Again anTonio (FIAT):-(

Do'nt give up yet,

Maybe Tracker should sign off this one .I think it is, "dont let the..... grind you down".

Regards,

Brendan.

[Derek Uzzell]

Colin Weston:

 

An amusing thing about Project X250 (though "amusing" is perhaps the wrong word!) is that Fiat's advertising makes much of the suitability of the Ducato for motorhome use by highlighting that extensive on-road pre-production trials were carried out.

 

In fact, in the "Fiat Ducato Motorhome" advertising leaflet dated January 2007, there's a photo of a test vehicle emblazoned with the legend "New Fiat Ducato - Camper Conversion Prototype". The photo is in the leaflet's Engines and Gearboxes section, and is captioned "The engines and gearboxes powering the New Ducato Motorhome were tested on cab-over prototypes and adapted for use on a motorhome. The 130 MultiJet has been specially designed for exclusive use on motorhome (sic)."

 

According to this leaflet "The New Ducato Motorhome fears no bends and no terrain..." No mention, however, is made of this heroic fearlessness transferring to Ducato owners suffering from Juddering Syndrome.

 

 

Brendan:

 

I admire your optimism.

[Derek Uzzell]

An addendum to my last posting...

 

In the July 2007 issue of "Camping-Car Magazine" there was similar picture to the one in the Fiat UK advertising leaflet. This picture had a reference explaining that 26 Fiat X/250 test vehicles had covered more than 340,000km, of which 100,000km had been by the motorhome-bodied version shown in the photo.

 

[colin weston]

Derek Uzzell

Perhaps you need to hang on to that Fiat literature as 'Exhibit A' for the court case! Having made such statements I would think Fiat & Peugeot have little excuse but to put the problem right. Are you able to scan the leaflet and email me a copy?

[colin]

Fiat's boast about new van being suitable for motrhome conversions was widely reported at launch, but you must consider say a 33L3H2 van has a gross train weight of 5.8tonne and a 35heavyL3H2 (as used on version of Adria I was considering) Has a GTW of 6.5tonne, I dought any of the vans which juddered where anywhere near these weights.

[Derek Uzzell]

Colin Weston:

 

Sorry, I'm not able to scan the "Fiat Ducato Motorhome" leaflet for you, but you could probably obtain a copy (hard or possibly soft) via www.fiatvans.co.uk

 

Colin:

 

I don't think anyone would argue over the 'on paper' suitability of X/250-derived Citroen/Fiat/Peugeot chassis for conversion into FWD motorhomes. It's the translation of the paper specification into metal reality, plus lack of attention to detail, that's causing the problems.