Thread: Simpson Recovery vehicle

Originally Posted by scarry

The engines in the vehicles were still destroyed regularly from lack of coolant....

That doesn't surprise me at all.
The low coolant alarm is just that an "alarm" and if the driver chooses to ignore this alarm then of course the engine will end up RS.
As with many Fleet vehicles the drivers don't really care too much and they usually drive em like they stole em and if they bugger up the Boss will fix em.

Originally Posted by DiscoClax

Falcon six cyl from about '98 had the temp sensor reading head temp, not coolant, and could run for an extended time without any coolant as the engine would shut down cylinders and cycle cool air through them. Effectively air cooled... You could limp along for quite some time without any issues...

Can you explain how that worked? I'm not cynical I'm interested, I'm surprised it wasn't a sales gimmick. I know one of the early xe or xf models had a lot of cooling problems in the hotter parts of Australia.

AU Falcon petrol 4.0ltr six cyl had it. Not sure if it was kept or quietly phased out in later models. It was advertised and in the sales literature.
The engine would shut down spark plugs in a staggered manner if it got too hot. The hotter it got the more it shut down. Still injected fuel so you got the evaporative effect but no hot bang. The sensor in the head meant that it didn't matter if there was coolant or not in there as it measured the 'real' temp in real time. So the engine cooled on those 'dead ' cylinders and the engine woyld then fire that cooled cylinder and shut another down. Twenty years ago we did that here in Australia... I remember thinking it was the first of a new era but no-one else seemed to pick it up.

We didn’t do it! The EEC range of ECUs were developed by FoMoCo in general.

Originally Posted by Tombie

We didn’t do it! The EEC range of ECUs were developed by FoMoCo in general.

The hardware was theirs but the strategy and calibration was definitely us.

The falcon's strategy sounds really cool (pun).

I would have thought that most of the vehicles sold in the last five to ten or even 15 years have a low coolant sensor that automatically shuts the engine down?

I would prefer the falcon strategy. If nothing else its not exciting having the engine shut down while you are going 100+km/h on a major freeway with limited opportunities to position yourself off the roadway. You can lose power steer and brake boosting before you stop, making it difficult to position the vehicle.

Originally Posted by Tombie

Current rubber compounds should mean hoses last warranty without an issue. And then some by significant margin.

A compound hose running at 2500psi at 90c will easily last 5 years. A radiator hose (a modern one and not a pattern part) will easily exceed that, the material is rated well above 130c and a whole 20psi won’t hurt

We owned several Daihatsu four wheel drives over the years and their radiator hoses were neoprene (of some description) and they seemed to last a lifetime. Back in the eighties Daihatsu's were popular vehicles on properties in far western New South Wales and mostly all sold by Dynamic Motors in Mildura or Vodic's in Broken Hill. I was buying a set of radiator hoses from Vodic's one day and the parts guy said "we have never sold any, they are neoprene and they last forever". I still bought a set for peace of mind, but they were costly as far as radiator hoses go, and I still have them. There was nothing available aftermarket, only genuine parts.

Cheers, Mick.

Originally Posted by mick88

We owned several Daihatsu four wheel drives over the years and their radiator hoses were neoprene (of some description) and they seemed to last a lifetime. Back in the eighties Daihatsu's were popular vehicles on properties in far western New South Wales and mostly all sold by Dynamic Motors in Mildura or Vodic's in Broken Hill. I was buying a set of radiator hoses from Vodic's one day and the parts guy said "we have never sold any, they are neoprene and they last forever". I still bought a set for peace of mind, but they were costly as far as radiator hoses go, and I still have them. There was nothing available aftermarket, only genuine parts.

Cheers, Mick.

Well there’s the problem - OEM’s don’t want a part like that to last a lifetime! Can’t make any money like that now can you...