The Quest for Uptime

While the complexity is increasing, the reliability of the current generation of trucks and engines is the best we’ve seen in several years. Photos: Jim Park

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We’re learning. We’re doing a better job at keeping trucks out of the shop and out on the road earning money, but it’s been a long, steep learning curve. Ever since the first diesel particulate filters appeared in 2007, fleets have been struggling to diagnose problems and make the necessary repairs. One of the greatest hurdles has been confusing messages and sometimes misleading information. Various sensors are often the culprit, but for the technicians working through the problem, the troubleshooting exercise was at first new and unfamiliar.

Each new generation of engine, and indeed mid-generation updates, brought new fault codes, new troubleshooting trees and more complexity in making the diagnosis. How much more complex? About tenfold.

“If you go back to pre-EPA-07, you’d get about 200-300 codes out of the [electronic control module],” says Gregg Mangione, senior vice president of maintenance at Penske Logistics. “Compare that to an engine [meeting 2014 greenhouse gas emission regs], with over a dozen different controllers. Some trucks are throwing between 2,000 and 3,000 different fault codes.”

However, Mangione says equipment manufacturers have learned to scale back on what information they present and how they present it. Previously, he says, “every time they turned on the dashboard light it created a problem for the driver. And that in turn created a problem for the shop. They had to decide whether the problem was serious enough to force the driver to stop.

“Now, with inexpensive telematics and truck-to-terminal communications becoming commonplace, we can more easily sort through the codes and message the driver accordingly. So while the trucks are throwing off more data than ever before, fleets are learning to use that information.”

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Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/channel/maintenance/article/story/2017/02/the-quest-for-uptime.aspx