It might be tempting to base PM intervals on historic brake life knowledge, however corrosion, rust-jacking, and even poor-quality offshore merchandise have shortened the life expectancy of many brake merchandise.
Photograph: Jim Park
How do you gauge the effectiveness of your brake upkeep program? It’s a tough query as a result of there are such a lot of elements to think about.
Price is definitely an element. Extreme tools downtime is likely to be one other, in addition to federal CSA security scores. And is your upkeep program ok that drivers can completely rely on their brakes when some pressing want arises?
A number of directives come into play with brake upkeep.
Clearly, you need to keep on the appropriate aspect of the roadside inspectors. The five-year common for brake-related out-of-service price throughout the Industrial Car Security Alliance’s Brake Security Week (2016-2021) is 13.2% of the vehicles inspected. These defects included having 20% or extra of the brakes on the truck stroking past their adjustment restrict, contaminated brake linings, badly chafed or broken brake hoses, or lacking or damaged brake elements.
Would you be happy if solely 86.8% of your fleet handed an in-house brake audit akin to a CVSA Stage 1? Would that be a passable measure of your fleet’s brake upkeep program? Might you look your shareholders, executives, or plaintiffs’ attorneys within the eye and persuade them all the pieces’s superb since you’re forward of the curve on brake upkeep?
The Significance of Truck Brake Inspections
Utilizing CVSA degree 1 inspection outcomes as a benchmark on your personal brake upkeep program can be an excellent place to begin, however that’s not the be-all and end-all.
CVSA inspectors seek for violations, and so they know precisely the place to look. The group publishes an Out-of-Service Standards information guide yearly. It lists all of the potential out-of-service situations, however not essentially all potential brake violations. In case your techs have been educated in conducting Stage 1 brake inspections, they’d in all probability spot the defects earlier than the inspectors did.
That may assist together with your CSA Upkeep BASIC scores, but it surely gained’t assist with detecting efficiency deficiencies, akin to glazed brake linings, out-of-round or non-concentrically mounted brake drums, brake stability, or utility and launch timing.
An affordable drum gauge simply offers visible a go/no-go willpower of brake drum integrity.
Photograph: Darry Stuart
Searching for Clues in Brake Inspection Out-of-Service Numbers
For those who’re on the lookout for a spot to begin, try the highest three violation classes from any current CVSA inspection blitz. For instance, an unannounced blitz final yr revealed the next prime three brake-related out-of-service situations:
20% Brakes Violations – 479. A car or mixture of automobiles is asserted out of service when 20% or extra of its service brakes have an out-of-service situation leading to a faulty brake, akin to a brake out of adjustment, an audible air leak on the chamber, faulty linings/pads, or a lacking brake the place brakes are required.
Different Brake Violations – 368. Examples of different out-of-service brake violations are worn brake traces, damaged brake drums, inoperative tractor safety system, inoperative low air warning system, air leaks, or hydraulic fluid leaks.
“Run your CSA scores for tools and upkeep violations and evaluate your organization’s scores to these of your opponents,” recommends upkeep advisor Bruce Stockton of Stockton Options. “That’s all public data, and all fleets are graded the identical by roadside inspections. Pull out these the place brakes have been the violation and see the place you stand.”
Stockton says below-average numbers imply it’s best to begin conducting your personal inspections and the required corrective motion.
“Do not wait to be inspected. Examine it your self, determine corrections wanted. Take a proactive method.”
CVSA often makes its inspection targets identified nicely forward of the particular occasion. For the previous couple of years, CVSA inspectors have focused brake hose and air glitches.
These initiatives should not randomly chosen.
Will Schaefer, former director of security applications at CVSA, says a committee meets twice a yr to assessment the outcomes of previous inspection campaigns, wanting on the prime violation classes. They determine essentially the most prevalent violations from earlier years and launch a centered inspection marketing campaign.
“Lately, we have been wanting carefully at brake hoses,” he advised HDT.
Perhaps brake hoses are one thing you must get your technicians and drivers to examine extra fastidiously — or no matter else CVSA has recognized as problematic.
