Thank you for the replies. The job went as expected; a complete PITA. A typical sequence of events and not at all unexpected. But you can only do what is requested particularly keeping an eye on immediate expenditure.
This started in January 2012 when the oil cooler failed. I don’t know how long the vehicle was driven around in this condition, certainly for several days, but the initial report was about increased oil consumption. The front of the vehicle was smothered in sludge. Changing the oil cooler was the easy bit, but the sludge caused real headaches. The job had to be done outside in freezing conditions in a yard that had to be kept as clean as possible, which meant laying large sheets of cardboard everywhere and draining the effluent into 25 litre drums. With only about 3 litres drained in half an hour, even with the bottom hose disconnected, it was clear that it needed warming up, but the concern was the rate at which the engine oil was being lost. After eventually another 5 litres had come out there was enough room to start adding degreaser to thin it down. Having changed the oil cooler the horrendously expensive detergent DAF supply was added and flushed through many, many times. The top hose was removed and cleaned out and the small hose were blown through during this process.
Earlier this year the rad cap kept leaking, because its seal had perished, but it never got renewed. By mid summer there was a noticeable leak from the nearside top hose or its stub. It was now clear that all the hoses had been affected by their bath in oil and that the radiator top tank was leaking.
With the arrival of a special offer on DAF radiators this month the original job could at last be completed. But first another thorough flush through with Mr ■■■■■■■ much cheaper Fleetguard Restore since although the coolant was clean, there was still a very slight film in the header tank.
All four expensive intercooler band clamps were seized (nothing new there)as were the radiator stay bar nuts, the intercooler to rad bolts, two cowling to rad bolts, one of the condenser to rad bolts and the rearmost pivot bolt for the air-con compressor. The pipe connections to the air-con rad also appeared to be ready to break off so the whole lot would have to hang to one side and the intercooler hang from the rear cab mountings. Apart from all the captive nuts for the air con rad in the intercooler falling out the rest of it was merely a struggle and a wiggle and a few names.
Changing the various hoses and a planned renewal of the metal heater branch pipe was nearly as challenging since there were more seized fixings; this time in the plastic headertank bottom mountings and the bottom water rail to cab front panel. The final top up with coolant revealed that this rail had not liked all the hammering on the impact driver, which resulted in four leaking pinholes, about another £100 in parts for the customer and a drain and refill.
Now I quite like DAFs, but I think the feeling with this one is not mutual! I spend most of my time working on fifty, or more, year old vehicles so I’m quite used to aggravation, resigned to jobs taking a lot longer than forecast, but I had hoped for an easy day, hence the hot spanner was on another site. So everything was down to impact hammering lots of penetrant and wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
It would perhaps have been a better idea to have given up on the radiator last year and renewed it then as a matter of course, but on a vehicle with 1.2 million Ks under its belt, I can’t really see much difference in parts renewed either way. What has resulted however is that the cost has been spread out over a much longer period, parts obtained at the best price by waiting for the operator’s privilege discount and stock ordering practically everything and the minimum disruption to work schedules by planning when to do the job.
