Paccar engine

As a general rule, European engines do have much better fuel economy than american ones, at equal torque levels. On the other hand you must be aware that in terms of use, you'd better think in replacing your truck once it has run for 900.000 km.

 

I sincerely wish you the best of luck, I hope they work well for you!

 

Replace engines @ 900,000 kms ? What engines are you running? Thats terribly low mileage to replace an engine, I'd be thinking more like 2 million kms for any standard engine, I used run my scania and 12 litre Volvo's up to 1.5 m kms in the 5/6 year term I kept them without any problems, some of my old scanias are still running locally and a couple have well over 2m on the clock and are working hard everyday and still running perfectly, I even have a 1984 142 with almost 4m on the clock and it still runs ( ok a few horses have bolted the stable) but it was never rebuilt or reconditioned !

Maybe in a sense you are right, Europe only has 3 truck manufacturers capable of making a decent truck nowdays, scania, Volvo and mercedes ! The rest are rubbish! Daf/pacaar engines being among the worst! That's where the American model wins: you can select any engine or drive train for your truck.

I'm not convinced anymore that our engines have better economy than US engines, Im now convinced that. The layout of the truck has more to do with their mpg's , for eg: I ran a scania r620 6*4 alongside another r620 with a tag axle layout, same trucks , same load, the extra drive axle accounted for 1mpg difference! Now there is a guy on this forum called dice1, after some aerodynamic tweeks, fitting supersingles and some micro polishing of the diffs he is achieving as good of mileage as most trucks over here !

 

i also think that is best to change truck before 1 mil especially volvo and scania because of expensive parts if something brake down this will cost you

as for 6x4 vs 6x2

you need to know that scania drivetrain is much larger than on other trucks

when i look at US differentials they look like they will brake down immediately

when you have heavier drivetrain in motion this will result by different momentum of inertion

r780/r782 on scania 4x2/6x2/8x2 are almost same capacity as r662+r660 on 6x4/8x4

best comparison would be r660 vs rb662+r660

or rp835 vs rbp835+rp835 there you will get even more differences between single drive and tandem....


have you ever seen broken differential on scania (road truck and not caused by drivers mistake off road)
probably no

have you ever seen MAN broken differential? yes you have they are twice smaller than scania ones and must have smaller looses

 

I know what you are saying but I'm told 1 mpg is getting away light and also some American guys are saying that tag axles are giving them much better mileage, we can't discount those opinions!

Oh yeah, you are right, I've never seen a broken diff on a scania and I have seen a broken diff on a man and a mercedes and I saw a Volvo drive axle break

 

That's the axle casing on the volvo

 

Having read all the negativity regarding the DAF engines.
We only have the 12,6l which is the forerunner to the MX (12,9L). I have been trying to figure out why we are getting good service from them all round.I also spoke to a friend of mine who has a mix of about 60 MX and the older DAF12,6l.He has also had good service from them and they only do oversize up 350 000lbs.He also uses Scania,Volvo and
Western Star.There is also a guy in our area who is getting rid of all of his DAF trucks because he says they are cr4p.He is changing over to Volvo and Renault.As far as I'm concerned no trucks will last with him because of the abuse and poor maintenance.

I have had a look at what I can see as the big difference.
What is obvious is that all our trucks have put better fuel filters fitted then the standard.We have filters that take all possible water out of the fuel.
Another guy I know who had the same fuel supplier as us had problems with a number of his trucks fuel systems (MX , Cummins and Mercedes).He found out that the supplier had been illegally blending his own bio-fuel in to the diesel.The glycerin had not been removed properly.This ended with a court case and the authorities stepping in.
We had none of these problems.
We had better fuel filter systems fitted.

I had a discussion with a well respected owner of a truck workshop in the area.Although he does multiple makes of trucks , a lot of DAF trucks go there because of his expertise on them.
He says the DAF engines are very susceptible to water in the fuel.
Not only fuel system damage but they start to drip diesel or over fuel on an injector which causes oil dilution problems , scored cylinders, melted pistons or valves.
He also says the seal on the tank pick up is prone to leak water in to the tank (We seal them with sealer).
I mentioned to him what the Irish guys had to say about these trucks.
He answered buy saying ,"have you seen how much it rains there".

I'm not arguing any point here but what I have observed is that the guys with topnotch fuel filtration have not had some of the problems other guys have experienced.

 

IMO- DAF engines are not problemless, but anyway are good.

MX problem is sufisticated SCR system.

SMART injection is precision like CRD, but as I can see - more reliable.

 

Now kingQ that's very interesting, you are describing Alot of the symptoms we are seeing here! Yes it rains here all the time and because of our unique roads generally there can be Alot of standing water to drive through, one of my dafs had a water separator on it but it got it later in life maybe the damage was being gone already?

The thing is these trucks were on contract maintenance with daf for the first 2 years, why I wonder did they not fix these problems? They don't seem to do it with anyone's here as it's rare to see one with more than 600,000 kms on it, furthermore when they did break down they wouldn't honour the warranty because I wasn't getting them serviced in the dealer where I bought them! (bs I know) daf as a company have a lot to answer

 

I really don't have much time for any of the agents here.
The one that nearly bankrupted me when I started out was Mack.
Was my second truck and it went in under warranty with 5000km on the clock.
Mack dealer went belly up while I was away for 3 weeks driving in another country.
Only found the skeleton of the truck 18 months later in a junk yard.
MACK USA who appointed the dealer to represent them just washed their hands of the whole issue.I spent 5 years paying for a truck that never moved again.

I have had very poor service from Hino , Man ,Tata, Isuzu , Mercedes and Volvo.
This is usually down to incompetent , apathetic , dishonest staff more than the official company policy.