"Gromit, we have a problem!"

  After some frustrating days of headaches and diesel mouthwash, we finally took the advice of Mr B, the supplier, removed the whole Wallas unit and took the back off...

 

"Come on, Gromit. No time to waste."

 At this point I was glad I'd thought ahead a bit more than usual and made it easy to get the hob out. Releasing two jubilee clips on the hoses, two quick-release plugs and 4 Allen screws and it lifts out easily. I'd been told how to get the cover plate off so within 5 minutes we were looking at the insides.

I went straight for what Mr B and I had suspected to be the culprit - the fuel pump. He suggested that perhaps the union wasn't tight and was leaking....

This was a "Eureka moment" -surely that Gromit grommet or O-ring should be inside the nut? Confident that I'd found the problem, I relaxed, despatched the findings to Mr B...

...and set about working out what the rest of the hob's guts consisted of. This is useful knowledge if it goes wrong while we're away somewhere and anyway, I like to know how things work.
  Unfortunately, I was wrong. The O-ring is only there to prevent the union nut from slipping along the LP fuel line during assembly. Another theory torpedoed. We all decided, at that stage, that this was a Return-To-Base warranty job...a good thing I'd saved the boxes.

A quick exchange of e-mails, and the re-packaged hob was picked up the following day, which was a pretty rapid response. With a weekend in the way, it took a few days to reach the workshop but once it'd been inspected it was found to have a defective pump. This is apparently unheard of - certainly I can't find anything on-line that complains about this - so, once again, we are in the unique position of being The First One. How exciting it is to blaze the trail! The duff pump was what we'd always suspected but I wanted to cover all the other possibilities first since the problem seemed to be a bit intermittent. Also, while the installation is pretty straightforward there was always a chance I'd screwed something up...put the hoses on the wrong way round or some other basic mistake. This in itself meant taking some of the kitchen apart to make sure I hadn't somehow swapped the hoses around behind the water tank. Wasted effort? Maybe, but perhaps the lesson learned is to photograph the final arrangement before boxing everything in...ho, hum.

Time for some reflection on all this, I think. The Wallas unit is expensive but the engineering standards reflect the quality of the manufacture. Having seen some of the cheaper options available the difference is obvious, and you definitely get what you pay for. I have some observations regarding the installation of the electrical side of things which we've already mentioned but apart from those the major issue has been identifying the source of the ignition problem. The fact that the hob would ignite but then flameout within a regular timescale suggested an automatic "shut down" signal was being generated somewhere. This and the erratic behaviour of the pump had us taking longer than necessary to do the fault analysis and get it sorted out.

MrB wasn't overjoyed that I'd shared my frustration here, but I reckon he can be proud of the fact that he responded quickly and effectively with advice and service. The bottom line, for me anyway, is that anything mechanical can go wrong at any time and it's how this gets dealt with and fixed is as important a part of the deal as the hardware itself. I doubt that the supplier of any of the alternatives would have been as quick off the mark as he was.

So now we await Wallas's return, and in the meantime get on with something else. Time to have a go at the problem of keeping the back window clear enough to see through.

"Tell ya what, Gromit lad. Let's have a nice hot cup o' tea, eh?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Quotes are from "Cracking Contraptions" and "A Grand Day Out".