Good article in this months An Cosantoir on the Combined Vehicle Base Workshops (CVBW) in the Curragh. Here are a few interesting quotes relevant to this thread:
the Defence Forces fleet of approximately 2,100 vehicles
"With the diverse nature of the DF fleet it is not possible to carry all the diagnostic equipments that may be unique to some of these vehicles" ... In cases where we cannot undertake particular work on a vehicle the job is contracted to a recognised dealer".
"... we have to have parts for every one of the over 160 types of vehicle currently in service with the Defence Forces. Many of these vehicles also have variants and we have parts and service kits for all of these as well"
... these are just some of the items that make up the labyrinth of some 90,000 parts stored here.
"... One of the biggest problems we have is not only the wide range of vehicles in the Defence Forces but the variants as well. Take the Nissan Patrol for eaxmple. We have a RD28 2.8 turbo-diesel engine. There is also a 3-litre injection engine. There are also other 2.8-litre variants of this as well. The vehicles may look the same but they have completely different engines ... parts, service kits and computer diagnostic software for all the different variants." ... new Nissan Patrol petrol GRs. These are automatic transmission, which means a completely different gearbox ...
For example, the charging system was giving problems all over the world and when we discovered the problem here we also found how to cure it... We passed on our findings to Mowag and the problem has now been solved.
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