newmercman:
I used to be a road tester for one of the trade mags & a bloke at Renault showed me some statistics on the relationship between clutch temperatures & starting off gear, pulling away in 3rd gear in the old B18 Renault box gave a temp of something like 2000deg C, against something like 500 for 1st gear, I’m no scientist but that can’t be good
When I first learned to drive a wise old sage told me to treat the pedals as if they had nails sticking out of them, be gentle & they dont bite you or the lorry, then again, get a decent constant mesh box & the left pedal is redundant if you do it right
Constant mesh…mmmm…that takes me back, 3 weeks of orchestral gear changes followed by perfection…unless you took a couple of weeks holiday then it was back into the orchestra pit
I thought that they were still using Eaton/Fuller boxes over on that side of the pond
I know what you mean though, had a 2800 Daf with one of those back to front 12spd splitter boxes, the ones that you had to use every gear or you just played tunes until you stopped & had to start all over again
Not like a Fuller or a David brown where if you missed one a bootful of revs soon slotted you in to the next one down
My fave out of them all was a 13spd Fuller in a Transcon, like a knife through butter
A twin Splitter was also good but meant you had to drive a Sed-Ak, ERF, MAN, Foden or even worse an Iveco
in our workshops yesterday and they were fitting a clutch on a 06 plate axor , manual telligent gearbox with 160,000 kms on the clock
according to our fitters they usually last till around the 200,000km mark and the best they have had is 260,000.
now surely if you were leasing a motor over a 4 year period then you would have thought the clutch would be good for the length of the lease based on 100,000 kms a year.
or do these so called electronically controlled gearboxes put more stress on the clutch.
Dont sound right to me at all dave. My actros has done almost 400k on an original clutch with telligent. I suppose it could be down to the driver, if he’s in the habit of doing loaded hill starts in 3rd high for example, and holding on the clutch as has been said then it wont last for a long time. i find , at least 80% of the time, that very few revs over tick over are necessary to pull away even when loaded if you have the correct gear and are gentle on the clutch. Although the number of guys you see/hear who must rev it into the yellow before letting the clutch up is surprising.
see this is the bit i dont get.
we do have a one driver one truck policy (except when hes on holiday and they put a spare driver on it normally for the duration).
and the telligent gearbox selects its own starting off gear which is 2nd when fully loaded. but it must be a bright spark who over rides it and pulls away in a higher gear at 44 ton
beattun:
a lot of the new american rigs in australia are coming with the eaton auto-shift now, so id be guessing the same for the states
You’re right there, I have some family over there with 08 Kenworths & they have the Auto-shift, in shift times/smoothness etc they are a long way away from the ones we have in Europe.
Just wondered if they were going over to them like we are over here.
beattun:
a lot of the new american rigs in australia are coming with the eaton auto-shift now, so id be guessing the same for the states
You’re right there, I have some family over there with 08 Kenworths & they have the Auto-shift, in shift times/smoothness etc they are a long way away from the ones we have in Europe.
Just wondered if they were going over to them like we are over here.
i wouldnt say so, all the euro trucks have their own gearboxes, like scania has opticruise, volvo / renault has ishift, etc etc
with the kenworths and freightliners etc, you get them built to specification, ie; you could get one with either a CAT , ■■■■■■■■ or Detroit diesel engine in it, and whatever gearbox you want, so with the 18 speed eaton fuller road ranger having been the box of choice for most people due to its durability and ability to pull ridiculous weights i suppose its only natural to move onto the eaton autoshift, in saying that however some of the freightliners are coming out now with the mercedez benz engine and their auto box, as its all daimler chrysler.
mechanic77:
It can largely depend on the drivers and work done. I know a Scania 142 that worked 5 days a week for over 10 years on the same clutch [its still in there now] but that was all with just one driver.
Slightly related, I know an 07 Ford Ka thats done less than 300 miles and is now on its 4th clutch! The first three have all been burnt out.
Not surprising when you see fully loaded wagons being held on the clutch at traffic lights on hills and such like.
It is suprising when its a Ford KA getting 4 clutches in 300 miles, and a Scania lasting 10 years !! I know !! When a fully loaded wagon holds it on the clutch it emits rays out to the smaller cars ‘bell housing’ and it wears away at it ?!! Or doesn’t it work like that?!!
mechanic77:
It can largely depend on the drivers and work done. I know a Scania 142 that worked 5 days a week for over 10 years on the same clutch [its still in there now] but that was all with just one driver.
Slightly related, I know an 07 Ford Ka thats done less than 300 miles and is now on its 4th clutch! The first three have all been burnt out.
Not surprising when you see fully loaded wagons being held on the clutch at traffic lights on hills and such like.
It is suprising when its a Ford KA getting 4 clutches in 300 miles, and a Scania lasting 10 years !! I know !! When a fully loaded wagon holds it on the clutch it emits rays out to the smaller cars ‘bell housing’ and it wears away at it ?!! Or doesn’t it work like that?!!
mechanic77:
It can largely depend on the drivers and work done. I know a Scania 142 that worked 5 days a week for over 10 years on the same clutch [its still in there now] but that was all with just one driver.
Slightly related, I know an 07 Ford Ka thats done less than 300 miles and is now on its 4th clutch! The first three have all been burnt out.
Not surprising when you see fully loaded wagons being held on the clutch at traffic lights on hills and such like.
It is suprising when its a Ford KA getting 4 clutches in 300 miles, and a Scania lasting 10 years !! I know !! When a fully loaded wagon holds it on the clutch it emits rays out to the smaller cars ‘bell housing’ and it wears away at it ?!! Or doesn’t it work like that?!!
Come on, read it properly and you’ll see your deliberate mistake !!
Its maybe not the normal , but when i got my 55plate merc actros, the clutch lasted a whole 2 weeks ! (thankfully i was on holiday when it went lol)
To be fair the the tow guy sayed he had pulled in a good few so it must have been a factory fault !
after a lot of to-ing and throwing they eventulay payed for it !
Since they put in the new one its been fine ,and never has a problem ,so far !
We had a 385 premium that went to the fairground with about 3000kms short of a million and i never changed the clutch in it
An ex Craibs 22-403 with 1.2 million on the same clutch ( did the head gaskets 3 times though)
we have an XF 480 that the clutch went at xmas time with over 700 000 on it.
I expect to see at least 7 to 8 hundred thou out of a twin plate clutch and at least 5 from a single.
my old 4 series did 560000 before it decided to explode pullin out of warick services at 9 o clock on a sunday night spent the next day sittin round waitin for scania’s in banbury to find a new one as no one had one in stock
