The real bread and butter for technicians, our 'In the Bay' stories focus on tips and expert recommendations for success when it comes to hands-on repair.
Covering everything from modern transmission troubleshooting to data-based predictive maintenance, here are our best of the best repair-focused stories from the past year.
A perfect repair is always the target when fixing a truck, but distractions and improper processes can cause a technician to miss the bullseye.
According to DJ Painter, a vehicle technician for nearly a decade, one of the worst feelings on the job is watching a familiar-looking truck being dragged back to the shop on a wrecker’s hook.
Avoiding ‘comebacks’ and improving aim starts with knowing how many times the shop misses the target, and identifying the root causes of inaccurate repairs is a good first step.
Transmission troubles are a quick ticket to unwanted downtime, but is the transmission even the issue?
“There’s a number of uphill battles, especially with the newer technologies,” noted Gary Pfister, Eaton’s N.A. technical services manager. The last decade has been more difficult in terms of transmissions in particular, as the industry has “leapfrogged technology.”
We had some experts discuss their tips for improving the troubleshooting process as vehicle powertrains continue to evolve.
Wheel-offs are an unfortunate example of how small errors can lead to monumental tragedies, and we’re reminded of this every time a dash cam video captures a tractor-trailer’s wheel popping off the spindle at 70 mph and careening toward oncoming traffic.
To prevent wheel-offs on the road, fleets must take a more active role in tightening up pre-trip inspections and installation techniques in the shop.
It’s hard to imagine pickup and delivery duty cycles—and so many other operations—functioning effectively without liftgates.
When the mechanized lifts have trouble going up or down, you can expect a drop in uptime, too. A few experts offer troubleshooting and repair tips to keep your liftgates in operation.
Technicians are becoming more connected to computers, with loads of information at their fingertips—Everything from repair history to diagnostic trouble codes. Having that information readily available can help techs anticipate which components are more likely to fail, streamline the repair process, and prevent problems from reoccurring.
Digging into historical data can help you be proactive rather than reactive and get ahead of potential issues.
Technician shortage statistics can seem tough to overcome as an industry, but there are ways to keep your techs around.
Successful mentorship leads to higher retention if it’s done right. That starts with properly training new technicians and apprentices on the right way to perform maintenance and repairs.
With brakes as one of the top system offenders in the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's 2023 International Roadcheck inspections, making sure that every aspect is operating properly is critical to a fleet's uptime. And to do this, technicians need to make sure that the system's automatic slack adjusters are working well, as without this component, the force from the air chamber won't translate to slowing the movement of the brake shoes.
Here are some tips on how to inspect and, if need be, replace this important component.
Predictive maintenance can be the shop superpower when it comes to minimizing downtime, but using this great power takes great responsibility to set it up right.
This cutting-edge approach to vehicle maintenance utilizes telematics and vehicle data, and then employs advanced analytics and machine learning to look for anomalies, with the end goal of preventing breakdowns in advance.
There are several reasons to encourage fleets to hang on to their trucks a bit longer than in the past, including rising costs of new trucks and decreasing value of used ones.
An engine overhaul could be a fleet’s best bet when looking to squeeze a few more years of life out of a truck.
TMC’s pending Recommended Practice 551: Root Cause Analysis could be a game-changer for troubleshooting problems in the bay and office.
Check out this technician’s experience with the process.
