Thread: Simpson Recovery vehicle

Never changed a coolant hose on any of our Tojo vans,some are 9yrs old with 300k on them.

I recon there is more to this whole saga,and we will never know what exactly happened.

The hose could have been damaged,the vehicle may have been damaged previously,who knows.

Some clown may have done a coolant flush and taken it off and didn't put it on correctly,although most of the jap stuff have a tap at the bottom of the rad for draining the system.

There is also a recover truck at MT Dare,but its nothing like the birdsville one.

Unfortunately far too many people head out to remote areas without making sure that their vehicle is in tip top condition before they head off.
Changing out the hoses and belts on a vehicle that has done nearly 100,000K's is just common sense and keeping the old ones as emergency spares also makes sense.
Then we have the people that head out with old 3/4 worn tyres that get stuck or come to greif because the tyres crap themselves when they hit the rough stuff.
I have seen this so many times in my travels along with the numbskulls that have run out of fuel 20-30ks After they have driven past a roadhouse.
This bloke that has the recovery truck is sitting on a Gold Mine with the idiots with 4WD's these days

if the bottom hose let go, wouldnt there be a big show of steam which should be noticeable from the drivers seat?

the fire service gets fair few callouts for "car on fire" when really its just a radiator or hose gone.

I think it would all pass under the car body out of sight if moving.
If the motor was working hard, no doubt the driver's concentration would be on picking the track to follow.
Cheers

Some modern cars dont have temp gauges and rely on the computer shutting it down. Good for this situation, but not good for watching for the slow decline in radiator performance over time to see when it would be prudent to replace, or for generally watching for signs of things not being fully hunky dory such as seeds building up in the radiator fins.

Depends how that bottom hose let go if its noticable or not. If it was suddun then one might hear it and if stationary then definatly you'd see the steam - if moving you might not notice it from the front but an observant driver might pick it up in the rear view mirror. It could have been a slowish leak and the coolant level has dropped enough to cause the cooked engine - as has been mentioned previously, as soon as that temp sensor is out of the coolant you wont pick up the temp. Low coolant alarm would save it and allowed the driver to stop and check it out before any damage was done.

Even with the windows wound up and the aircon full blast you can smell a hot engine and the boiling coolant.
Disasters like this a usually caused by inexperience and/or inattention.

Originally Posted by trout1105

Disasters like this a usually caused by inexperience.

Yes and before "experience" there is "inexperience" - there is no fast track to experience.

And I can assure you that even with all the experience in the world you can drop your coolant in some circumstances and not hear it, not smell it or have any knowledge of it. That is why I have a low coolant alarm on my 101 and will be putting them in other vehicles as well.

Garry