Ducato comfort matic

[NickTre]

The Comfortmatic gearbox on our 59,000 mile 2014 Ducato based Hymer motorhome will no longer reliably go into neutral and is occasionally slow to recognise reverse. It intermittently also fails to respond to manual inputs, sometimes, but not always giving the message "Manual option not available".
The automatic option still works normally.
I have not found anything about this problem elsewhere.
A couple of years ago we were stranded in Belgium when no gear could be selected; on that occasion it was recovered to a local commercial Fiat dealership who replaced the clutch and actuator mechanism.

 

[varesecrazy]

Hi and welcome

Are the fluid levels still good ?


The dash message should mean that an error code is stored.. that may point towards the issue

Charlie

 

[rayc]

These type of faults seem par for the course with robotic gearboxes. I had a two year old 2006 Renault Master with the Quickshift 6 robotic gear box and had the reverse of your problem, in that I could drive it 'manually' but it had lost all of its automatic functions including any reference to it in the display.
To cut a long story short it turned out to be two faulty glow plugs which caused the ECU to instruct the gearbox control unit to revert to manual operation only.

 

[NickTre]

Many thanks for those suggestions. I'll check the fluid levels and I presume I'll need to go to a Fiat dealer to check for error codes.

 

[varesecrazy]

No problem

Look at the MES register at the top portion of forum homepage..

Somebody may be near to you

MultiECUScan software will read all of the stored faults.. and can read system pressures.. clutch wear. Etc

Charlie

 

[NickTre]

An update;

I took the van to an official Fiat motorhome specialist, W Sanders near Holsworthy, who identified a problem in the gear lever mechanism. This is an entirely electronic component, a glorified switch which it seems was not functioning properly. The item was deemed to be non-repairable and so need to be replaced. The genuine Fiat part was £440 + VAT. Total cost nearly £700 with labour! I could not find a used item for significantly less.
What is interesting is that although the official Fiat advice is that the unit cannot be repaired it actually has screws on the casing which I suspect could be dismantled to clean any contacts - certainly worth a try because if it were all to spring apart when it's opened there's nothing lost.

 

[NickTre]

I have now dismantled the unit; it comes apart very easily with no springs flying across the room but it reveals that there are no physical electrical contacts to clean. The switch mechanism appears to rely on the movement of magnets at the end of the lever which presumably actuate sensors on a circuit board. Without specialist knowledge and abilities this is indeed probably not repairable so I feel rather better about forking out so much for the new unit.

 

[Communicator]

Following from Nick's informative post, the magnetically operated sensors are possibly reed switches. If the PCB is accessible, and suitable replacement reed switches are available, it is possible that the unit could be repaired relatively cheaply by a person skilled in electronic repairs.

(Reed switches are typically contacts of magnetic material sealed along the length of a glass tube.)