Brake Check

Hey Guys, just throwing a little reminder out there. A bad diaphram you'll hear, wheel seal, you'll see, But unless you notice the pushrods a little unequal, broken springs can be sneaky. Take a peek in there. I just know my drivers would NEVER know it.

Yeah I had to replace a few this winter for this reason. Good idea to check them throughly every once in awhile I guess.

I was reading somewhere to change the pods out in pairs.
Thought it was odd.
Any opinion?

I check them every time I am under greasing.

As far as replacing in pairs, supposed to but not many people do. You get better holding with the parking brake when both replaced. Most common cause of broken springs is driver error. Happens when they mash the brake pedal to the floor when the parking brake is already on.

I just replaced all the cans on my dumptruck, gonna start paving soon and don't want any downtime because of a faulty diaphram .Plus the cans were about 6 years old and getting pretty rusty and corroded.

We see alot of broken springs in our fleet, but with 16,000 trucks that is not hard to do. It is part of our b-service pm to bump the cans and listen for the rattle of a broken spring.

All our tractors are spec'd with the R14 relay valve that has the anti compound valve built in to prevent the damage from driver error of pressing the brakes while the parking brake is set or setting the parking brake while the servie brake is depressed.

I see no problem just replacing one can.

Can any of you explain how pressing the brake pedal while the park brake is already applied can break the spring?

Tom K said:

Can any of you explain how pressing the brake pedal while the park brake is already applied can break the spring?

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My 2 cents: in general broken springs have always been associated with compounding. However technically compounding brakes puts more stress on the slack adjuster creating slack adjuster failures and over adjusting brakes. Most trucks now a days have R14 valves with anti-compounding valves. We found that in our fleet that broken springs were related to a certain manufacture, we had to make inspecting these as part of our quick lane inspection and b-service pm.