Juddian:
no no no, you’ve got it all wrong, its brakes to slow gears to go, doncha know… …makes for easy training and test passes too…
In practice the MAN exhauster is one of the best when its working, if used correctly with manual gear selection for maximum effort the brakes need not be used in normal driving except to bring the vehicle to a final halt, this at max 44t.
In comparison with Scania’s puny exhauster effort that makes a noise, and thats its whole contribution, the MAN exhaust brake is a gem.
MANs get some stick here, meself included, but if issued to a driver or combination of drivers who actually give a toss they are a perfectly serviceable lorry, they do not take kindly to abuse from the steering wheel operative contingent.
I entirely agree - the poorest in my experience were Mercs.
Until the euro 5 rubbish came in the merc used compression braking.But compression braking screws up the add blue system so they took to using the rubbish exhaust flap valve system.Thats why they dont work anymore.
Rusty Nail:
It’s a genuine MAN option at 540. Same engine as the 480, the D26 I believe.
We previously had a TGA with the D26 480 lump which was brilliant so we opted for a bit more grunt when speccing the new one.
The truck is a recovery vehicle so the weight varies massively. It weighs 20 tonnes on its own and some days may be towing an empty 7.5 tonner and then the next day it may be towing 44 tonnes so I can’t give you an accurate fuel return figure. It has also only done 30,000 K’s so she’s still running in. Another factor to consider is the amount of pro work it does. The previous TGA returned a very rough average of 8.9mpg over 5 years and 250,000 k’s.
As for the spec, obviously we wanted the extra horses for when we grossing nearly 65t and this was also the reason for speccing the retarder option. It had to be a manual gearbox as well. Makes life so much easier when trying to manoeuvre and pull heavier weights. The result is a very easy truck to drive.
Thanks for that, i kinda like the MAN, not unbreakable like MAN’s of yore, but very quiet and if you allow the engine to lug right down by forcing it to stay in gear it has a lot of low revved grunt, even in humble 440 guise, the poxy autobox from hell won’t allow any of that if left in auto.
Wouldn’t so no to another 100 horses mind…
…makes for easy training and test passes too…
