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Holy poo poo I forgot this thread existed. Looks like I've got some back-reading to do.InterceptorV8 posted:They installed them wrong. I don't know how they installed them wrong. I mean I know HOW they installed them wrong, but it is such a rookie tire mistake that I can't loving believe it. So now that I am back home, I get to go back to a professional tire shop and have them completely dismounted from the wheels and remounted as a complete set. There's 2 different kinds of tire guy. The crazy masochists who actually enjoy that line of work and the guys who are simply too loving stupid to make decent money doing anything else. The problem is, most of the people in group A end up in a service truck so anybody you see in a shop are generally group B (or group A's who don't have a license or just don't like pulling the ridiculously long shifts you get on the road). I busted tires for 6 years, and if I hadn't developed back problems I'd probably still be doing it. Also your drives are caps right? because the problem you're describing sounds like a tread misalignment (literally they didn't roll the tread on straight at the retread plant) or casing issue. My understanding is that because the US tire industry is made up of a million different mom-n-pop shops (as opposed to us up north, basically in Western Canada we have 4 main chains of tire shops and a handful of independent guys around the hub cities) good quality control is not a prevalent thing in the retread market. It's one of the main reasons caps have such a bum rap, when at Kal we had a failure rate on our caps that was comparable to (and sometimes the same as, depending on how many group Bs were working at the retread plant on a given day) virgins. Anyways I fix trucks now (HET in a shithole drivetrain/CVIP shop), moving up in the world and all that. On paper it's not much better for my spine but when you have jacks and cranes to lift poo poo there's a lot less opportunity to do something stupid and put myself back in physio. I haven't been at it for long enough to get any really good stories yet but I'm sure that's coming.
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Jan 19, 2014 17:21
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InterceptorV8 posted:I wonder about that. Our shop gets pretty good caps, unlike the strange poo poo that you find around LA, I think they are Bandags recaps, but they are the ones that are California approved tires for the tutti-frutti CARB laws I believe. Now since you are the man with the knowledge, do they mark the recaps like they do virgins for static balance? Bandag was bought by Bridgestone a couple years ago and is now in direct competition with MRT (Michelin's retread division), and they're both pushing the quality really hard as a result. They won't actually sell you bulk tread anymore unless you've got their specific equipment, which is increasingly automated (the coolest bits being the casing analyzers, which create a vacuum around the tire and watch how the casing reacts to find separations or air pockets). Anyways, balance on a cap is a pretty tricky business. They're not marked, but initially the high spot (red mark on a virgin) and heavy spot (yellow) are generally both at the seam of the tread on a cap. In theory, standard procedure for us was to mount them so that the seam on the outer is 180 degrees from the seam on the inner, though in practice ~98% of the time our caps were uniform enough we didn't have to bother unless we knew a driver ran bobtail or high speed/light load a lot or had a princess-and-the-pea level of sensitivity (which is why I suggested you probably have a bad one on there somewhere, it should never make a truck handle like Michael J. Fox is driving no matter how they're mounted). If they hit the end of the roll at the wrong time though, you'll end up with 2 seams on a tire. Not necessarily a bad thing, you just use the midpoint between the 2 seams as your heavy spot. But notice I said initially. For the first 3-400 miles (more or less depending on speed/load) the freshly cured rubber breaks in with the rubber that's already had a full tread's worth of miles put on (or 2, 3... I've seen a casing run as many as 7 lives though it's rare to see more than 3). When they finally start to jive with each other your high spot, if it wasn't too severe, has probably stayed at the same spot but settled down a bit and your heavy spot could have moved anywhere on the tire. If a driver/company was dead set on having a set of caps spun on a balancer we'd insist they run a good trip or two and come back. As far as your issue goes though, you're on the right track taking it to a known competent shop anyway. I was always fond of the 'jackstand cruise' method, jacking all the drives up and running the truck up to a fairly low speed to look for runout. The safety risks inherent to "driving" a stationary vehicle means some guys and/or their managers don't like that method though. If the tires are confirmed to roll straight the next place I'd look would be to see if they were mounted with water in them- this is a double whammy of dipshittery as it wrecks the wheel (and if they're steel it makes it 10x harder for the next guy) and makes your poo poo shake like a 5 year old on pepsi and pop rocks. I once had a beer trailer that had so much water in the tires that the vibration was ruining the product.
