Charge Air Cooler

[BBBEEBOP]

Who owns the warranty on the charge air cooler, Freightliner or the engine manufacturer?

[DriVer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBBEEBOP Who owns the warranty on the charge air cooler, Freightliner or the engine manufacturer?

Freightliner. They specify what they want for the cool pack/charge air cooler per the needs of the engine. There could be more than one supplier for the charge air cooler and FCCC will buy what meets their needs.

The cooler does not ship from Cummins or CAT.

[BBBEEBOP]

Thanks Driver,

Just had mine replaced, rotted out. No warranty too old.

[Pigman]

Rotted out in a 2005 Vectra? Unless you've got 200,000 miles on it, I'd try to find out why. This is DEFINITELY not normal.

John

[BBBEEBOP]

Why is a good question? But after 5 years there is no warranty left on Freigthliner parts. As my CAT dealer said who has a good RAD man the cooler and hydraulic pipes couldn't take the pressure and were swelled. The cooler itself was distorted and showed signs of clacium corrosion. I bought this unit used and who knows what happened before. Now it has a heavy duty cooler and new hydraulic pipes. I didn't get to see the old cooler as parts delivery was slow and my rig was in for other service. Took almost a month because of a $3.00 fitting that freightliner could not supply.

[J Walker]

Your description of the charge air cooler is different than what I think it is. I may be wrong but I believe the charge air cooler is a separate coil with fins (radiator) that mounts in front of the engine radiator. The charge air cooler is cooled by the engine fan, not the engine coolant. Rubber hoses connect the charge air cooler to the turbo charger and the maximum pressure should be about 30 psi. I suspect that your repair could have been an overkill, especially with the explanation you were given.

[BBBEEBOP]

Yes you are right, what gave you the idea that it was cooled by the engine coolant?

[chasfm11]

I believe that JWalker was responding to your description as I might have. The only place on my CAC system where I would have concerns about taking pressure would be at the joints where it transitions from the pipe itself to the CAC and then out of the CAC and into the pipe the feeds in engine intake. It is more from them coming loose than from they breaking due to the boost pressure. My boost gauge confirms what JWalker told you - I get a maximum of 28lbs at full boost.

Truthfully, I have an inherent distrust of Freightliner dealers. I've been to couple of the them personally. My experiences there are mirrored by what I've read here and on another forum. IMHO, some of them try to take advantage of MH owners whom they feel are not knowledgeable enough to catch them in their misrepresentations of the facts.

I don't have a lot of experience with CACs. I cannot, however, imagine a situation in which a CAC could be as distorted as your description implies without a lot of other parts being affected, too. On our engine, the actually radiator is the downstream (air flow wise) component of the "sandwich". If the CAC got hot enough to distort the metal, I cannot imagine how the radiator was not also affected. This assumes, however, that the damage your are describing was not physical damage caused by something like the fan blowing apart and the broken blades slamming into the fins. That would not explain your description of the need to replace the pipes unless they were similarly damaged.

We are all trying to learn more about the components of our MHs and when I don't understand a post, I try to respond and ask questions. Perhaps someone will have a better description of the damage that happened to you and can help us all to understand it.

I'm certain that you relayed the information as it was presented to you. It is just not making sense to me. But I'm certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Charlie

[J Walker]

Here are the descriptions used that don't fit a CAC. A CAC can't rot out with just air inside and outside of it. There won't be a calcium built up with no water coolant involved. These problems might be found with the engine radiator but not the CAC. If the CAC and its hoses were swelling then they were defective. It is highly unusual for that to happen. Referring to the hoses as hydraulic seems to be a misnomer to me. As chasfm11 said, I am sure that these are the things that the shop told you. They may have fixed a problem but I would really like to hears something I can understand when they describe the problem and solution.

[BBBEEBOP]

Sorry about the poor description guys, but I am less knowledgeable then you. I can only report what I was told. My CAT dealer did think that the pipes/hoses may have been low quality but I never saw them after removal. All I know is he said he replaced them an the cooler with heavy duty. Again, I apoligize for the poor description and will try harder the next time. (I hope I don't have a next time) Thanks for the input.

