Once a month we sit down and talk through what’s been happening in the workshop. The interesting jobs, the problems we’ve solved, and the tips worth passing on. Looking back over this month, one thread ties nearly all of it together. We don’t just fix what’s broken, we find out why it broke. That’s what stops it happening again.
Here’s some of what came through the doors.
We had a couple of engine rebuilds come in badly corroded inside, and the cause was running water instead of coolant. These stationary engines run constantly at high RPM and overheat on site, so the operators top them up with tap water and leave it there for months. Water has no rust inhibitors, so it eats away at the block, heads, water pump and oil cooler, and the rust it creates blocks the radiator from the inside. It also boils sooner than coolant and forms tiny air pockets against the piston that pop and take a little metal each time, until they eat clean through the cylinder liner. By then a rebuild has become block machining and crank polishing. If you ever lose coolant, run water to get home, then drain it and refill with coolant the moment you’re back.
One failed engine really showed why we dig. It came in running heavy at idle but fine at high RPM, and when we stripped it there was no obvious cause. Eventually we found one piston skirt had melted around the gudgeon pin. The trail led to the piston squirter, the jet that sprays oil to cool the piston. Its little non-return valve was sticky on two cylinders, so at idle it wasn’t sending enough oil to keep the piston cool. Left to idle and warm up before going to full revs, that’s exactly when it cooked. Without chasing the why, we’d have rebuilt it and watched it fail again.
We’ve also started free quarterly catch-ups. We take three months of a customer’s service records, list every vehicle and every job, and look for repairs that keep repeating. One customer with five identical Ivecos kept splitting header tanks, because sunlight was making the plastic brittle, so we taped over the top to shade it. They were clogging radiators in dusty conditions, so we set a monthly cleaning schedule. Their stationary engines were being serviced hit and miss, so we’re fitting hour meters and tightening the intervals. The idea is to head off breakdowns instead of reacting to them.
A few smaller ones worth knowing:
- Air conditioning. A Canter came in with no gas and eight separate leaks. Every high-side O-ring had cooked, because the condenser fan had failed and let the system overheat. We fixed the fan as well as the seals, so it stays fixed.
- Canter servicing. Resetting the oil can light on the dash doesn’t reset the soot reading. You need a computer to reset the oil change in the maintenance menu, or your DPF burns start playing up. We’ve seen 10,000 grams of soot in the oil from a missed reset.
- Give your truck time to wind down. Two Mercedes faults this month, an ABS code and a crystallised AdBlue doser, both came from isolating the truck too fast after shutdown. Wait five minutes and both go away.
- We change the water separator fuel filter every service, not every second one, because the sludge that collects in it is the last thing you want reaching your fuel system.
If you don’t service with us, that’s fine. Do this anyway. Go through your own service records and highlight everything you get fixed regularly, even something as small as air leaks. Once you can see your repeat repairs, you can get ahead of them and book them in before they put you on the side of the road. A truck that’s moving is a truck that’s earning, and staying ahead of the maintenance is how you keep the wheels turning.
Book in today: 08 9353 1289