Motorhome breakdown abroad: what to do (and what we learned the hard way)
Our motorhome lost power on hills from Portugal to Gibraltar and up through Spain, and we still had not got to the bottom of it in France. Here is what to do when it happens to you, and what three summers of breaking down abroad have taught us about cover, mechanics and getting home.
The short answer
Get safe first: hazards on, off the motorway if you can, everyone out on the side away from the traffic. Then call your breakdown provider and be precise about the symptoms, when they happen, and whether the van can still move safely, because that decides whether you get a mechanic or a tow truck.
Before you ever leave, check that your cover works at your van's real weight and length, because plenty of policies stop at 3.5 tonnes, and read what it does at a weekend. If the van still drives, a local mechanic, a campsite owner or a fellow motorhomer will often get you further, faster, than the official route.
Somewhere on a motorway in southern Portugal this August, fully loaded and heading for the Algarve, Steve put his foot to the floor and the van just did not respond. There were no warning lights and no error codes, just a brand new motorhome slowing to around 20 mph on a hill with traffic behind it. That was the start of a fault that followed us for the rest of the summer. It was also not our first time: in 2025 a turbo pipe came off our old van in the Alps, and in 2024 a flat battery stranded us at a German services for eighteen hours. This guide is everything those three breakdowns taught us. If you are still planning the trip itself, start with our guide to taking a motorhome to Europe.
What happened to us in 2026
The van is a Dethleffs on a Fiat base, about 5,000 miles old
Our Dethleffs XL Family is built on a Fiat base and was a few months old when we took it south. It drove perfectly from cold and perfectly on the flat. The fault only showed itself after an hour or so of driving, on a hill, in the heat. Here is how it played out, in order.
- Portugal
Fully loaded and heading for the Algarve, the van lost power on a motorway hill. No warning lights, foot to the floor, down to around 20 mph. Hazards on, off at the next junction, and we limped the last twenty minutes to a campsite we knew.
- Portugal
Fiat Camper Assist could only arrange a recovery driver, not a technician, and it was Friday, so the dealers were shut until Monday. We turned down a tow into storage. A local mechanic plugged in his scanner, found nothing, and told us the van was too new for his machine.
- Into Spain
Fine for the first hour or so, then the power faded again. We stopped at a services for half an hour to let it cool, and on the next big hill it dropped like a stone. We still made it to the marina at Gibraltar.
- Spain
A technician from Allianz, subcontracted to Fiat's assistance service, rang us. He had seen the same fault three times that week, all on brand new vans, all after roughly 150 miles, and suspected software. Ours had about 5,000 miles on it.
- Spain
Exactly 90 minutes and 90 miles after setting off, the power went again on a climb, with lorries overtaking us. The last few minutes up to friends' place in the mountains were a crawl. We settled into shorter driving days.
- France
An Allianz technician finally plugged the van in. He found dashboard communication errors and unspecified faults, said he had dealt with six cases doing exactly the same thing, and told us to ask our dealer at home for a software update.
As we write, the van has not yet had its software update. The plan is simple: get it home safely and book it in with our dealer, Loudons. We will update this guide when we know what the fix actually was. Each stage has its own write-up on the blog, from breaking down in Portugal and still making it to Gibraltar to losing power up the mountain and the diagnosis in France.
The first hour: what to do
Safe first, then the phone
The first question any breakdown service asks is whether you are somewhere safe, and it is the right one. A motorhome crawling up a motorway at 20 mph with lorries coming up behind is not safe, and Steve called that hill in Portugal simply too dangerous. Hazards on, and if the van is still moving, get off at the next junction rather than stopping on the hard shoulder. If you do have to stop on a motorway, everyone gets out on the side away from the traffic, puts on a hi-vis vest and waits behind the barrier, never in the van.
On French autoroutes, use the orange emergency phones or call 112, because the motorway is served by approved local recovery firms rather than your own provider's trucks. Tell your breakdown company afterwards and keep every receipt. Anywhere else, ring your provider, and give them the details they need to send the right help: what the van is, where you are, what it is doing, and whether it can still be driven safely. That last point matters more than you might think. Once we had told Fiat's assistance the van could still move safely, we could ask them to look for a dealer along our route rather than send a truck to collect us.
If the van still moves safely, get it somewhere you can comfortably wait. In Portugal we nursed it twenty minutes to a campsite we knew, which meant we waited for help beside a pool rather than on a verge. That is a far better place to spend a weekend, and when the recovery company offered to come out at night, we could tell them to wait until morning instead of waking a whole campsite.
Breakdown cover over 3.5 tonnes
Read the small print before you need it
Breakdown cover for big motorhomes is harder to find than you would expect. Once a van is over 3.5 tonnes, or around 7.5 metres long, a lot of mainstream policies simply stop, and you need cover that names your real weight, length and height. Our Dethleffs is plated at 5.5 tonnes. On our previous vans we used the RAC-backed Arrival policy through the Camping and Caravanning Club, which covered us at 5.5 tonnes and 9 metres in Europe. It has not always been quick: in Germany in 2024 we waited eighteen hours and still had nobody, and in the end got ourselves going with a jump start and a new battery from a local garage.