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Jan 25, 2014 22:07
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CannonFodder posted:Aren't the CounterAct balance beads just tiny golf balls, in essence? The density of a golf ball isn't ideal, and they bounce around too much. The range of speed where they do more good than harm is very narrow. Beads work well enough until you have to clean them out to patch a hole (if any of them are hanging out around the beads of the tire when you air up it can cause separations- and they love to stick to the lube. there's a reason you're supposed to toss the whole bag in without opening it). A few of my customers have tried those rings that bolt between the wheel and drum (which are ball bearings set in fluid) and feedback was good until it got cold as poo poo and the fluid started freezing/gelling up on them. They have new one with a thinner silicone fluid that doesn't freeze though.
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Jan 26, 2014 01:49
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Snowdens Secret posted:How do you mount a tire with water in it? Is this a matter of not drying your compressed air or are you saying people pull unmounted tires out of the rain and just chuck them on? Google maps satellite of my old shop:  Bear in mind those are all stacked 10-12 high. And that's the smallest commercial shop in the city. It's also the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes. There's just enough water, it's nice and warm but still shady inside a tire. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 17:54
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InterceptorV8 posted:Or if road service, the spares on the backs of trucks collect all kinds of poo poo. Oh gently caress does that ever get nasty. Canadian companies tend not to use spare racks though, you see 'em infrequently on trailers (usually trailers from the mid-late '90s) but never on a tractor. I've only used a truck spare twice (both were on Swift units, we took care of all their calls in western Canada). First was in the middle of winter and it took me more time to clean the ice and road grime/gravel out of the tire than the whole rest of the call took. And trailer spares if present were usually twice as hosed as the tire I was taking off anyway. I never left the shop on a call night without at least a cheap 22.5 cap in the back of my truck. Goddamn, recalling all this poo poo after nearly 2 years out of it and pursuing another career has got me wanting to do a 'stories from the tire biz' thread, like all those GBS 'stories from my job' threads from around 04-06 before GBS was a shitpile. I miss the tire business to the point where I look forward to running over nails and wearing a set out, cause it means I can go back to the old shop (though only a couple of guys from the old crew are left, high turnover rates are inherent to the business). I think I'll be drafting a couple up in Word when I get time, and if I like the result and nobody says it's a bad idea for an AI thread I'll make it happen.
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Jan 27, 2014 00:47
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I'm surprised a Dale Jr. edition Volvo made it to Europe. They only made like 150 of 'em and you'd think they all stayed in the south... but I guess Russia is the Florida of Europe.
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May 5, 2014 05:42
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PainterofCrap posted:I was driving to South Carolina from New Jersey this weekend, and after staring at a ton of truck-butt, I wondered: Cost. Engine retarders and no fluid to boil mean major brake fade issues are nonexistant in all but the hairiest of mountain roads, and since 90% of foundations take the same drums/shoes, most shoes are relined and volume dictates price, poo poo costs basically nothing but labor to replace (parts on a standard assembly are under $200 per wheel end at retail pricing for drum, shoes and spring/roller kit, if you get the good brand-name stuff) Discs are starting to come into the fold, and as they become more popular they will be cheaper to maintain because there's fuckall for labor in a pad swap so they'll snowball that way pretty quickly in the next decade or two. But there's a lot of market inertia involved too since there are millions upon millions of vehicles with 3600A drums and Q+ shoes.
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May 11, 2014 22:15
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InterceptorV8 posted:Too much poo poo hanging off the engine anymore. Remember when I picked up that brand new Volvo 670 with the piss-tank? Fucker was the same way. Please don't call them piss-tanks. It's a fun nickname but it also perpetuates a myth that causes stranded drivers to try a thing that doesn't work and also causes mechanics to have a really bad day. Also creates confusion with the (admittedly very rare) case that a truck has onboard actual black water storage. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 19:00
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It's all fun and games until you're personally the one who has to flush  a person's urine out of an emissions system.
