Diesel cooler placement .

[Sunny43.5]

Hi guys I thought this one would be a good point of interest , this happened late last year . I was returning home with my son when we had to pull off the road for one of those emergency rest stops [you know the ones you see with guys with their backs to the traffic] . Any way we pulled back onto the road a drove back towards home , I heard a thump under the van from the passengers side as we took off . A little bit later we were waiting at a set of lights to turn right onto a main road there was a small downhill slope , as we entered the corner the van suddenly slewed sideways . My first thought was that we had lost a tyre and it had rolled off the rim , I pulled over at the side and got out to look at the rear tyre not flat ??????? then I noticed a large wet patch under the front side under the passengers door on the road . Diesel fuel !!!!! and bloody lots of it were spewing out over the road [no wonder we went sideways ].
We arrived home shortly after to discover that some brilliant designer had decided to fit the diesel cooler under the passengers side directly behind the passengers front wheel . As we had pulled back onto the road a stone had flicked up and bang punctured the cooler right at the in pipe from the fuel tank . What amazed me was that the whole under side of these vans have a plastic covering and other than the exhaust , this diesel cooler is the only thing on top of the plastic unprotected . My question was as these vans are designed in Europe with left hand drive you would have thought that they would know the passengers side would be the most vunerable for us poor buggers down under who drive on the left hand side of the road , and also that this is the side that would be most likely to spend time off the edge of the bitumen . End result I removed the cooler and ran a bypass pipe , it has not caused any running problems so if it happens to any one this can be done without any reduction of performance etc . Howard

[BrianJ]

Thanks for the feedback, what bad luck and potentially dangerous. I have often wondered what that cooler was.

I have been on hundreds of kilometers of outback dirt roads and not had this happen yet. Do you have front mudflaps on your van, or would they be in the wrong place to protect it.

I must inspect mine since my trip to Northern Territory!

Brian

[Sunny43.5]

Yes the flaps are there but the rock still got past , I can only guess it may have bounced back up , Howard

[4wheels]

Hi Howard,

My fuel cooler was also a casuality of my Cape Yorke trip. Not punctured, just bent, crimping one of the pipes, but not enough to cause a noticable loss of power. In fact, I didn't know about it till I had the van serviced on my return. It would have been a lot more of a problem if it had leaked badly miles from anywhere. I have made a skid tray for the fuel tank, as that regularly bottoms out off road, tearing the support straps, but didn't cover the cooler, thinking that would compromise it's effectiveness, but I might have to rethink that now.

Brian R.

[T5 Double off road]

Hi rough road users - my son has electronic Tdi Hi-Lux 4x4 2005 it also has a diesel cooler like T5 but it is mounted well up out of harm's way so as I get well off road at times I have recently removed the two brackets that hold the cooler and bent them in just in the right places to hold the cooler about 3" higher, I am hoping this will now be OK - remember these modern hi-pressure diesel's heat up the fuel and in summer temps with plastic pipes & tanks would you risk running without one !!

[Transporter]

That's good idea, thanks for that tip.
I went through a few rough tracks and forest trials like and so far so good. I will certainly look at the bending the 2 brackets when I'm under my T5 next time.

[Sunny43.5]

Our van is now 4 years on from removing the cooler and still no operational problems , its unlikely that ours would ever see the outback so I won,t worry about it . My main gripe was the poor design of where it was placed for Australian use , a simple mesh grill would have been the easiest way of protecting the cooler which is made of alloy and is by nature going to be easily damaged . Its a small thing but stupid designs need to be highlighted , our moto cross bikes are the same victims of design stupidity they have twin radiators which are directly behind the front wheel and so cop heaps of stones . So the smart thinking aftermarket people have made metal mesh shields to protect them .