It's annual motorhome fettling time (coming up to its 4th anniversary).
The Fiat (Professional) dealer charges for standard servicing are extortionate, so I do my own, thank you very much. There isn't much that is over-challenging in a standard service, and even using genuine Fiat parts (bought from an online retailer), the savings on labour charges are significant. (My experience of the quality of work of three separate local Fiat Professional dealers have also been rather less than satisfactory).
(I had a motorhome on a Transit some years back. The local Transit specialist main dealer was efficient, good to deal with, and with labour-rates about half the Fiat dealers, and, incidentally, almost half those for the Ford car side of the business, with which it shared premises and a reception - albeit the latter on the other side of a partition. I know, because I also had a Mondeo at the time).
Doing the work in my own time means I can spread it out in bite-sized chunks, and also be rather more thorough than a main-dealer service.
So, yesterday I had the front wheels off to check and clean the brakes. The wheel bolts were a bit of a challenge, but I finally managed to remove them, and in cleaning the OSF brake, noted that one of the caliper piston dust boots had split. There's no sign of any issue arising therefrom, no wear, no binding, no leak (the seal is further inside) but patently it's best to remedy asap. I was tempted to do it myself, but I'm not entirely sure if the boot alone can be replaced on these brakes without full disassembly, and not fancying a large, undrivable brick on the drive if I were to fail part-way through, everything was cleaned up and put back together. I'm looking for somwhere local to do the work. The other side was fine, and cleaned up nicely. Such issues usually arise through "nipping" the boot when removing/replacing the caliper, but, at least to my knowledge, it hasn't been touched since it left the factory. The chances of this being spotted at a dealer service are absolutely nil.
Today, it was the turn of the rear brakes, and time to grease the rear axle (yes, really - it has grease nipples!). The rear brakes are disc, but the handbrake is a drum let into the disc ("drum in hat"), and the, small, shoes need adjusting up at intervals, which requires wheels off.
The wheel bolts on the rear wheels were even more of a challenge, I managed to get three of five loose on the first wheel, before failing with the other two, and tweaking my back to boot. I abandoned the brake work, and started on greasing the axle, a job which requires the weight taking off the bearing on each side, alternately. (Jacked up until wheel off the ground).
With the first one off the ground, I used the grease-gun, only to realise it was out of grease. I had a spare cartridge in the garage (I've had the grease for years, since I las had a motorhome with an Al-Ko chassis and it's only 6 squeezes on each side annually). Unfortunately, that cartridge was split, but I manged to transfer enough into the old (empty) cartridge, only for the grease-gun to start playing-up (in oh-so-many ways). The next hour or so was spent spreading grease all over the place, and wasting much of it, until I at last managed to get it working with just about enough left to complete the job. After much swearing both sides were jacked and greased, followed by a monumental clean-up. A 20 minute job took a good few hours.
I'm now sourcing a breaker bar for the wheel bolts, (though, if/when it goes in for the boot, I can get the garage to "break" them off) and a new cartridge of grease is on order.
A hot bath and Ibuprofen later and the back is still rather (read very) iffy.
The rest of the service should be a doddle in comparison, and I've done it all before (it's really only an oil change and full set of filters - though the pollen filter on a Ducato is a job for a double-jointed, long-armed dwarf).
As you were, I simply needed a grumble.
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