Anyone had experiance of Opti Cruise on a 2003 420 Scania? Got a chance to purchase one any hints would be appreciated. Thanks 
Only you can decide if you like it. Some drivers love it other hate it.
We run a scanny with it and recently its played silly buggers due to the opticruise, some piston in a small cylinder that basically changes the gears via the air/electric control stopped playing, new one fitted err 3 weeks later same prob.
i hate it personally… although the r420 manual is not as slick as the old 4 series
I’ve only driven one a few times - an R480 on an ‘07’ plate and I liked it very much.
I’d have one over a manual Scania.
Asda Skelmersdale have been using r series opti cruise 420 & they are crap, very slow gear changes, unnecessary gear changes, very poor fuel economy, 8 to 9 mpg if you lucky & Skem don`t pull heavy loads, touch the electric exhaust brake button on the floor & you will think the pistons will be coming into the cab, it will drop two gears & rev counter goes straight into the red. Asda have made a huge mistake with these trucks & if they could save face somehow & get rid of them they would do it. I would rather buy an old Scammel than an opti cruise.
i had a r420 one when i was doing livestock i hated it and jacked 3 weeks after when they wouldnt give me a 144 back
Far as i know the opticruise is similar to the old autotrans ,and it was/is crap
My Spanish 460 has Opticruise and in my opinion its the best thing since sliced bread.
Heading northwards from home in Malaga to the rest of Europe I cross several mountain ranges and the opticruise saves an awful lot of left leg work on the clutch. Another benfit is when driving through sucidal cities like Madrid or Paris you can concentrate on who is aiming at you and how to avoid them, rather than being on the gearbox all the time.
For the uninitiated Opticruise is NOT an automatic gearbox - its a normal box with extra kit which enables it to change up and down itself, although full manual intervention is possible.
The whole point of the opticruise is that it optimises the fuel flow when in auto, so when you are in manual you might as well be in proper truck with a manual gear stick, & the driver decides when to change gear, not a sensor on the engine.When in manual you still have to use the clutch,With town driving, the gears are up & down, & revs are all over the place. The Volvo i drive puts Scania to shame.
hal56:
The whole point of the opticruise is that it optimises the fuel flow when in auto, so when you are in manual you might as well be in proper truck with a manual gear stick, & the driver decides when to change gear, not a sensor on the engine.When in manual you still have to use the clutch,With town driving, the gears are up & down, & revs are all over the place. The Volvo i drive puts Scania to shame.
I would agree with most of this, however you DO NOT need to use the clutch for manually selected up or down shifts, you only use the clutch when starting or stopping. Personally I prefer the degree of control the clutch gives me when reversing - some I know will disagree.
As for using the manual option, I use it rarely, mainly when decending long downhill gradients - just for that extra bit of control. Again some argue that its not neccesary to lock a gear manually, there are however many long mountain descents in Europe where I like to hold 8th or 9th and use just the retarder and exhaust brake, leaving the service brakes stone cold for any unforseen circumstance.
When I say long decent, the one down the Sierra Tujeda from Casabermeja to Malaga where I live is 23Km and has a lot of 5% down hill in it!!
Like it or not but you won’t have a choice in a few years, Merc, MAN, Iveco all offer automated manual gearboxes as standard fit now, Daf may be the same. Scania’s Opticruise is, I believe, still a syncromesh box which makes it slower than the Volvo, Merc, ZF boxes in the others, the old AutoTrans in the Merc was the same & it wasn’t very good, the new Merc Powershift box is as good as the others though.
The thing about Opticruise is it does still have a clutch pedal for the technophobes amongst us.
I’m with you on this one Hombre, I took a Stralis down to Murcia recently & it was a pleasure, come off a roundabout, hit resume & let it do its thing all the way up to the limiter.
I think the main worry is that when the old left arm muscles wither away it will show how exactly much exercise the right arm gets 
I mean holding a pint of course 
You will have to use the clutch in manual mode if the speed of the truck is to low or to high for the gear that you trying to use. I only use auto in yard, when i leave i am in manual, by the first corner i am in 8 gear, i need to be in 7 so press down on change lever & if engine speed is not correct it will not change so have to use clutch. If i try this corner in auto i would be in gear 10, when i slow for corner it will only drop to 9, then it struggles a bit before dropping again to 7, the gear i would of been in if i had been in manual.
These trucks would be ok if fuel economy is not a great issue, but at ASDA it is the end of the world as they are putting the blame on the driver & not the truck.
all these so called autos are manual boxes with automated electronic changing of gears engaging/disengaging of clutch they all still have a clutch…(with or without pedal). this goes for the volvo daf (and others with as tronic) and scania to say the least…my favourite was the as tronic in the 95xf i had.
i find them reasonable with a decent power output but as someone commented about supermarket trolleys they are not suited to the lower bhp (in my experience anyway!!)
choice of volvo or scania ,i’d opt for volvo. the change is alot quicker. approaching a island with a gap in the traffic to keep her moving the scania seems to just lag and cannot make up its mind what gear its ment to be in and the oppertunity and mommentum is lost. i shift just gets on with it in a split second.
so can i have a i shift in a scania please 
jon
We had a demo unit for a week, and every driver who used it disliked it. Mainly due to slow changing. I didn’t get a chance to try it, but I’m a die hard manual fan anyway.
I have had one for the last three years in a chipped R420 To start with I thought it was crap but you need to give it time to get used to Jumping in a demo for 4hrs does not give you a good impression it took me weeks before I was using it properly And you do not need to use the clutch to change manually only for stopping and starting and as I do a lot of farm and Quarry work the clutch gives me far more control when shunting. Allthough i will admit the I shift is a better box there is no control when shunting leading to excessive clutch slip