“We have heard of brakes dragging, as opposed to a full wheel lock up,” said Keith McComsey, director of marketing and customer solutions, wheel end for Bendix Spicer Foundation Brake. Wittlinger’s sound advice was echoed by all of the sources that spoke with FE. “When this happens, it’s best to start by contacting the slack adjuster manufacturer to work through these scenarios.” “We have heard of some similar isolated cases,” said Jeff Wittlinger, business unit director for Hendrickson wheel ends and brake systems. We now return you to our regularly scheduled story about how slack adjusters may be involved in wheel end thermal events. The experts at TMC will be able to help you with your service issue. However! If you’re experiencing wheel end thermal issues, put the magazine down and contact TMC, which is currently generating diagnostic criteria for related service issues, like RP 167-Vehicle Electrical Fires: Causes and Solutions. So we turned to the manufacturers for answers. Recently, Fleet Equipment (FE) caught wind of wheel end thermal events that were seemingly caused by automatic slack adjusters locking up, increasing wheel end temperatures and risking asset losses. “The challenge is that once equipment is burning, so is the evidence of the root cause, making it harder to sift through and determine the reason.” “An evaluation of the vehicle with diligence is more likely to yield the appropriate corrective action,” he said. Sturdy explained that a bearing fire has very different symptoms from a brake-related fire-and both of these look different than a tire fire. “This gets compounded in cases where there is no investigation with root-cause analysis.” “Data gathering on wheel end thermal events has been very difficult because some fleets are uncomfortable acknowledging that such conditions have occurred,” said Greg Sturdy, director of wheel end product engineering for Accuride Corp. Gathering as much data as you can related to the situation and sharing it with your manufacturers and suppliers is imperative. There can be a number of different causes that require different solutions. Before we look at how slack adjusters may factor into higher wheel end temperatures let’s get this out of the way first:Įach wheel end thermal service event needs to be thoroughly investigated to determine the root cause to curb the problem. Wheel end thermal events are serious maintenance issues that can be caused by setup, maintenance, driver neglect, road debris or some combination of all of these.
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