[BBBEEBOP]

Just tring to educate myself now that I have had the problem found this site thought it might be of interest. Fleet Air Technology - Charge Air Coolers
PS: about a year ago I ram through ten miles of road construction in Montana, calcium and red clay in a light rain. Rig and toad were covered with a brown slush took two washings to get them totally clean, I wonder what the under carraige and other components looked like.

[chasfm11]

There is no need to apologize. I certainly wasn't writing to be critical of you and suspect that JWalker feels the same. I can promise you that I didn't understand as much as you do when we first got our DP and it has taken these 6 years to get me to the level of mediocre understanding that I now have. A lot of of that growth in knowledge was my questioning things that just didn't seem right to me. Usually, others with greater experience in the given area being discussed will clear things up. I've learned a lot more from being wrong than from correctly assessing situations. Somehow my mistakes stick with me longer

Let me give you an example. I took our RV to an independent shop for wheel bearing inspection and fluid replacement. He told me that he had to pull the wheels and replace seals,etc. The charge would be $450. Afterwards, he said that he didn't have replace the seals and that pulling the wheels wasn't necessary. He still charged me $450. So, for that kind of money, he opened the drains on the bottom of the reservoirs and filled them with new oil. That is just shameful. That same shop, on the same trip, charged me $500 to replace my engine coolant. He carefully noted on the invoice the steps he took to do that. Drain the engine, fill with water, run 'till hot, dump and refill with coolant to proper level. He charged me for 2 gallons of antifreeze. I left scratching my head. His shop rate was $85 per hour which meant he spent over 4 hours to get to that total for that work.

Fast forward a couple of years. I:

• drained the coolant
• filled with water and flush - followed the instructions on the flush and drove for about 1/2 hour.
• drained the system and flushed with fresh water. I captured all of the original coolant and the 2nd draining for recycling.
• ran the engine again and flushed again
• filled the engine with distilled water, ran and flushed again
• replaced all of the engine hoses and clamps
• filled with 5 gallons of coolant (mine is a 10 gallon system) and topped off with distilled water.

I did this all in just over 6 hours and this was my first time working a diesel engine. It took the guy 2/3 as much time to do less than 1/3 of the work - and he is a professional??? Needless to say, I never went back to that shop.


If you will look back over my posts, you will find several different problems that I had - A/C drive belt, speedometer, etc. where I fixed stuff that Frieghtliner didn't fix or messed up. I never ever claimed to be a good mechanic, especially a diesel mechanic so when I can do better that the guys that I pay, I have a right to be skeptical. A service manager at the Ft. Worth dealer told me that a loud thumping noise in my brakes when I backed up was rust from my not driving the vehicle enough. What it really was was the automatic slack adjusters not being activated because I wasn't braking hard enough. Since I started going through the air brake system checkout regularly, where I leak test the system under heavy pedal pressure, the thumping has never reoccured. I guess I finally knocked all of the rust off, huh?

I hope you get my point. I'm just trying to say that the information given to you didn't make sense to at least me. It could well be something that I should understand better that will help me in the future. Part of me believes, however, that you weren't given a correct explanation. Getting that might help you.

[chasfm11]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBBEEBOP Just tring to educate myself now that I have had the problem found this site thought it might be of interest. Fleet Air Technology - Charge Air Coolers PS: about a year ago I ram through ten miles of road construction in Montana, calcium and red clay in a light rain. Rig and toad were covered with a brown slush took two washings to get them totally clean, I wonder what the under carraige and other components looked like.

That's a good thought. It is possible that particulate debris picked up of the road and funneled by the fan into the CAC damaged it. That does not explain, however, why the "hoses" were damaged in any way or why other components didn't suffer ill effects from that same debris.

[J Walker]

BBBEEBOP, I am glad you took my posts as constructive which I intended them to be. All I was trying to do was to understand your posts and now I believe I do. Your article about failures of CAC is interesting. I am going to look further into my turboboost pressure, but I have never seen it quite reach 30psi. I am going to see what happens when the exhaust brake is on. I do see how a CAC with tube walls a little too thin could fail and how vibration could cause a failure. It is surely something we don't wish to happen because it surely would be an expensive item to fix.