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Can anyone on here help?

We have a 2002 Senator with gas/electric heater with a thermostat. For the first year or so we had no problems, then last year the thermostat refused to switch the heater on - so at night we got colder and colder, unless we woke up and twiddled the thermostat then it registered the temp and switched the heater on. The service dept at the dealers could find no faults and after weeks of testing returned it to us. The problem continued.

Then, it stopped putting the electric heater on at all, no heat, nothing - but it would run off gas (weakly). After weeks at the service department (a different one) they found that the heater would randomly cut out, and diagnosed a motherboard fault and replaced it. This fixed the problem for a while.

On our last outing we had the same thermostat problem we originally had - it just doesn't register the temp and either gets hotter and hotter or, more usually, gets colder and colder and does not switch the heating on. We returned it and they can again find no fault, after weeks of testing.

So we have a van we want to use over the winter, that will run a heater off the gas but not off the electric. So the heating is either 'on' or 'off' which is not ideal.

Can anyone shed any light on this? So far it has cost us a lot to fix but has not, yet, been fixed!

Hi, Do you know if the heater has a remote thermostat ? if so it's either not working correctly  has not been pluggen in correctly, or has been fitted in the wrong position, if not and you have a new board fitted then i would suggest getting one fitted, could be the switch but unlikley.

Thanks for the reply.

We have a little thermostat up underneath the upper lockers. Apparently the workshops both tested the themostat and said it was working ok.

Unless the second motherboard has also burnt out somehow, I am thinking this is the most likely culprit. Maybe it's worth getting a new thermostat fitted and seeing if that fixes it.

Trouble is, the workshops are no longer interested as this is an intermittent problem and they don't know how to fix it! It has cost us a fair bit so far and also rendered our van out of action for a long time! It's really frustrating! The Senator is in really good nick in every other aspect.

Hi Tigereye, check with Wizard or arc systems on this site, as I seam to recall a very similar problem with the thermostat, it had to be moved in order to work properly as it was to near the heater, it was making it malfunction in van(but when tested separately it  worked fine). Find then on the Repair section at the top of this form.then Fixit Club Members Directory, scroll down and you will find e-mail link, he deals more with damp vans, but has extensive knowledge and should be able to help.

Thanks for all the info here - I will look into each aspect and see if we can rectify the problem. Lots of elements to think about!

Would you say that these things need fixing by the repair dept rather than doing it ourselves? Because all the bits test as 'working' they have returned the van to us as fixed, but we know that this problem tends to come and go.

Would wheel balancing be part of the annual service? This has not long been done.

This caravan is proving expensive so far...

Well, your fee can be my eternal gratitude and esteem!

I will get the service dept to look at it again and do the things you suggest and hopefully that should fix it! The van has been out of action a lot this year due to them testing it over weeks and weeks!

Thanks for your help

We've had it for 2 years and it came from a main Bailey dealer, everything worked OK up until the warranty expired then the heater started playing up. They had fitted new tyres and serviced it every year since new as they sold it to the original owner until he part-exed it. Everything is pretty perfect until it developed the heating problem, very few repairs have ever been done on it.

When the gas fire works it gets too hot which is why we prefer the electric one, it worked weakly last year when we just could not get the electric fire to work and switched to gas for the weekend, but we think it was possibly because the temp dropped overnight and we had the wrong type of gas, or maybe because we rarely use it on gas, as you say (we have had to use it more since then and it is usually OK).

It was all serviced a few months ago again so the only remaining problem is this electric fire issue.