Preventative
Maintenance :- Some Tips |
Richard Oliver |
Keeping Your 4WD
Fit
Do you know where aerobics
came from and why it became so popular? It started because of some
experiments carried out by Dr Kenneth Cooper for the US Air Force in the
mid-1960s.
These experiments gave all
of us the answer to an age-old question: "How much exercise is
enough?"
Cooper was studying pilot fitness
at the time and he was the first person to ever work out (in a scientific
sense) how much exercise anyone needed to do to stay fit. Then he
went on to grade many common exercises and assign them points.
He worked out this if you got
30 points of exercise a week - in any combination of walking, swimming,
cycling and so forth - the end result would be that you'd be fit.
I was reading about this in
Cooper's original book on aerobics over the summer (no, I'm not a fitness
guru - it was just a very interesting book - if you're interested, it's
Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper M.D, 1968).
This started me thinking about
a similar question that often comes up from my customers: "How much
4WD maintenance is enough?"
Catch Things
Early
The essence of preventative
4WD maintenance is pretty straightforward: repair things before they
fail. Especially critical things where a component failure
can leave you stranded miles from nowhere or facing ruinous repair bills.
But the question is: how do
you know when something is likely to fail? Especially when it's not a regular
service component?
Sometimes external visual
inspection or a road test by an experienced mechanic can detect faults. Another
way is to make use of the experiences of experts. We've been repairing 4WD's
for over as decade now (and I have a degree in Automotive Engineering myself)
so we're able to anticipate when particular components are
likely to cause problems pretty accurately.
The list below isn't comprehensive,
but here are some tips we've found about five vital, infrequently looked-at
components that I'd like to pass on (and please bear in mind that I'm
quoting average time frames. Depending on what you do with your own 4WD,
this could go up or down a bit)
5 Key Components To
Watch
1. Timing Belts
Timing belts should normally
be changed at 100,000 kms, but if they've been contaminated with heavy dirt
or oil they can fail earlier - usually with a lot of noise and repair bills
running into several thousand dollars. I'd suggest you change them every
80,000 to 90,000 kms
2.
Starter/Alternator
By about 100,000 kms when these
items are taken apart they usually exhibit a fair amount of wear and are
not easily repaired by the side of the road - and you certainly won't be
going very far without them! Again, I suggest you overhaul them every 80,000
to 90,000 kms.
3. Rear Wheel
Bearings
Fully floating axles (the ones
with the big hub in the centre) should be repacked at the same time as the
fronts. Semi-floating axles are a little bit different - they need special
pullers and presses to service them. But both types should be attended to
at around 40,000 kms
4. Winches
Winches are exposed to all
the mud, dust, dirt and water that we throw at them but are used very rarely
(unless, of course, you're an exceptional daredevil or you drive in tremendously
rugged terrain!). Because of this an annual strip, clean and lubrication
is usually enough to keep them humming.
5. Diesel Fuel
Injectors
These are certainly not serviceable
by the side of the road! You should get them checked every 90,000 to 100,000
kms |