Fiat Ducato
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I thought I'd pen a few
lines to show how I've maintained my Fiat Ducato, especially
the campervan version, and here only in areas of untypical maintenance.
Our camper was made by a company called Adria having been modified
from a standard van built in 2005. The date is fairly important
because not long after that date various changes were introduced
making spare parts often tricky to identify correctly. |
Fixing the Fiat Ducato
Adria Campervan Fridge
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Quite recently (May 2024)
our fridge stopped working and I had to figure out how to fix
it. It's powered from a choice of three sources.. 240 Volt AC
mains, 12 Volts DC or gas and, since we've owned the van (from
2007), it's been plugged into a mains supply and quite naturally
the fridge has been using that option. Not too surprising then,
after 17 years of continuous use, that the mains option failed.
Thinking about the reason... the heater whose task is to keep
the gas-liquid refridgerant cycle running will have been turning
on and off so somewhere in its construction metal fatigue probably
eventually open-circuited the element.
I checked and found that suitable
new elements were plentiful so bought one and fitted it. The
fitting exercise was not straightforward as it meant deciding
how to remove the old element and insert the new one. Not only
swapping the actual element posed a problem.. but how the fridge
fitted into the van needed to be figured out. The pictures below
show how I managed. |
One of the clues to fridge failure
is the lack of waste heat leaking from the upper grille. When
the fridge is working normally one should be able to feel a waft
of warm air if you put your face near to it.
Removal of the fridge for repair
involved several stages of dismantling. The first step having
diagnosed the fault was to remove the exterior grilles. These
were clipped into plastic frames secured with stainless steel
screws. I found much better access after also removing the frames.
The second step was to detach
all the electrical cables and the gas supply pipe. The cables
are on the top and the gas supply pipe connection is at the bottom
left looking from the rear. This was better accessed once the
fridge had been slid forwards about six inches or so. |
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Limited access to the wiring
was via a detachable panel in the floor of the wardrobe so I
was able to test heater supplies and their continuity. In my
case, as I'd expected, the mains heater proved to have failed
requiring the removal of the fridge.
After a lot of puzzling I found
a pair of fixing screws located behind the passenger seat. These
were holding the fridge in place in conjunction with a kind of
very messy black Bostik.
I was then able to shift the
very heavy fridge and this picture shows it slid forward with
its door removed.
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I identified the screw
connectors holding the various cables which needed to be detached.
Basically these are the mains
input, the battery supply and the thermostat wiring.
I made notes and took numerous
pictures of how these were routed and to which choc-bloc terminals
the cables connected. |
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Below, after the gas pipe
(bottom right) and the cables had been unscrewed, I pulled out
the fridge and lifted it away to gain access to the heater assembly.
I lifted it onto the adjacent seat, taking care not to get any
Bostik on the seat material, and using the inspection panel from
the wardrobe floor on which to rest the fridge on the seat. |
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Here you can see
the electric heater assembly.
There are two heaters within
the heavily insulated metal sleeve. To gain access meant unclipping
the outer sleeve and pulling away some of the insulation material,
after which the mains heater was jiggled out. The battery powered
heater, fed by the grey cable, was left in place. |
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On the left is the open
circuit heater and below is a picture of the replacement heating
element. |
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Fitting the new heater
and refitting the fridge was fairly straightforward and it then
worked normally. |
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