This year we did something different. The new van came with two years of Fiat's European cover, and viewers reminded us we already had it, so for Europe we relied on that and kept our UK cover for home. On paper that made sense. On the road, it showed us what manufacturer assistance is really for: getting a broken vehicle to one of that brand's dealers. It could arrange a recovery truck. It could not send a mechanic to diagnose a fault at the roadside, the dealers it could use were too busy or shut for the weekend, and because our van still drove, a tow into storage until Monday was not much use.
Before you go, find out three things from any policy you hold: what it will do on a Friday afternoon, whether it will send someone to diagnose rather than just recover, and what happens if the van still drives but not properly. Our Fiat cover could not do the second, and that was the one we needed.
Breakdown cover and motor insurance are two separate things. Our motorhome insurance is with Sterling, a partner of the channel, and it is your insurer, not your breakdown provider, that matters if you need a green card outside the EU. Our Europe guide covers that side in more detail.
Finding a mechanic abroad
The campsite knows someone
Our best help came through people, not phone lines. In Portugal, the campsite pointed Steve to a German who looks after solar and leisure electrics. He does not do engines, but he knew who did: a Ukrainian mechanic four or five minutes up the road who he reckoned was the best in the area. That mechanic pulled us straight in, plugged in his scanner and checked the turbo for leaks, all on a Friday afternoon, when the official route had nothing until Monday.
The same summer, our skid wheels bent in on the chassis after one too many speed bumps. Our friend Walter offered to find a motorhome dealer. What we actually needed was metal workers, and his friend sent two round for 8am. By 9:22 they had straightened the chassis section with a hammer. In 2025 it was the same story with our old van in the Alps: a local garage found the turbo pipe had come off and refitted it with a jubilee clip.
Local mechanics are brilliant with anything mechanical. Newer vans with electronic faults are another matter: the scanner in Portugal could not read our 2026 van at all. For electronics on a new van, you will probably need a dealer for your base vehicle in the end.
When you do need a dealer, ring around rather than waiting for someone else to do it. In 2025 the nearest Fiat dealer told the breakdown desk it was too busy to see us, so on the Monday morning we drove to a dealer anyway and asked in person. It worked. Most dealers close at weekends, and one Fiat dealer we headed for in southern Spain closed from two until five for lunch, so a Friday afternoon fault can easily become a Monday fix.
Limp mode, heat and faults with no codes
When the van drives, just not properly
Limp mode is the engine computer cutting power to protect the engine when something is wrong. You can usually still drive slowly to somewhere safe, but it is a warning, not a way to carry on. In the Alps in 2025 our old van went into it with the engine light on and managed 11 mph in first gear up a hill. A plug-in code reader showed a turbo boost pressure fault, but clearing the code did not fix it. Even once a garage had refitted the pipe, neither they nor our reader could clear the code, and the van stayed in limp mode until a Fiat dealer cleared it. He would not take a penny.
This year was harder, because there were no warning lights and no codes a normal scanner could read. The van would lose power after roughly 90 to 150 miles, usually in the heat, usually on a climb. In France it was described to us as an emergency mode: switch off, leave it a while, restart, and the problem goes away. We found that too. On the way to one campsite in Spain, Steve switched off to fill up with diesel and the power came back. But a short break was not always enough, and on another day a half-hour lunch stop did not touch it.
Heat was the pattern. We drove from Barcelona into France for around four hours at 28 to 29 degrees with no trouble, but in the mid-thirties heat of southern Spain and Portugal it kept coming back. That does not mean heat is the cause of your fault, and we would never diagnose your van from ours. It does mean that if your van only misbehaves in one set of conditions, write those conditions down.
We planned shorter days, around 100 to 150 miles at a time, with a proper stop in between, and avoided big climbs where we could. On the flat it mostly drove fine, and hills were where it struggled, so where there was a choice, we took the flatter road. It added time, but it got us from Portugal to France and on towards home.
What to carry, and what to say
The things that made the difference
The paperwork, in one place
Your breakdown policy number and the phone number saved in more than one phone, the original V5C, your insurance certificate, and the base vehicle details: make, model, year and mileage. In Portugal, the recovery driver wanted a photo of the van, a description of the fault and, before anything else, where it was going to be fixed.
A fault diary
When the fault happens, write down the time, the miles since you set off, the outside temperature and what the road was doing. With no codes on the dash, that was the only evidence we could give anyone, and it is what made the pattern clear: an hour or more in, on a hill, in the heat.
The basics in the cab
Hi-vis vests within reach of every seat and a warning triangle, which several European countries require, plus jump leads. In 2024 a flat battery left our old van dead at a German services on a Sunday, and a Polish driver parked next to us had it started on the first turn of the key.
A translation app
Steve talked a Ukrainian mechanic in Portugal through the fault using a translation app on his phone, and sorted a minor bump on the way into a French campsite the same way. It is not elegant, but it works, and a mechanic who understands the symptoms is a mechanic who can help.
A few phrases help before the translation app comes out. These three cover the basics of a fault like ours, in the three languages of this summer's route.
French
Mon camping-car a perdu de la puissance. (My motorhome has lost power.)
