The engine brake on a Volvo is fantastic and saves wear on the pads.
coiler:
Hi moose, have you had a lot of problems with the engine side plates on the 13 litre Volvo’s? Just started having a problem with a 56 plate, weeping coolant when cold. Not happy as Volvo replaced the seal on the side plate18 months ago, and are now saying the repair isn’t under warranty as it will be the plate that needs replacing for £500 + labour. Can’t get them to move on prices or give any help on prices.
Just wondered if you’d had any experience of this.
We had this problem on a 12 litre FH at about 1 million kms…repaired it in our own workshop…gaskets were cheap and took about a days labour and it gave no more bother…
coiler:
ellies dad:
Coiler how the hell do you get 2 or 4 year’s from a set of brake pad’s■■?
I get 80k’s from a set on my Actros,with 300k’s on the clockim for a set of disc’s aswell this time around.I run my own trailers with (mainly) meritor elsa225 disk brakes with EBS, so the brakes on the tractor unit and trailer are well balanced (same size disks). I aim for running temperatures for trailer disks approx 20 deg C higher than on T/unit. Doing all this means we can get 4 years for t/unit pads (350-400 thou Km)and 3-4 years for trailer pads (280,000-330,000km). We’re carrying steel 95% of the time, so running at high weights, but no sharp braking!
Your professionalism pays you dividends Coiler,through lower running costs…As a matter of interest,how do you control the temperatures of the tractor unit/trailer discs…is this done by reprogramming of the trailer’s EBS module parameters?
I don’t touch the programming on the t/unit ECU, I find this is fine, but it is possible to “fine tune” the braking perameters of the trailer. It’s a bit like tinkering with the old load sensing valve.
For example, if a trailer has an axle design weight of 9 tonnes, although the max legal limit is 8 tonnes, (and you’re not going to go over this), the brake calculation won’t give you full braking on the trailer until you’re approching 9 tonnes (which you won’t do), so the tractor unit brakes do more of the braking and get hotter than the trailer. If you were to alter the braking program so that full braking occurs at 8 tonnes axle load, this will balance the brakes between tractor and trailer, so when you’re fully loaded the brakes are getting full air pressure.
Or you could buy your new trailer with an axle design weight of 8 tonnes, it will come with the “correct” brake settings.
Another example is if you are running with very light cargo, and find the pads glaze over on the trailer because they’ve hardly got anything to do, You could increase the unladen pressures so they do some more work.
Of course to reprogram the trailer brake ECU to anything other than the original settings you would need to submit a VTG10 to Vosa.
coiler:
I don’t touch the programming on the t/unit ECU, I find this is fine, but it is possible to “fine tune” the braking perameters of the trailer. It’s a bit like tinkering with the old load sensing valve.For example, if a trailer has an axle design weight of 9 tonnes, although the max legal limit is 8 tonnes, (and you’re not going to go over this), the brake calculation won’t give you full braking on the trailer until you’re approching 9 tonnes (which you won’t do), so the tractor unit brakes do more of the braking and get hotter than the trailer. If you were to alter the braking program so that full braking occurs at 8 tonnes axle load, this will balance the brakes between tractor and trailer, so when you’re fully loaded the brakes are getting full air pressure.
Or you could buy your new trailer with an axle design weight of 8 tonnes, it will come with the “correct” brake settings.
Another example is if you are running with very light cargo, and find the pads glaze over on the trailer because they’ve hardly got anything to do, You could increase the unladen pressures so they do some more work.Of course to reprogram the trailer brake ECU to anything other than the original settings you would need to submit a VTG10 to Vosa.
I imagine you could also fine tune the EBS control unit via the ‘air suspension’ input port by tinkering with the air pressures…but you’d want to know what you’re at…too dicey a job to screw up!