I had a dodgy fuel gauge on an iveco rigid in france and that was £200 for the Renault magnum wrecker to arrive with 2 x jerry cans of diesel…[emoji23][emoji23]
Oh and £800 plus 2 days for an atego alternator…[emoji54][emoji54]
The funniest ones were on the autoroute when the tyre fitter said its got to be a new michelin tyre after a blowout and my boss having a meltdown on the other end of the phone…[emoji23][emoji23]
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ArcticMonkey:
Went to Volvo at Le Mans to get 2 new batteries put on just to be on the safe side and gaffer wants the old ones bringing back
I had a stud break off one of my front wheels, went to Scania and they wouldn’t replace just the one stud. It was all or nothing, my boss was not happy so I had them all replaced but I had to bring the ‘good’ used studs back for spares ha.
biggriffin:
m.a.n rules:
biggriffin:
Beau Nydel:
Last wagon I owned was a Daf 85 on contract maintenance. Batteries replaced every 2 years automatically as cheaper than a silly o’clock callout.We all know this is correct, but the people who pay the bills don’t they just see the cost of batteries, not the bigger picture,…
correct me if i’m wrong but isn’t there s decent weigh in when buying new battreies ?
Ours just sit near the scrap bin, and the local pickey-scrap man takes em,.
Dealerships sell them for recycling, there’s a big company I think in the Midlands who collect from motor trade, got Dafs and mountys on em.
That scrap man must love your place there’s a fortune to be had weighing in batteries if you go to the right place with them. Think we get £50 each for a truck battery maybe more, got £900 for a dead forklift battery.
ArcticMonkey:
A breakdown van came and he got his mobile battery charger out and initially did the same as we did which was put the red lead on that metal tube which pulls out at rear of unit by the run up bars and put the black lead on the metal frame, but it was still dead. So he took the front battery cover off and put the black lead on something in there and it fired up straight away.
Sorry for my lack of description in using the correct jargon as i’m not mechanically minded.
Yeah those pull out tubes on the back of Volvos and Renaults are useless and have a sort of shiny surface that’s hopeless for making a good connection with jump lead clips just unclip the battery cover then go straight to the terminals on there Anderson connectors with a tail lift lead are usually ok as an alternative.
If you need a jump start and can’t get any joy with another vehicle probably best to just order two new batteries and get the parts place to bring them out to where you are if possible rather than call recovery.
Only modern vehicles to have let me or others i know down with sudden battery failures are Volvos, my mate always had to jump start his following a few days off, without fail it wouldn’t start on its own unless he had remembered to switch it off at the mains.
We found on the Volvo chassised transporters that two sizes of batteries could have been used, someone had specified the small batteries which could be relied upon to let you down on a cold morning without any prior warning, replacing with the taller obviously higher capacity batteries saw no further issues…wish the same could be said for recent FM’s.
Vartas lasted 4 years on my last MAN, one morning it was slow turning over, but did fire up so just kept it running all that day and popped into the dealer on the way back, who discovered one faulty battery but swapped both out, vehicle on R&M.
I don’t recall batteries dying so quickly or regularly on the old motors, but engine idling wasn’t the antichrist it’s since become so we weren’t restarting the things dozens of times a day, no doubt starter motors and flywheel ring gears are suffering higher wear rates too, progress.
lots of the big companies now are on complete r&m agreements hence they dont pay for starters and ring gear hence its just policy to make you switch off all the time and save that precious fuel…the dealers dont care as its bounced back to the manufacturer who are making fortunes anyway,so its only the driver who finds it a pain in the ■■■■ having to start it 90 times a day to save their fuel score on fleetboard/microlise or whatever.
total complete and utter pish to be working for these companies.
Juddian:
Only modern vehicles to have let me or others i know down with sudden battery failures are Volvos, my mate always had to jump start his following a few days off, without fail it wouldn’t start on its own unless he had remembered to switch it off at the mains.
We found on the Volvo chassised transporters that two sizes of batteries could have been used, someone had specified the small batteries which could be relied upon to let you down on a cold morning without any prior warning, replacing with the taller obviously higher capacity batteries saw no further issues…wish the same could be said for recent FM’s.Vartas lasted 4 years on my last MAN, one morning it was slow turning over, but did fire up so just kept it running all that day and popped into the dealer on the way back, who discovered one faulty battery but swapped both out, vehicle on R&M.
I don’t recall batteries dying so quickly or regularly on the old motors, but engine idling wasn’t the antichrist it’s since become so we weren’t restarting the things dozens of times a day, no doubt starter motors and flywheel ring gears are suffering higher wear rates too, progress.
Funny you should say that with Varta. We sprang the extra for what’s considered a premium brand and mine have gone in the same way also about bang on four years - no warning, never been run down flat whilst I had the truck most of the time, just one morning one had gone bad.
Whilst four years isn’t too bad in the scheme of things it’s certainly not great or anything like as good as I’ve had out of batteries in the past.
Own Account Driver:
[quote=“Juddian”
‘‘Funny you should say that with Varta. We sprang the extra for what’s considered a premium brand and mine have gone in the same way also about bang on four years - no warning, never been run down flat whilst I had the truck most of the time, just one morning one had gone bad’’.
Whilst four years isn’t too bad in the scheme of things it’s certainly not great or anything like as good as I’ve had out of batteries in the past.
