Preventative Maintenance

First off there are hundreds of vehicles on the roads including tractor trailers.

And general maintenance is important for all of them. Not only does it save money in the long term, it makes everything safer for everyone on the road.

Everyone has a different idea of what PM means to them. There is the guy who doesnt take care of his equipment till it breaks, then there are the diligent owners and fleets that every service interval come in and have everything inspected to make sure it is safe and running right.

I myself have worked in a shop with their own check list for their fleet of rental cars and trucks. The sheet was the same regardless of what came in but it had all the points that one would pay attention to, if it was a moving truck, it had one set of extra points to check, and if it was a flat bed another set of points to check so everything would be checked no matter what came in.


On a semi truck, it would be different and much more detailed because of the strict regulations for them. if one thing is out of whack on one, then it would be considered out of service and parked on the side of the road at the scales.

A few examples of an out of service truck done on the Peterbuilt


Pic not shown, but caging screw in one of the air cans for the brakes is broken.

 This is down to the belts in the passenger side tire on the drop axle

 An deformed bushing for a strut and shock absorber

 A frying hood catch

 Leaking power steering pump

And though not on the Pete, it is on the Freight liner and it is missing its slack adjuster on the first set of tandems


All of these things can be spotted and taken care of easily before they get to the point of the truck being parked at the scale waiting for a mechanic to come out.

And all this is done as your greasing the fittings underneath, always making notes to yourself on what is normal and what isn't


To me PM is a requirement, it makes any piece of equipment last longer and run better. it might cost more up front but it is worth it in the long run and in the big picture.

Hydraulics Continued..

This weekend I went to the logging show in Sequim WA.  And there for operators to use where a CAT mini excavator and a Link Belt excavator.  I got a chance to use the Link Belt one, and they had a little thing set up to pick up a watch and a ball and move them to a bucket and then move the bucket to a different platform that where perched on traffic cones

Hydralics

Yesterday was the first time ever for me on a pice of hydralic equipment aside from forklifts at my previous internship.

We are renting a bobcat mini excavator and learning the hydralic system in it as well as getting some stick time in on it. My first time on one wasnt to bad, just have to take it slow and not be jerky with the controles.

I say i can stack a few tires up with it now.

Intro to Hydraulics

Starting last week we began hydraulics and learning the different fittings and how to measure them.

also going through the Cat Basics for hydraulics and watching the lethal strike video.

The video is very informative and drives home safety in the work place.

SPQ13 Electrical boards

Been doing the electrical boards in class. done a majority of them and have gotten close to all of them right.

playing with highlighters and coloring in our maps surely does help, hope that the new students recognise this as the way not to get lost with electrical.
looking at an electrical schematic has diffrent colors writen and abriviated in them. and they might have numbers on them.

In the schools freightliner the large electrical pannal in the cab all the wires in it are white. but they are numbered.

If one can take a schematic and draw in the colors and look at the numbers on the paper then one should be able to follow the wires in the truck even though they are not colored.

working on the horn for the 92 dodge and i did notice something with the wireing diagrams.
If your useing "Alldata" the wireing diagram will look diffrent than if you use "Mitchal Ondemand"

They both will tell you the same thing but the way they are drawn up can be confusing if your going between one and the other. Even though if you color it in like we are told then it helps some but still can be confusing.

Take your time stick with one diagram and use your matco, snapon, or walmart highlighters or cryons.

and remember, never hook the red wire to the green wire.

SPQ13

Greetings again.

Start of the spring 2013 quarter and jumping right into electrical Fun Fun

Cylinder heads, Gen Sets and Batteries Oh My

Over the past few weeks I have gotten my 300 hours completed

Ontop of that I have been put on diffrent projects other than just turbos as well.

I helped install a Northern Lights gen set on a 50 foot sailboat. And then,  helping pull cylinder heads off of a tour boat and then helped install a dozen 130 pound batteries into an 80 foot sail boat