Drivers Are A part of the Upkeep Program
Since drivers occupy a front-line place with respect to brakes, their enter on brake situation and performance may be invaluable — offering they’re providing correct and well timed data.
The required driver car inspection report is a technique of speaking considerations, and even real issues. However fleets may transcend that and add extra basic queries to journey stories, akin to whether or not drivers had observed something uncommon concerning the brakes — not essentially a particular prescribed defect.
“For those who gave drivers the identical kind of coaching on car inspections that our inspectors get, I’m certain they’d be capable of spot all of the violations that our inspectors do,” Schaefer says.
If drivers did their pre-trip inspections armed with that form of coaching, they’d discover the telltale indicators of brakes being out of adjustment, or brakes not making use of, like seeing previous rust on the within floor of a brake drum or a brake rotor.
“In different instances, I believe they’re not even wanting,” Schaefer says. “I believe that some pre-trip inspections is likely to be, let’s say, slightly cursory.”
That’s an issue, too. However there are instances the place drivers complain about, say, the truck being exhausting to cease or the brakes not feeling proper. They gained’t know why, however they belief the mechanics to type it out. If nothing apparent is discovered throughout an inspection, the store will put the truck again out and the motive force will complain once more.
After a few such go-arounds, anyone will lastly resolve to have an in depth take a look at the brakes, and lo and behold, they discover an issue like glazed brake linings or seized clevis pins — each of which can scale back the brake power between the liner and the brake drum.
In Stockton’s expertise, not all drivers are nicely versed in mechanical points involving brakes, but when they’re complaining about one thing, it ought to be investigated. And he cautions, fleets have to be extra proactive typically than simply hoping drivers will complain about an issue.
“By no means assume drivers are going to report an issue,” he stresses.
Even with nearly one half inch of lining left, this college bus brake is completed because of rust-jacking.
Photograph: Darry Stuart
When it Involves Stopping a Massive Rig, 1 Foot Can Be a Massive Deal
Neither of those hypothetical issues shall be apparent with a cursory visible inspection. All of the elements can be shifting as they need to be. The angle between the slack adjuster and the push rod is likely to be right, however the stopping power is compromised by an unseen drawback.
“I did some testing on glazed brake linings a lot of years in the past,” says Darry Stuart, president of DWS Fleet Administration Providers, a fleet upkeep consulting agency based mostly in Wrentham, Massachusetts. “We discovered the distinction in stopping distance between a glazed brake shoe and a brand new brake shoe is about 10 toes. Not a lot when you concentrate on it, and I advised a driver that, as soon as. He advised me one foot is usually a massive deal if you’re hauling gasoline.
“A variety of upkeep individuals do not consider how the motive force feels when he’s driving,” he provides. “They only need to get as a lot life out these elements as they’ll.”
Brake stroke indicators are a really cheap manner of visually checking brake adjustment. They have to be calibrated and drivers want to grasp use them. After that, they’re nearly infallible.
Photograph: Jim Park
A Commonsense Method to Truck Brake Upkeep
Basing a brake upkeep program and PM intervals on previous established norms gained’t work anymore, significantly the place fleet automobiles are uncovered to harsh de-icing chemical substances, like within the Northeast and Midwest. Wheel-end elements simply don’t final so long as they used to.
Fleets can ill-afford the asset downtime and driver dissatisfaction related to unplanned repairs. Stuart’s go/no-go standards has modified from so many thousand miles per thirty second of lining thickness, to “will it make it to the following PM?”
After all, that judgment is subjective, and each fleet is completely different. Responsibility cycles, terrain, and even local weather have an effect on brake life; what works for one fleet in all probability can’t be evenly utilized to a different.
Nevertheless, there’s worth in benchmarking your fleet in opposition to peer fleets. The TMC/FleetNet Vertical Benchmarking Program or the State of Heavy-Responsibility Restore report, issued yearly by Fullbay, can present some perception.
In case your prices and touch-time figures are comparable in comparison with peer teams, you’re in all probability within the ballpark. For those who’re off the mark, possibly that you must rethink the way you do brake upkeep, and the way efficient your upkeep program truly is.
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