Caterpillar wanted 3,000.00 and change to change coolant, change hoses and belts and thermostats.
There is ll kinds of room around our engine to boot. Twenty years ago even ten years ago, maybe I could d it myself. One factor may be that they know many/most RVers are not able to o this fairly simple work themselves so they charge what they can get.
But...These places work on the big trucks and the charges are covered by companies that charge off the work as expense. Technicians do not get but a fraction of the 150.00 to 200.00 an hour or whatever the rate is.
The companies have a lot of business expense to cover, of course it is charged off on taxes. I have no idea or where the middle ground on all this is but for Individuals these kind of charges are hard for many of us to bear.
In Tucson at the Cat shop we had batteries and dipstick replaced. I don't remember how much but it was reasonable. Biggest cost was they had to get the batteries from a Golf Cart shop. Quoted one price but charged them/us a lot more when they found out it was for an RV. I can't remember their name but would recommend them. Pulling that generator appears to be a bear of a job.
I am going to change the coolant to prevent any of those problems if I find a shop around here that has a reasonable rate. No thought by Freightliner to make dropping the generator easy. Still there may be a couple o tricks to simplify the job. We use to have some Techs from Freightliner, Cat and Cummins here.
Have not seen any posts by them in ages.
