Thread: WT??....MERCEDES-BENZ has finally signed-off on a $350 million contract with the Aust

Originally Posted by malsgoing130

I've always wanted a G wagon, lots of standard diff locks etc and a pretty simple vehicle. That was then 15-20 years ago. Now? too many electronic gizmos on the motor gear box etc, hope they supply 5 litres of petrol and a box of matches with them so that our troops can set them on fire when they fail
Fenders of any sort can be field stripped bits replaced and got moving really fast. Even I with no real machanical expertise have managed to strip the gear box and trans case off the vehicle and get it back together in 4 hours by my self.
Being from Africa and knowing how military supply deals are done there, I hope no one received a little brown envelope with a christmas bonus to get the deal thru Any how good to see our tax money hard at work.

i also seem to recall Tata having done a deal with the indian Millitary for 3000+ vehicles, dont think they are too fussed about a complicated 1200 vehicle deal.
Mal

Times have changed and we can not revisit the past!
Yes, they are complicated BUT they are heaps more reliable. This is where the fancy maths are done....believe it or not, an infrequent major breakdown is far more preferable to frequent minor ones.
Trust me, we are sick of our 20+ year old fenders breaking down with niggly poxy failures. Why is is that ford can now offer 60, 80 even 100 thou km warranties, when they didn't when I bought my first XD? I remember spending most w/e working on my HQ but hardly ever lift the bonnet on my present car? (D2 excepted).
Defence now spends a huge amount of money and effort on proving and documenting reliability and holding manufacturers to it! This just might be one of points raised by Blknight.
Similarly, we spend a lot of time developing maintainability metrics in conjunction. For example, if a component is time consuming to fix, hard or expensive to diagnose or a PITA to work on, we will insist that it is wholly replaceable within a short timeframe with basic tools. It's public record that the bushmaster power pack (engine, trans complete) is swappable in less time than your lunchbreak.

Yes you have to be a technician now, but you also need far less of them and see them far fewer times. Believe me, thats a good thing as they are a special breed!

Ralph

you must take a bloodly long lunch break....

book time is 4 man hours for a pack change.

with 5 blokes and a dead eye crane operator Ive seen it done in 45 minutes.

the amberly record for a drive in drive out major service including pulling the pack/trans, doing the valves, drain/replace all oil/filters, full grease up, batteries out and load tested and re-installed. is just over 3 hours with 3 greasers spinning spanners and a crane operator.

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

you must take a bloodly long lunch break....

book time is 4 man hours for a pack change.

with 5 blokes and a dead eye crane operator Ive seen it done in 45 minutes..

Spot on!
We turned 'em over in the Middle East in around 1hr give or take, providing the qd's gave us no troubles! And that was using a HRV crane, no gantry!

That being said, we didn't do many which kinda reinforces my argument! Lots of oil sampling and temperature measuring.

Cheers
Ralph

Originally Posted by rick130

You aren't biased though, are you Dave ??

What is the latest inside skinny ?

I know that the bias question was ment to be in jest but...

the reason why its not going well is that the rover fleet is aging and its already maligned enough by just about everyone without having to deal with whats going to come up now that its already past its designed life and is going to have to be nursed along for another 10 years.

and we're going to wind up with users who will deliberately thrash them to break them to try and get them gone so they can have the newest toy to play with...

we're already getting chassis and bulkhead cracks and not just in the ones that have been consistantly overloaded.

Thats a good point,I have seen it many times over the years,people wrecking machinery so that they get the newer gear.I doesn't matter what you get,the grass is always greener elsewhere and the people that use them don't own them,don't pay for them so don't care about them.With mine machinery,more and more of it is fitted with controls that stop any type of abuse such as not selecting a gear with the revs above idle,not selecting a forward gear while the wheels are turning backwards and vise versa and speed limiters and over rev cut-outs.The new G's won't be any better than the 110 and Merc will but heads with the ADF over damage from abuse. Pat

l guess we will just have to wait for the white paper to come out hey ...

cheers

As I now work for Diesel Motors CV(Mercedes Benz) here in W of A, we should be seeing some of them thru the yard for pre delivery. No one is sure yet what capacity they will be built to yet when they hit our workshops, but will take some pics when it all goes ahead.
Will be interesting to say the least.

The one good thing with the change is that theres going to be a few ex military Landies up for grabs!

Bad thing is that there wont be any more after them