• Dodge's 16-tonne Commando has been around long enough for
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it to be familiar to most fleet fitters, and this very familiarity tends to breed the feeling that there's nothing new to learn about its servicing and maintenance. This is a dangerous attitude and can cost operators a great deal of unnecessary expenditure as we found out when we saw how the fitters at Canterbury Motor Company hanclle its maintenance.
Very few special tools are needed for all but the most major work on a Commando.Indeed, the only special tool that was used on a major C service was for the rear-hub oil seal wear ring, and this was made in the workshop by the fitters themselves.
Most of the servicing is straight forward enough to need little comment, but where many owners who do their own maintenance make mistakes is either on parts of the truck which have been updated over the year or which differ from other trucks.
Having said this, we also found a number of instances where operators had cost themselves money by not recognising early symptoms of misadjustment or, we are sorry to say, by a surprising lack of care. Constant vigilance, as a president of America once put it, may well be the price of freedom. In maintenance, lack of vigilance can lead to a very high price in unnecessary repairs.
• by Peter Wallage