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May 17, 2014 20:16
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angryhampster posted:Our 2012-2013 Prostars with the Maxxforce engine seem to blow EGR coolers like mad. They've become such an issue with stranding drivers in the middle of nowhere that we're trading them all already. We usually don't trade till 450k, so looking at roughly half that mileage with the Prostars. Wait, they still haven't figured out how to make an EGR cooler last, even after the VT fiasco? gently caress me, I'm glad those things aren't selling well around here. Shadokin posted:the amount of sensors that can stop working, never throw a code, but cause something completely else to stop working or stop working correctly is insane. Engines and emissions poo poo honestly isn't even that bad once you get into an AutoShift (the F is optional in its name and is frequently dropped by anyone who's worked on one). Literally 95% of the trucks that get towed to my shop are Autoshit issues. Not only are they inherently a bad idea (basically a robot sitting on top of an otherwise ordinary RTLO-box), the implementation is the most claptrap garbage I've ever seen from Eaton. The ECUs and diagnostic software seem to have been programmed by someone who only made it about halfway through Java for Dummies- the diagnostics give you (vague) trouble codes and very little else (actual sensor readouts? forced servo/solenoid operation? HAH you don't need any of that, just start throwing sensors and servos at it til the code goes away you pussy), and the ECUs frequently get themselves into poo poo-flinging competitions with the engine ECU. Any issue with the Eaton ECU causes the engine to not start. Oh and there's two plugs on said ECU with nothing but color coding (black and dark grey or navy blue, depending on revision) to keep you from plugging them in backwards, and good luck actually seeing the cunts while you're pulling off the circus-grade contortionism it takes to plug them in. If they go in backwards the ECU is fried every time and the X/Y servo has about a 50/50 shot at surviving. If you don't want to shift gears get a loving Allison. I've seen people spend what a whole Allison is worth just trying to keep an autoshift on the road. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 16:08 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 16:06
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"What series Detroit is this?" "It's a DD15" "NO TOM IT'S NOT A VOLVO" I don't even know what to say about that.
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May 26, 2014 19:31
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Well, other than the massive replacement intervals on duals. Though those new honeycomb air filters last forfuckingever too so yeah. Pretty much just a ~Peterbilt Cowboy~ thing.InterceptorV8 posted:Sounds like it's time for a piss test. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 02:39 on May 28, 2014 |
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May 28, 2014 02:35
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Jared592 posted:Hey fellas, about to head out on a 6,000 mile cross-country (USA) road trip, and I figured truckers know a thing or two about minimizing the pain of extended time on the road. Are there any particular cushions/other things I can purchase/do to make my ride more comfortable? This trip is being made in an econobox. I plan to get a Spotify account and load up a ton of podcasts to make the long trip less mentally fatiguing. I'd like any tips you've got on how to ease the physical pain of sitting in the same position for hours at a time. Anything you put on the seat is more likely to hurt than help. If you smoke, avoid doing so excessively. Staying cool and hydrated is extremely important on a long trip especially this time of year (hope u gotz a/c br0). Coffee is good but don't overdo it, and energy drinks aren't great (too much sugar, and you crash quicker and harder- at least I always did). Lots of little naps and jogs and rest stops do a world of good.
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May 28, 2014 05:28
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Found the problem  Is there much room between the element and the ID of the housing? You could fashion a baffle out of one of those bigass cardboard tubes, and if that proved inadequate then cover it in... well I don't wanna namedrop Dynamat but any sort of sound deadener you could trust to stay in one piece inside a filter housing.
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Jul 20, 2014 17:07
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"one position locked up" is a very common failure mode in the winter (shoes freeze to the drum, frozen air lines too sometimes), to the point where changing skidded tires is basically all tire guys do for the first three months of the year. I've only seen 2 single set skids above freezing temps, one was a seized brake cam (and that's the reason most brake cam bushings are nylon these days) and one was the situation IV8 mentioned.
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Jul 21, 2014 06:07
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kastein posted:Skidded tires are why I regularly hear tractor trailers driving around with their tires making an incredibly loud whompwhompwhompwhomp sound, right? Because I hear that A LOT. It's one of the more common reasons, yes. Standard practice if the tires survive the skid is to air the outer down, break beads, spin the tire 180 on the wheel and air-up, since DOT (at least in Alberta) permits skidded tires to keep rolling as long as the skids aren't in the same spot. Since this is universally a vertical procedure (wheel still bolted to unit) it's the best route for everyone involved. But there's a hundred other reasons trailer tires can be ridiculously noisy. Separations are pretty common, equally noisy and within a set of determined limits mostly safe and legal. Or about to explode, depending on the situation. Uneven treadwear can make gnarly sounds too.
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Jul 22, 2014 05:08
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I knew a guy once who ran XZA3s on all 10. Like on purpose, year round. Can't remember where he was running to before he signed up with the company I met him at, but it wasn't far enough south for that to be even remotely sane. A couple winter runs stringing pipe with super Bs to Grande Prairie and I had him sold on some 711s though.
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Aug 27, 2014 03:32
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The best, smoothest and by a large margin the most expensive linehaul steer tire.
