I am looking at a D250E haul truck. Nice truck, but the retarder does not work, and the brakes are a little weak. These are not deal breakers for me, but I am wondering if anyone knows how expensive these would be to fix. That way I know where I will be cost wise when I get the thing the way I want it. I know I have not given many facts, but any input would be appreciated.
we have a D300e, if it was me i would call around to the cat dealers and see if you can find someone with extensive knowledge on adt's, spend some money and have them check it out. They are fairly straight forward, I think they could tell you if its a bad problem with out much trouble.
Quackattak, Thanks for the input. The only reason I know about the issues are from a dealer evaluation of the tractor. They did a full eval. and usually err on the side of being extra picky so that the customer cannot come back to them and say they were untruthful. I will ask the dealer mechanic's opinion and estimation for sure. Just thought some of the guys on this forum that run service trucks might have a ball park idea. Take care.
It all depends on what is really wrong with each item. As I recall those trucks have external disk brakes but I don't remember if they were air over hydraulic or straight hydraulic yet. The air over units had power boosters which was the usual problem unless the brake pads are worn out. The boosters can be rebuilt pretty easily. As I recall the last ones I did were a couple of hundred in parts for each booster and about three hours of labor on each. Worn out brake pads are not hard to do but the pads are expensive and you really need to rebuild the calipers at the same time. Figure four hours of labor for each caliper and around $150 in parts per each caliper as a base line. It has been years since I've done them but this should give you an idea. The retarder issues depend on what they are using. If it is the one in the torque converter housing it can be very expensive. As I recall there is an electronic control over that type and wiring issues were common. You need some troubleshooting time to figure out just what is wrong before that can be figured.
John, Thanks for taking the time to give your opinion. You gave me some good specifics to use as starting points in my questions for the mechanics that did the evaluation.