New/Prospective Owners

A collection of common faults that have people losing sleep, as suggested by Dazzer.

• Clackety Clackety Clackety, metallic sound from the engine when you start your van, particularly when it has been sat for a while. The hydraulic valve lifters drain down when they haven't been used for a while (say a few days or a week). Typically running the engine for a few minutes to pump them back up, then after a couple of miles driving they should quieten down. | see here

• Buzzer sounds from dash board. Low pressure oil warning can be loose wiring to the oil pressure sensors, faulty oil pressure sensors, or quite often there may be a bad connection in the dash pod. The printed circuit board in the dash pod quite often is the cause of many false alarms. A clean up of the contacts with a scotch pad can do wonders including brightening your dash ilumination. Sometimes odd dash behaviour is caused by a leaky windscreen playing havoc with the electrics, look for corrosion/dampness/moss/slime etc! see here

• Leaks. Unless you are fantastically wealthy, lucky or are a mechanic with time on your hands, fluid leaks seem to be something you just need to put up with. T25 ownership could be classed as an exercise in leak management. How much are you losing and how often does it need topping up? A lot of vans run happily with a coolant/oil habit. Think of it that the fluids in your van are being kept fresh rather than sloshing around mile after mile and breaking down. Gearbox oil always looks worse than it is. However, clutch/brake fluid needs sorting pronto.

• Squeaky noise from front suspension when going over bumps. Wishbone suspension bushes are quite often the culprit, although there are a number of rubber bushes under there that it could also be. One piece of advice is to spray it with silicon grease and turn up the stereo.

• Hard to find second gear when cold, be patient with it gentle force. Til it warms up, change the gearbox oil for some fresh if you don't know the history.

• Gears wont select, could be clutch mechanism, but quite often the gear selection gubbins which is a solid bar from frot to back with various levers bushes known as "the linkage" can be worn. The excessive play can result in some or all gears being inoperative. To test remove the linkage at the gearbox there are two bolts that hold a cup on a ball socket that moves the gear slector on the gearbox. Make a note of the orientation of the plate so you can put it back the correct way on the gearbox flange. Manually select the gears by hand. If this works OK you probably have a linkage issue and not a gearbox issue.