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Aug 27, 2014 03:42
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InterceptorV8 posted:That's what I thought. gently caress, aren't they almost $600 a pop? I don't even loving know what to say. thing is, his cost per mile was really low because a steer tire is meant to deal with a lot more abuse than a drive is (more load, more lateral force, etc) so they'd last for loving ever. And he didn't put new on the drives, he'd just get new steers and move the pair back whenever there was an issue. Apparently they were decent on ice (and incredible in the dry and rain) because of the little bit of siping the A3 has on the edge of each rib, but they were exactly as bad in mud and snow as you'd expect. His chains were well-used.
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Aug 27, 2014 14:05
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I'm still slugging away at salt shakers, and it's really exacerbating my drinking problem. I should have taken a picture of the slack adjuster where I had to turn roughly half of it into liquid via O/A. Would have just cut the cam like normal but had to save the cam for a sample because my parts dept. refuses to order poo poo by VIN, which they ended up doing anyway because the front drive axle has different cams from the rears and I had already cut the other 3. Oh and they're 50% Western Stars, so let me tell you about seized P-clamps 
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Oct 11, 2014 05:44
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I think Interceptor's new truck is another Volvo?
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Oct 11, 2014 06:36
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Ah, that explains it. Doubly so if the VIN starts with the number 3. The last 4 years or so Navistar's QC has become a joke, even compared to their reputation prior to that. At least you didn't get one with a Maxxforce
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Oct 11, 2014 07:24
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Everyone raves about gas station tacos? But the best taco shop in Calgary is also in the same parking lot as a gas station. (Oro Azul, next to the Petro on Memorial and 36th)
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Oct 17, 2014 02:20
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9axle posted:I don't know, I am in one now and it's pretty loud, and the doors sound cheap as hell when they close, like an old Hyundai. I had a 1992 Western Star when it was new for a couple years and it was a whole different animal. Quieter and tighter, both in fit and cab space. Yeah, their quality really took a nosedive in the early '00s 
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Nov 9, 2014 04:25
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jonathan posted:when they moved to America ?  (Mercedes bought them, at the end of the '90s IIRC but I know for sure '02 was the year they shut the Kelowna plant down and moved production to the US)
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Nov 9, 2014 23:03
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30.4 Obese. I'm overweight for sure (beer gut of beer guts), but 'obese' is hilarious. BMI is dumb.
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Nov 22, 2014 02:07
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Powershift posted:Yeah. My 540 has a more comfortable seating position than my f 150. Especially last-gen Petes. Peterbilt daycabs can eat a dick they are the most uncomfortable goddamn thing I've driven since that time I tried to drive an S2k
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Nov 23, 2014 16:54
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CannonFodder posted:And I drive a flappy paddle auto in my small fleet and it's the bees knees. They're doing flappy paddles now? Interesting. Is it a proper auto or an autoshift? And if the latter is it Eaton or a Meritor ZF (or Volvo)?
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Dec 26, 2014 18:26
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some texas redneck posted:So here's something random. Not sure what Texas is like that way (or how it works with things like benzos, though a script means nobody can really say much about it as long as you're not abusing) but my father got his type 2 'beetus diagnosis a little over a year ago and is still driving (and has been through 3 different companies since then, because he's been doing a lot of seasonal work lately). Best bet is to call up a couple of trucking companies in your area and ask how it all works around there. Failing that, I'm not sure how vehicle classifications work down there either but here you can run a 5 ton on a regular driver's license as long as it's a single axle truck with hydraulic brakes (though an air brake certificate is a fairly easy test to pass after a day in a classroom and/or an evening of studying). And LTL work isn't bad stuff in general, still a huge step up from pizzas.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:40
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AllPraiseToAllah posted:Every grind is going to make my butt hole pucker. Meh, It's not a Mack. Eatons are fairly tolerant to grinding. Honestly most of the tranny failures I see are milkshakes from a failed cooler, range collar/air system failures and shock loading failures (in that order). I see maybe one or two collar grind-outs on a main box per year.
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Jan 26, 2015 03:47
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InterceptorV8 posted:What IS a good paycheck anyway? I just surpassed my father's wage (he hauls dirt these days so he's paid hourly). He's been driving trucks for 35+ years. I've been fixing them for two. Quite a hosed up industry, this one. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 05:13
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The new Detroits are all actually really loving good. Between those and the fact that most of the kinks have been worked out of the ISX I'm not sure why anyone specs a truck with a yellow lump anymore.