Il n'y a aucun voyant allumé. (There are no warning lights on.)
Pouvez-vous brancher la valise de diagnostic ? (Can you plug in the diagnostic computer?)
Spanish
Mi autocaravana ha perdido potencia. (My motorhome has lost power.)
No hay ningún testigo encendido. (There are no warning lights on.)
¿Puede conectar la máquina de diagnosis? (Can you plug in the diagnostic computer?)
Portuguese
A minha autocaravana perdeu potência. (My motorhome has lost power.)
Não há nenhuma luz de aviso acesa. (There are no warning lights on.)
Pode ligar a máquina de diagnóstico? (Can you plug in the diagnostic computer?)
For the kit we actually run in the van day to day, from the batteries to the air suspension, see our accessories and upgrades guide.
Warranty and getting home
The base vehicle and the habitation are covered separately
On a coachbuilt motorhome, the base vehicle warranty and the habitation warranty are two different things, from two different manufacturers. An engine fault on our Dethleffs is Fiat's problem, not Dethleffs', and the same goes for the assistance cover that comes with it. That cover runs out with the warranty, too: our old Kon-Tiki was just over three years old when it broke down in the Alps, and it was out of both. When we picked up the new van we were told to register for Fiat's extended warranty within fourteen days. When we chased it in spring 2026, we were told the five-year extension had been suspended and only two years was available, though there are third-party warranties out there.
Report a fault early and in writing, even if the van still drives, so there is a record from the first time it happened. Give the dealer at home everything you collected on the road: the dates, the miles, the temperatures, what any technician found. We will be taking what the technician found in France straight to our dealer, along with his advice to ask for a software update and a proper check.
As for getting home, if the van still drives, you have options. We talked about heading for the ferry from Santander rather than driving all the way up through France, and the Allianz technician who rang us in Spain told us he had escorted another van with the same fault from Madrid back to Bilbao for the ferry to Portsmouth. In the end we chose to drive, in short stints, with the temperatures dropping as we headed north. Our ferries guide covers the Spanish crossings if you need them, and our Spain and France guides cover the roads in between.
Keep perspective. A breakdown abroad feels enormous when you are lying awake thinking you are as far from home as you can be. But we were lucky: we were never stranded at the roadside, the van was never in a compound, and the trip carried on. A van that drives slowly is a problem to manage, not the end of the holiday.
Breakdown abroad questions we get asked
Does normal breakdown cover work for a motorhome over 3.5 tonnes in Europe?
Often not. Breakdown cover gets tricky once you are over 3.5 tonnes or around 7.5 metres long, and plenty of policies quietly stop there. On our previous vans we used the RAC-backed Arrival policy through the Camping and Caravanning Club, which covered us at 5.5 tonnes and 9 metres in Europe, and it was not always quick to respond. Whatever you buy, check that the policy names your actual weight, length and height, and that it covers every country on your route.
Is the manufacturer's assistance that comes with a new motorhome enough?
It depends what you need from it. Our new van came with two years of Fiat's European cover, so we relied on that this summer. In practice it could recover us to a Fiat dealer, but it could not send a mechanic to diagnose the fault at the roadside, the dealers it could use were busy or shut at weekends, and the van still drove, so a tow was not much help. Read exactly what it covers outside weekday hours before you rely on it.
What is limp mode, and can I keep driving in it?
Limp mode is the engine computer cutting power to protect the engine when it detects a fault. You can usually still crawl somewhere safe, but you should not carry on as normal. On our old van, a turbo pipe came off in the Alps and the van stayed in limp mode even after the pipe was refitted, until a Fiat dealer cleared the code. If you have a red warning light or the engine is overheating, stop.
Can a local garage fix a new motorhome abroad?
For mechanical jobs, often yes. A local garage in France refitted our old van's turbo pipe with a jubilee clip, and metal workers in Portugal straightened our bent skid wheels before nine in the morning. Where they struggle is newer vans with electronic faults. The mechanic we found in Portugal could not read our 2026 van at all, because it was too new for his machine.
What should I do if I break down on a French motorway?
Get everyone out on the side away from the traffic and behind the barrier, wearing hi-vis, and call for help on one of the orange emergency phones or on 112. French autoroutes are served by approved local recovery firms, so your own breakdown company usually cannot send its own truck onto the motorway. Tell your provider what has happened as soon as you can, and keep every receipt.
Can heat make a motorhome lose power?
It was part of our story. We drove from Barcelona into France for around four hours at 28 to 29 degrees with no trouble at all, but in the mid-thirties heat of southern Spain and Portugal, the van lost power after an hour or so of driving, again and again. By the time a technician plugged it in, the working diagnosis was software, made worse by heat. That is our van, not a rule, so get yours properly diagnosed rather than assuming.
Written by Steve and Lyndsay Radford. Every first-hand detail comes from our own breakdowns in 2024, 2025 and 2026, filmed as they happened. The procedural advice on motorways, safety kit and cover is general guidance and can change, so check the current rules for each country and the exact terms of your own policy before you travel. Sterling Insurance is a partner of the channel. Roaming Radfords is a trading name of Yowzer Limited.