I have a horrible feeling my T4 van's head gasket is toast

[mangocrazy]

The die is cast, the runes have been thrown and the van is booked in at AW Eng for mid -December.

The feelthy baby murdering diesel will continue to stalk the highways and byways of this fair land in search of fresh meat.

Or something.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Baby murderer!

IIRC it's actually the over 65s who are most at risk

[KungFooBob]

No one cares about old people tho'

[weeksy]

A cabbie recently told us the best engines he'd ever run were 90s diesels. Most of them achieved starship mileages with no engine work. He reckons cars are much more unreliable today with so many needing engine work as well as multiple sensor failures, DPF issues etc.

Exactly that ^^^

I've owned three vehicles with '90s (or earlier) diesel engines; the 2.5 TDi 5 cylinder ACV engine in my T4, the 1.8 TDCi engine in my 2007 Ford Focus (pre wet belt!) and the 2.0 HDi Citroen/Peugeot engine in my 2005 Berlingo Multispace. All of them were phased out in the early to mid 2000s due to being unable to meet emissions targets, all of them were capable of big, big mileages and all of them were replaced with smaller and far more problematic power units.

A cycnic might say that vans started to become much more car-like in their cabin comforts and infotainment systems around about the time the engines became a lot less reliable and not capable of high mileages.

'Don't worry about that smaller, more highly stressed engine sir, just look at the plush cabin and plethora of gizmos you have to play with'...

And somehow there's thousands upon thousands of modern vans for sale with 200,000 on the clocks.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/van-search ... t=year-dsc

[Mr. Dazzle]

I'm not gonna tell you what the actual number is of course, but even a 'normal' car is designed and tested for more than 200k these days. Trucks and vans are closer to a million.

Of course, you seldom find a car with 200k on it which isn't also 25 years old so it's a bit of a hard one to really quantify.

Loads of the vans you see with mega miles for sale would be ex-fleet stuff which smashes through loads of miles in not many years and has on-the-dot maintenance too, so again it's hard to really say/see what's going on.

[mangocrazy]

The prize for hardest-working van of the year must go to the 71 plate Peugeot Partner van with 340k on the clock. Being 71 plate it would be registered in August, so only a little over 3 years old. 110k miles per year!

Chapeau...

[MrLongbeard]

Of course, you seldom find a car with 200k on it which isn't also 25 years old

Looks out of window...... OK so it's 185k at the mo, give me another year

[Mr. Dazzle]

The prize for hardest-working van of the year

Nothing to do with vans of course, but this reminds me of when I first started working on aerospace actuation systems. Modern airliners spend more time flying than they do on the ground, it can be up to a 70/30 split on long haul stuff! Took me a little by surprise when I first saw the use cases.

[cheb]

The prize for hardest-working van of the year

Nothing to do with vans of course, but this reminds me of when I first started working on aerospace actuation systems. Modern airliners spend more time flying than they do on the ground, it can be up to a 70/30 split on long haul stuff! Took me a little by surprise when I first saw the use cases.

Wasn't that why Qantas had the best safety record? Most problems are at take off and landing and Qantas had very few short routes.

It must be true I read in a newspaper, made of real paper, years ago.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Dunno if it's still true, but it used to be the case that Qantas had never suffered a passenger fatality in flight (not including people who die of their own volition ), which is pretty good for what is actually one of the oldest airlines still going.

[cheb]

They had the best nickname too, Queer And Nasty, Try Another Service

[MyLittleStudPony]

I'm not gonna tell you what the actual number is of course, but even a 'normal' car is designed and tested for more than 200k these days. Trucks and vans are closer to a million.

Of course, you seldom find a car with 200k on it which isn't also 25 years old so it's a bit of a hard one to really quantify.

Loads of the vans you see with mega miles for sale would be ex-fleet stuff which smashes through loads of miles in not many years and has on-the-dot maintenance too, so again it's hard to really say/see what's going on.

Tell us the number! Tell us the number!

[MyLittleStudPony]

A cabbie recently told us the best engines he'd ever run were 90s diesels. Most of them achieved starship mileages with no engine work. He reckons cars are much more unreliable today with so many needing engine work as well as multiple sensor failures, DPF issues etc.

Exactly that ^^^

I've owned three vehicles with '90s (or earlier) diesel engines; the 2.5 TDi 5 cylinder ACV engine in my T4, the 1.8 TDCi engine in my 2007 Ford Focus (pre wet belt!) and the 2.0 HDi Citroen/Peugeot engine in my 2005 Berlingo Multispace. All of them were phased out in the early to mid 2000s due to being unable to meet emissions targets, all of them were capable of big, big mileages and all of them were replaced with smaller and far more problematic power units.

A cycnic might say that vans started to become much more car-like in their cabin comforts and infotainment systems around about the time the engines became a lot less reliable and not capable of high mileages.

'Don't worry about that smaller, more highly stressed engine sir, just look at the plush cabin and plethora of gizmos you have to play with'...