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May 9, 2015 17:29
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Powershift posted:Whether the ISX's kinks are worked out or not, their reputation is shot. So much so that the largest oilfield companies are specing their trucks with paccar engines now. Detroits are only available in freightliners/western stars, Cat engines haven't been available in non-cat trucks for 5 years now. Holy poo poo, I had no idea they cut horizontal integration that far out of the picture already. Last I heard it was just starting to get prohibitively expensive, but you could still spec just about any Paccar/IH/DTNA with any DD/Cummins/Cat on a special order basis if you had enough coin. Kinda like back in the day when you could get an N14 in a Volvo but you were paying out the nose. I guess that's what working at a lovely little drivetrain shop does, I've been so far removed from the new stuff I stopped paying attention to what's going on with the manufacturers. loving scary that those Paccar engines are catching on. Rear geartrains are bad news for guys like me.
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May 10, 2015 20:18
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Yeah I've heard they're basically a lightly Americanized DAF engine.Powershift posted:With the modern engines they're non-standard fittings, and rubber hoses crimped to metal hard lines thread straight into aluminum engine bits. and what should be a 3 foot section of $10 a foot hydraulic hose is now a $400 "only one in stock canada-wide" abortion. One thing I like about DTNA (and I'm not a big fan of shakers and stars) is you've always got NPT somewhere along the line to work with. Might be in a spot where you have to replace the whole 10 feet of line instead of the 4 foot section that's leaking but it's there if you need it. Of course, DTNA will also have put 377 P-clamps on that line and run it inexplicably over top of the transmission and around the exhaust 3 times.
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May 11, 2015 00:08
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gently caress me, has Freightliner QC always been this bad? My new job is at a fleet with 100% new Cascadias (oldest one is a '12 with 700k, and we're in the middle of receiving a 12 truck order) and all the time I'm not getting trailers up to snuff is spent fixing factory fuckups (and the typical Mercedes plastic failures, but those I expected). Literally every single one has had the compression fittings behind the plate for the trailer lines loose, I've seen 2 grilles that had peeling chrome on delivery, and random poo poo just not bolted down properly all over. DD16s though, holy poo poo best engine ever. They fixed every single thing that pissed me off about the 13/15.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:13
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AFAIK, yes. Since deletes are still (very technically) legal and much cheaper they're still the go-to. Learned how to back up with super B's today. At the end of a 13 hour shift, the most stressful one since I started with this company in fact, and while seconds away from coating the seat of the shunt truck with last night's questionable vindaloo. Didn't do too bad actually, I rather surprised myself. Only pulled forward twice. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Sep 13, 2015 |
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Sep 13, 2015 03:11
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Speaking of ice roads, we had a driver try to do a parked regen in the middle of a lake last week. In a truck with a grass burner.
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Mar 11, 2016 03:48
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Random Number posted:Shut the gently caress up about racism and post trucks/scenes from trucks.  Should be a quick n' easy inspection for ya bud, I take care of my equipment 
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Jun 2, 2016 01:57
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e: holy poo poo that got a little rant-y. TLDR there's fuckall incentive for a mechanic to do anything outside banker's hours. Leaving this poo poo for posterity though. Devil's advocate here, that attitude is one I try to avoid but it's common among fleet guys for a very good reason. Being the guy who likes overtime is a bell you can't un-ring once the expectation grows in and there's not enough overtime at stake for it to really pay off vs. the risk of having to stay late basically whenever, booked days off actually happening being dependent on whether something breaks, basically guaranteed holiday work etc. I made just short of 60k this year (still 6k less than I made doing tires, and I didn't have to buy and maintain a 5 figure tool collection or spend 30k going to school) and OT counted for less than $250 in my pocket after taxes. And the only thing my sacrifice goes toward past that $250 is a pat on the back from management (still no less likely to be the first on the chopping block if poo poo goes sideways though, can't inspect trucks and I'm low on seniority), slightly better rapport with the drivers (which instantly vaporises the first time I have to give them news like "it's still safe and legal, drive the fuckin thing til I don't have a lineup of 10 trailers that aren't" or "problem y caused problem x to happen, your 15 minute fix just turned into 2 hours, sorry you can't go make money right now"). I do this poo poo pretty much out of some hosed up sense of pride in being the reason this collection of rust and plastic golems still moves freight and because no one else will, and am not significantly better or richer a man than the guys that do their 8 hours and leave this place behind them when they walk out. Turbo Fondant fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Jan 1, 2017 |
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Jan 1, 2017 02:38
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 11:18 |
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Our dispatchers live in the real world so the guys have much less of a problem with em, but a lot of the software on these is really lovely. Even when they're not getting in a fight with the rest of the CANbus network and breaking random poo poo on the truck the UI is garbage, it's a similar experience to running a self-checkout at the grocery store.
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Oct 8, 2017 16:32
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