Road service

The other day I was sent to Mount Vernon due to a blown out radiator hose on the side of the road. We did not have the correct hose so I had to put something together to get the truck back to the yard. Here is a picture of what I did.

Here is what I put together. I cut up some water hose and where the downward bend is I used some metel pipe. 

That is where the hose blew.
Also couple days ago I fixed a interior door storage compartment. The screws holding the compartment together broke off. So I used some thin metel and rivets to hold everything together. But Also on this same truck I walked by and noticed a bolt missing from a spring hanger.  Here are some pictures...

Here is how I fixed it, it's a small fix but worked well.

Missing bolt in the spring hanger, I put a new bolt back in. 

Cummins quick serve

In school i got the chance to connect to a truck with a lap top using quick serve to diagnose trouble codes. The the best way was to just disconnected sensors and to see if i can find the reason the light on the dash appears. This is pretty new to me i have spent about two hours just seeing whats there, trying to get comfortable with quick serve. What i learned so far is go to the reason first. Find out why that check engine light is on and fix that problem. Then go on to see if anything is else is wrong but first always go to the reason.  Diagnostics using the laptop is defiantly  something i want to get more into and possible to be hired to do. Here is a picture...

Also the other day a truck came in to get new steer axle brakes. But when i pulled the drum off it was all white and same with the inside of the rim. Well what happened is the rim was very old so it was wore out and only about half of the drums surface was flush with the rim. I could actually feel the inside of the rim it was like a ridge where the drum had worn in. So i talked to the driver and we agreed that the truck needed new drums and new rims as well.  Here are some pictures to better explain.

Cat 3516 Engine

At school i got the chance to tore down one cylinder head of the cat Cat 3516. This engine is a lot of fun to work on because of how big everything is. But also because everything is so big and just right there i got a much better understanding of how all the components work. Here are some pictures of what i have done so far i will start to reassemble everything next week for next weeks blog.

Injector

Showing how the big the piston and connecting rod are.

Cylinder Liner

That is the engine my cylinder head is the fourth one from the top or fly wheel.

Clutch worksheet

In class today I went through three trucks looking at the different styles of clutches. They vary from style, size, and adjustment style. I learned about how a hydraulic clutch works I had never seen one before. I did a work sheet here is a picture of it and a picture of me adjusting a clutch.

Me adjusting the clutch 

Me using the clutch adjusting tool to see if it's the right amount of play 1/2" 

Finished worksheet 

Rear end change

This week I did a rear end swap. The driver complained about noise coming from his second axle rear end. So I drained the oil and found metal and on the magnetic check plug there was a chunk of metal there as well. To remove the rear end I welded a hook to the top for the forklift to hook on to it. I removed the axles, drive shaft, and unbolted the rear end along with inner axle lock air line. And out it came pretty easy. To install the new rear end I cleaned the housing very well made sure there were no broken metal pieces any where. Then I applied silicone where the rear end meets the axle housing. Then I took the yoke off of the old rear end and put it on the new one and also I welded a hook to it. We slid it in with the forklift put long bolts to help align it and it slid right in. Pretty easy job but seems tough. I learned ways to make my life easier like welding a hook to the rear end and to use super long studs instead of small aligning studs. You don't have to fight with it. Here are some pictures!

Hoses

Today a driver came in saying that he is losing power when going up a hill. Turns out the air to air hose had a hole in it. The reason he is losing all power is because the air coming from the turbo is coming out of the hose. The driver is very lucky he caught that before it got way worse and that he was local. Also the other day I had a truck lose all its coolant and the driver had no clue because the sensor in the coolant tank had been taken out by someone driving the truck before him... I noticed something wrong due to all the smoke coming from the exhaust and puddle of coolant. Turns out the egr hose had a huge chunk missing out of it. I replaced both hoses by loosening the egr tank. Having little to no coolant in the truck might be the end of it. It smokes very bad constantly and runs at about 15 hundred rpm constantly. I don't yet know what the damage is but tomorrow we will further investigate. I learned that as a driver always do a pretrip if that driver had looked at his coolant level or notice that someone had taken the sensor out of the tank maybe that truck wouldn't have had all these other problems now. Here are some pictures....

Egr hose 

Air to air hose

Brake cans

Today one of our trailer was losing air cause of a bad brake can so I pulled into a rest area. I went out there to fix it by replace the brake can. But then I noticed the passenger side brake can had broken threw the face of the break can. The spring I think exploded so then I replaced it as well. Here is a picture of it....

Also at work I have been working to redo a drop axle so that it would go up faster. Right now we got a couple new trucks they all have the same problem with the drop axle being way to slow. So I'm trying to run hoses different ways to valves and from the tanks. I think I got it down in the next blog I will show how it all works.


Hours 337