Just giving the van the once over today in between trips. Adding a few extra screws to some of the drawer runners, realigning cupboard doors etc. - Well, it is over a year old now ... 
Joking aside, and the reason for my post is a rather more serious issue regarding the integrity of the Thetford Caprice (MK3) oven mounting. Having enjoyed several trips recently, I have on at least a couple of occasions opened the door after arriving on site only to be greeted by a black screw on the floor. Without any obvious signs of where the screws may have come from, and assuming they have been left over from the vans construction, and that they have simply worked their way from under the furniture, I just collected them and placed them in the front drawer.
However, today, I discovered the source ...
During cleaning, when I opened the oven door to clean around the outside, the bottom left hand corner of the oven appeared to move together with the door by approximately 10mm. Thinking that this was an optical illusion, I opened and closed the door a couple of times, and sure enough, the oven was loose within its mounting. Very loose in fact. Further inspection revealed that there should be a screw underneath the oven door, securing the lower left part of the black frame, and another higher up, which would normally be exposed by opening the door of the grill. Both were missing and after a quick glance across at the ones on the right hand side that weren’t missing I immediately realised where the two black screws were from.
Now normally, I wouldn’t even consider writing a post about a couple of screws that have worked loose, but the result of this was that in addition to the obvious movement every time the oven door would have been opened and closed, with very little effort by hand, the bottom left hand side of the oven could be withdrawn approximately 20mm from within it’s regular cabinet mounted position. Given the fact that on our van (2017 6TD), the oven sits right above the axle and as it isn’t from one of Swifts high-end ranges, there are no shock absorbers, I can well imagine the banging and clanging that would have been going on en-route to our next stay.
After checking the mounting screws on the right hand side and discovering that they were both tight, I decided to dig a little deeper and soon realised why only those on the left hand side had come loose. Hopefully, the picture below might help me to explain ...
At the bottom left hand side of the oven, you can see the screw which I have re-fitted. However, the root cause of this problem, being unique to the left hand side mounting is the narrow wooden infill strip into which the screws penetrate, which, although being covered with a wood-effect vinyl covering on the exposed side, a quick illuminated glance from the rear revealed that this is made from an extremely soft, light wood, almost white in colour, rather than MDF or Chipboard for example, and as such is significantly less dense than the aforementioned materials. So soft in fact, that with little effort, I was able to deeply impale a screw into the rear of the infill batton with only slight thumb pressure. The first thing that sprung to mind was the balsa wood I used to make model planes out of as a child. After replacing the two screws, it was immediately obvious that this wood is unable to withstand sufficient screw torque to reliably secure the oven in place, and so I will undoubtedly be devising an alternative fixing method in the very near future. The right hand side does not suffer from the same issue, as those screws are driven into a much denser pre-formed panel of either MDF, or chipboard.
My van is a 2017 Swift Siena 6 TD, but other Swift group models such as a the Sprite Major 6 TD, Swift Conqueror / Challenger / Sterling Eccles 590 and possibly others have the same layout and so no doubt employ the same method of cooker mounting as mine. Having made the discovery, and being satisfied that I will ensure the integrity of the cooker mounting in my van, the reason for my post is to to strongly advise others who have a similar van where the cooker is mounted to an infill baton on one side to check theirs, for the following reason ...
When looking underneath the cooker I noticed that the gas supply is connected with rigid pipe. PVC coated copper to the underside of the oven and then what appears to be a stainless tail protruding from the bottom of the oven. Had I discovered a flexible tail, I wouldn’t have been too concerned and wouldn’t have even posted this, but now having discovered that the pipe work is rigid, would consider a loosely mounted gas appliance, fitted to a vehicle, which would be subject to approximately 10-20mm of lateral movement when driving over undulations in the road surface somewhat of a safety concern on a 17 month old caravan.
If you’re the owner of a recent model Swift, particularly those models I mentioned earlier, please check yours guys - I’d be interested to hear your findings.
Ic.
Joking aside, and the reason for my post is a rather more serious issue regarding the integrity of the Thetford Caprice (MK3) oven mounting. Having enjoyed several trips recently, I have on at least a couple of occasions opened the door after arriving on site only to be greeted by a black screw on the floor. Without any obvious signs of where the screws may have come from, and assuming they have been left over from the vans construction, and that they have simply worked their way from under the furniture, I just collected them and placed them in the front drawer.
However, today, I discovered the source ...
During cleaning, when I opened the oven door to clean around the outside, the bottom left hand corner of the oven appeared to move together with the door by approximately 10mm. Thinking that this was an optical illusion, I opened and closed the door a couple of times, and sure enough, the oven was loose within its mounting. Very loose in fact. Further inspection revealed that there should be a screw underneath the oven door, securing the lower left part of the black frame, and another higher up, which would normally be exposed by opening the door of the grill. Both were missing and after a quick glance across at the ones on the right hand side that weren’t missing I immediately realised where the two black screws were from.
Now normally, I wouldn’t even consider writing a post about a couple of screws that have worked loose, but the result of this was that in addition to the obvious movement every time the oven door would have been opened and closed, with very little effort by hand, the bottom left hand side of the oven could be withdrawn approximately 20mm from within it’s regular cabinet mounted position. Given the fact that on our van (2017 6TD), the oven sits right above the axle and as it isn’t from one of Swifts high-end ranges, there are no shock absorbers, I can well imagine the banging and clanging that would have been going on en-route to our next stay.
After checking the mounting screws on the right hand side and discovering that they were both tight, I decided to dig a little deeper and soon realised why only those on the left hand side had come loose. Hopefully, the picture below might help me to explain ...
At the bottom left hand side of the oven, you can see the screw which I have re-fitted. However, the root cause of this problem, being unique to the left hand side mounting is the narrow wooden infill strip into which the screws penetrate, which, although being covered with a wood-effect vinyl covering on the exposed side, a quick illuminated glance from the rear revealed that this is made from an extremely soft, light wood, almost white in colour, rather than MDF or Chipboard for example, and as such is significantly less dense than the aforementioned materials. So soft in fact, that with little effort, I was able to deeply impale a screw into the rear of the infill batton with only slight thumb pressure. The first thing that sprung to mind was the balsa wood I used to make model planes out of as a child. After replacing the two screws, it was immediately obvious that this wood is unable to withstand sufficient screw torque to reliably secure the oven in place, and so I will undoubtedly be devising an alternative fixing method in the very near future. The right hand side does not suffer from the same issue, as those screws are driven into a much denser pre-formed panel of either MDF, or chipboard.
My van is a 2017 Swift Siena 6 TD, but other Swift group models such as a the Sprite Major 6 TD, Swift Conqueror / Challenger / Sterling Eccles 590 and possibly others have the same layout and so no doubt employ the same method of cooker mounting as mine. Having made the discovery, and being satisfied that I will ensure the integrity of the cooker mounting in my van, the reason for my post is to to strongly advise others who have a similar van where the cooker is mounted to an infill baton on one side to check theirs, for the following reason ...
When looking underneath the cooker I noticed that the gas supply is connected with rigid pipe. PVC coated copper to the underside of the oven and then what appears to be a stainless tail protruding from the bottom of the oven. Had I discovered a flexible tail, I wouldn’t have been too concerned and wouldn’t have even posted this, but now having discovered that the pipe work is rigid, would consider a loosely mounted gas appliance, fitted to a vehicle, which would be subject to approximately 10-20mm of lateral movement when driving over undulations in the road surface somewhat of a safety concern on a 17 month old caravan.
If you’re the owner of a recent model Swift, particularly those models I mentioned earlier, please check yours guys - I’d be interested to hear your findings.
Ic.
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