And somehow there's thousands upon thousands of modern vans for sale with 200,000 on the clocks.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/van-search ... t=year-dsc

When I was looking for a van I was amazed how ones about five years old with what I'd consider very high mileage still went for very good money.

[MyLittleStudPony]

Prii also fetch fairly decent money at 250+k miles, especially if they're young enough for private hire use.

[mangocrazy]

The van has just made its last journey prior to being driven to Darwen/Blackburn in December. I drove it back to Stafford from Sheffield and just outside Uttoxeter the familiar squawk and red light appeared. I'd only done about 60 miles on a full header tank but had been keeping up with traffic and generally driving 'normally' - for me, anyway.

So on the way back the next day I topped up the header tank and drove back never going past 2000 rpm and spending most of the time at 1800-1900 rpm. This equated to a top gear speed of about 50mph. The only time I exceeded that was down Weston Bank when I knocked it into neutral and let it freewheel. The theory was that if I didn't use any turbo boost (or only the bare minimum amount) cylinder pressure would be less and not so much coolant would be blown out.

I'm happy to say that the theory worked. I got back to Sheffield (70-75 miles) with a complete absence of squawking, and when I checked the header tank the coolant level was still just within the Min marking. I'd say that driven in that manner I coulld probably get at least 150 miles from full header tank to loud squawk.

Having said that, I was absolutely the slowest thing on the road and was passed by wagons for fun. I don't recall overtaking a single vehicle. It was a weird experience.

[weeksy]

The van has just made its last journey prior to being driven to Darwen/Blackburn in December. I drove it back to Stafford from Sheffield and just outside Uttoxeter the familiar squawk and red light appeared. I'd only done about 60 miles on a full header tank but had been keeping up with traffic and generally driving 'normally' - for me, anyway.

So on the way back the next day I topped up the header tank and drove back never going past 2000 rpm and spending most of the time at 1800-1900 rpm. This equated to a top gear speed of about 50mph. The only time I exceeded that was down Weston Bank when I knocked it into neutral and let it freewheel. The theory was that if I didn't use any turbo boost (or only the bare minimum amount) cylinder pressure would be less and not so much coolant would be blown out.

I'm happy to say that the theory worked. I got back to Sheffield (70-75 miles) with a complete absence of squawking, and when I checked the header tank the coolant level was still just within the Min marking. I'd say that driven in that manner I coulld probably get at least 150 miles from full header tank to loud squawk.

Having said that, I was absolutely the slowest thing on the road and was passed by wagons for fun. I don't recall overtaking a single vehicle. It was a weird experience.

Tbh at that stage I'd have hired a van for the day instead. Some things in life are not worth putting yourself through

[KungFooBob]

The van has just made its last journey prior to being driven to Darwen/Blackburn in December. I drove it back to Stafford from Sheffield and just outside Uttoxeter the familiar squawk and red light appeared. I'd only done about 60 miles on a full header tank but had been keeping up with traffic and generally driving 'normally' - for me, anyway.

So on the way back the next day I topped up the header tank and drove back never going past 2000 rpm and spending most of the time at 1800-1900 rpm. This equated to a top gear speed of about 50mph. The only time I exceeded that was down Weston Bank when I knocked it into neutral and let it freewheel. The theory was that if I didn't use any turbo boost (or only the bare minimum amount) cylinder pressure would be less and not so much coolant would be blown out.

I'm happy to say that the theory worked. I got back to Sheffield (70-75 miles) with a complete absence of squawking, and when I checked the header tank the coolant level was still just within the Min marking. I'd say that driven in that manner I coulld probably get at least 150 miles from full header tank to loud squawk.

Having said that, I was absolutely the slowest thing on the road and was passed by wagons for fun. I don't recall overtaking a single vehicle. It was a weird experience.

Tbh at that stage I'd have hired a van for the day instead. Some things in life are not worth putting yourself through

That's not the Yorkshire mindset!

[mangocrazy]

It was actually quite relaxing and liberating (in a weird way) bimbling along as the slowest thing on the road. Hard to explain, but there's no annoyance getting baulked by slower traffic, or people pulling out on you and then dawdling, because you are Captain Slow driving his milk float. The only thing on the road slower than you is a cyclist.

[weeksy]

It was actually quite relaxing and liberating (in a weird way) bimbling along as the slowest thing on the road. Hard to explain, but there's no annoyance getting baulked by slower traffic, or people pulling out on you and then dawdling, because you are Captain Slow driving his milk float. The only thing on the road slower than you is a cyclist.

And having everyone held up and thinking CUNNNNNNNNT!

[mangocrazy]

It was actually quite relaxing and liberating (in a weird way) bimbling along as the slowest thing on the road. Hard to explain, but there's no annoyance getting baulked by slower traffic, or people pulling out on you and then dawdling, because you are Captain Slow driving his milk float. The only thing on the road slower than you is a cyclist.

And having everyone held up and thinking CUNNNNNNNNT!

I stayed religiously in the inside lane... All bar about 10 miles were on dual carriageway or motorway. Wasn't aware of any animosity and quite frankly my dear, I didn't give a damn...