[/quote]
^^^ how the hell did i bugger that quote up 
In my own cars and 4x4 Yuasa are OE equipment generally and they are my go to make for some years now, 5 years warranty on the better versions, most seem to last well in excess of 8 years with 11 and 12 years not unusual by any means, the twin OE Yuasa’s on my Toyota 4x4 donkeys years ago lasted 11 years and never did actually fail, just turning the engine over wasn’t as brisk as it had been, much better way for batteries to fail than this one day good next day dead way they die now.
They make lorry batteries too, but with only one or two versions offering over 2 years warranty, might be worth asking around if anyone else has tried them out on wagons.
Juddian:
Only modern vehicles to have let me or others i know down with sudden battery failures are Volvos, my mate always had to jump start his following a few days off, without fail it wouldn’t start on its own unless he had remembered to switch it off at the mains.
We found on the Volvo chassised transporters that two sizes of batteries could have been used, someone had specified the small batteries which could be relied upon to let you down on a cold morning without any prior warning, replacing with the taller obviously higher capacity batteries saw no further issues…wish the same could be said for recent FM’s.Vartas lasted 4 years on my last MAN, one morning it was slow turning over, but did fire up so just kept it running all that day and popped into the dealer on the way back, who discovered one faulty battery but swapped both out, vehicle on R&M.
I don’t recall batteries dying so quickly or regularly on the old motors, but engine idling wasn’t the antichrist it’s since become so we weren’t restarting the things dozens of times a day, no doubt starter motors and flywheel ring gears are suffering higher wear rates too, progress.
Given I’ve now a got a 15 plate one, everything works, would you advise making sure I flip the key to complete off and flip the little (can’t recall the name, isolater?) Orange switch near the diesel tank n/s. Rear cab?
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Stehinch:
Juddian:
Only modern vehicles to have let me or others i know down with sudden battery failures are Volvos, my mate always had to jump start his following a few days off, without fail it wouldn’t start on its own unless he had remembered to switch it off at the mains.
We found on the Volvo chassised transporters that two sizes of batteries could have been used, someone had specified the small batteries which could be relied upon to let you down on a cold morning without any prior warning, replacing with the taller obviously higher capacity batteries saw no further issues…wish the same could be said for recent FM’s.Vartas lasted 4 years on my last MAN, one morning it was slow turning over, but did fire up so just kept it running all that day and popped into the dealer on the way back, who discovered one faulty battery but swapped both out, vehicle on R&M.
I don’t recall batteries dying so quickly or regularly on the old motors, but engine idling wasn’t the antichrist it’s since become so we weren’t restarting the things dozens of times a day, no doubt starter motors and flywheel ring gears are suffering higher wear rates too, progress.
Given I’ve now a got a 15 plate one, everything works, would you advise making sure I flip the key to complete off and flip the little (can’t recall the name, isolater?) Orange switch near the diesel tank n/s. Rear cab?
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Leave isolator on, pull key out till it goes click, that will automatically start the standby sequence, normally 2hrs, then the electrical system goes to sleep, then will wake up when either the key is pushed back in, or the door is unlocked, It can be overridden in the settings, but this causes flat batteries, Fridge stays on, and night heater should still work if the system is asleep.
Stehinch:
Juddian:
Given I’ve now a got a 15 plate one, everything works, would you advise making sure I flip the key to complete off and flip the little (can’t recall the name, isolater?) Orange switch near the diesel tank n/s. Rear cab?
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I assume you mean a modern Volvo, Stehinch, in which case i’m not up to date with best practice for newer versions, thankfully Biggriffin has answered that one.
If it was MAN you were asking about, can’t say as the ones i’ve driven have ever been a problem in this area, always been good starters and the batteries not lost charge particularly, well until one of the batteries dies 
…there clear as mud 
Boss looked at the old batteries i took back to yard and after thinking my unit had new batteries on recently, he quickly realised it hadn’t had new batteries since he bought it, as these were well worn and were Volvo batteries. The casing had warped in places. He explained how and why this happens but having the inner workings of stuff like that explained, it just goes straight over my head tbh 
He oringinally suspected they were new Varta batteries because he’s had some which haven’t lasted 2 minutes and was able to get refunds on them
biggriffin:
Stehinch:
Juddian:
Only modern vehicles to have let me or others i know down with sudden battery failures are Volvos, my mate always had to jump start his following a few days off, without fail it wouldn’t start on its own unless he had remembered to switch it off at the mains.
We found on the Volvo chassised transporters that two sizes of batteries could have been used, someone had specified the small batteries which could be relied upon to let you down on a cold morning without any prior warning, replacing with the taller obviously higher capacity batteries saw no further issues…wish the same could be said for recent FM’s.Vartas lasted 4 years on my last MAN, one morning it was slow turning over, but did fire up so just kept it running all that day and popped into the dealer on the way back, who discovered one faulty battery but swapped both out, vehicle on R&M.
I don’t recall batteries dying so quickly or regularly on the old motors, but engine idling wasn’t the antichrist it’s since become so we weren’t restarting the things dozens of times a day, no doubt starter motors and flywheel ring gears are suffering higher wear rates too, progress.
Given I’ve now a got a 15 plate one, everything works, would you advise making sure I flip the key to complete off and flip the little (can’t recall the name, isolater?) Orange switch near the diesel tank n/s. Rear cab?
Sent from my S41 using Tapatalk
Leave isolator on, pull key out till it goes click, that will automatically start the standby sequence, normally 2hrs, then the electrical system goes to sleep, then will wake up when either the key is pushed back in, or the door is unlocked, It can be overridden in the settings, but this causes flat batteries, Fridge stays on, and night heater should still work if the system is asleep.
Thankyou
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