RoyH Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 I am putting this as a separate topic because I don't want to labour the main topics with a bit of rambling. When I was a Transport Fleet Engineer long ago and had repsonibility for the engineering aspects of national fleet of some 1200 heavy and light goods vehilcles one of the operating companies had a fleet of 80 British Leyland 3.5ton gross FG box vans. Those old enough will remember the cabs had the doors at 45deg on the rear corner of the cab. These were replaced on a rolling programme and new models appeared with various "improvements". One of these was to change the mounting of the rear of the rear leaf springs with a slipper instead of a rubber bushed shackle. Presumblely to eliminate the wear in the rubber bushes. A few months into the use of those vehicles with this modification and we were finding the the rear gearbox oils seals and bearings were breaking up. To cut this story, which is getting a bit long, the final result of the cause was that they had failed to realise that as the rear axle moved up and down to accomodate road surfaces the arc it was moving in was no longer restrained by the shackle but it was moving futher and the drive shaft was bottoming on the sliding splines. This was pushing the whole of the transmission and the engine forwards and the weakest link being the rear gearbox bearing was collapsing. All of the propshafts had to be shortened I think by, if I rembember correctly, 2 inches and British Leyland paid for the lot. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the Sevel engineers have modified something and then continued to use some original components and the have failed to notice that unintentional consequences will result. Although I don't have a motorhome now, I have a caravan, I am following this with great interest to see what the outcome will be. I hope some bright spark comes across the basic reason soon. At that time we had people blaming drivers and overloading and all sorts of reasons but eventually by means of an accurate engineering test we proved our point and it was accepted. History does have a habit of repeatiing itself and even after 30 years and all sorts of computer aids etc,. engineering is still not perfect. Good Luck. RoyH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 Aparently only the motorhome variant of the Sevel chassis has slightly longer drive shafts. Not sure why. Does anybody know? C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaun Posted February 14, 2008 Share Posted February 14, 2008 If this were the case, wouldn't the judder in reverse which is being experienced in the latest Ducatos, affect each and every one of them. I can understand where a fault manifests itself in only some vehicles, say, due to imprecise production tolerances. However, a fundamental design flaw would surely affect each and every vehicle. Shaun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Clive: Please could you reveal the source of that snippet of information? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fred grant Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 slitely longer drive shafts is the least of clives problems me ansums. perhaps it was mrs masseuse> f Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyStothert Posted February 15, 2008 Share Posted February 15, 2008 Ours is van conversion. Three of the others are van conversions. 2 have 2.2 litre engines. The majority are 130 2.3 litre coachbuilt motorhomes, but the inclusion of three vans suggest that either the driveshaft theory is spericals, or it's immaterial. And who cares? Fiat should just bite the financial bullet and sort 'em out. Don't buy a Fiat or Peugeot/Citroen based motorhome is the answer at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davenewellhome Posted February 16, 2008 Share Posted February 16, 2008 I thikn Roy's tale was given as an example of previous design issues with motor vehicles not as a specific guide as to what may be the cause of this judder. I'm fairly confident in saying that drive shaft length is a red herring. D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoyH Posted February 17, 2008 Author Share Posted February 17, 2008 You are right Dave. I was only using my tale as an example of what can go wrong and not suggesting that the current problem was with the same components. Sorry if I misled some. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davenewellhome Posted February 17, 2008 Share Posted February 17, 2008 I don't think it was anyone's intention to mislead Roy, least of all yours. I just felt a little clarification was in order as we seemed to be heading down the road of the driveshafts being a contributory factor, which I'm pretty sure they're not. :-D D. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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