O.K. the truck: Renault Premium 420, Manual gearbox 16 speed.
The problem: Left the truck & trailer for inspection, everything was fine when I left it with the garage. On collecting it I found it very difficult to engage any gear… I thought "Houston we have a problem… " got a gear and moved off, stuggled to get her to engage next gear, just wouldn’t slot in like I was pulling against the gate. Then went for a half gear, no half gears, stuck in low. She will change range o.k. but no half gears and struggle to get into the gears, I have to give a sharp hard tug or push to get in.
Turned around and went back and said " what did you do when you took her out, I know something happened…" No response, no suprise there, denials and sheepish looks, faked concern and weak suggestions. Leave it with us we’ll have a look was the only suggestion but I have taken her away. The truck was fine, I have owned her for over 7 years and she was fine, no problems up until I left her this morning.
Anyone recognise the problem? I will take her to Elgin on Monday morning but equally I’ll have a look tomorrow morning (Sunday), the gearchange is cable operated, the splitter for half gears on the stick is working and releasing air as normal but nothing from the box.
I suspect when they took it out for a test run they hashed a gearchange and have done some damage … any thoughts welcome
Just had exact same problem on my Magnum came on all of a sudden, one minute shifting was ok then approaching a roundabout on a1 very difficult to shift gears, resistance getting it out of gear an very very hard to get it in gear. The splitter stopped working at the same time so changed the air control valve for this without any improvement. New clutch pack was the solution (not cheap).
Went through the rest of the system before parting with my hard earned. Checked and cleaned air dryer, drained and flushed air system, checked and bleed hydraulic system.
bazstan009:
Just had exact same problem on my Magnum came on all of a sudden, one minute shifting was ok then approaching a roundabout on a1 very difficult to shift gears, resistance getting it out of gear an very very hard to get it in gear. The splitter stopped working at the same time so changed the air control valve for this without any improvement. New clutch pack was the solution (not cheap).
Went through the rest of the system before parting with my hard earned. Checked and cleaned air dryer, drained and flushed air system, checked and bleed hydraulic system.
Thanks to you all for suggestions, sorry for delay in getting back. I can see this as a possiblity. Infact whilst trying to work out what was going on this evening, I pumped the clutch repeatedly and after maybe 7/8 goes just before the pedal was on the floor there was a grating noise, like trying to engage gears without clutch. If I then operated clutch normally it was fine again, then on another repeated operation the peddle went hard, I thought …“maybe a problem on the clutch pack”. I’ve had one of these go on an early Magnum I had, it was leaking air badly, not these symptoms and I never lost the splitter BUT sounds like this may be the problem as your symptoms were identical.
My thanks to you “bazstan009”… it just p****s me off that it was fine when I left it, just can’t help feeling that if they hadn’t touched it then all would be fine. If I remember rightly the clutch pack was £600 ish, but that was many years back.
Hiya …Bad news about the expense…go back a few years when it was one driver to a truck things didnt go wrong.
nowadays some companys (no names) have 3 drivers per truck per day. i think your truck likes one driver… I know
it sounds really silly but how often have you herd drivers say they,ve had a day off and the truck had another driver.
then more than enough things have gone . I was showing a chap how to drive a 12 speed Foden one day, as i change
gear their was a crunch, the chap laughed and said can you drive it your self■■? I said watch this and changed
a differant sequence and it worked. usuall you drove 1l/2l/3l/into D1/od1/d2 and so on
who ever had driven this Foden had changed l1/l2/l3/l4 into d2/od2 so this is how the truck was to be driven.
Talk about tempremental…going back to the renault there has,nt got a rag jammed down into the gear change
cables has there■■? i had a cable break one day and the garage said somthing had been in the top by the cable
mecanisum. that day they got the truck started in a gear and i drove it (solo)to the workshop just chaning the high
and low.Good luck
John.