No Power Steering and Battery Light

[bcredliner]

Originally Posted by ants_oz

Replacing whichever parts are generally involved in failure is plain common sense.

CN90 - your example of the cooling system systemic issue on the E39 is an excellent one. Where parts within a system are known to fail, only a sub0standard technician would replace only the failed part in that system. The reason being, they are generally asked to warrant their work, and how can that occur when they know there are other failure-prone elements they have not at the least inspected, at best replaced.

Do it once, do it right.

To misquote an old adage - a rich man fixes something once. A poor man fixes something many times.

I have acknowledged at least twice that best practice is to do an overhaul of the system.

As you know, techs replace only what is authorized by the owner. I think you can say a good tech should/would advise one of the risk (significantly less than a certainty) of doing less than an overhaul. There probably a tech or two somewhere that wouldn't take the work unless they did the overhaul. I don't know of him. Yes, they stand by their work which means if they didn't do the work they don't stand by it.

From my point of view the following would be appropriate : I feel strongly that the cooling system should be overhauled every X miles or X years. That is because the cooling system failures can cause very expensive engine problems that I have seen occur when the system is not overhauled. While the cooling system components can have very different life cycles it is not unusual that they fail near the same time, especially if the vehicle has overheated. There are those that successfully replace components as they fail. That is a higher risk scenario but a direction you might want to consider. If you choose to do so be sure you understand how and how often to inspect the cooling system so you are more likely to recognize a problem before it happens. In cases, such as a bad water pump, several other cooling system components will be at least partially removed or accessible. That being the case it will be more economical in the longer run to replace those parts as well.

I'm done.