| Lubrication By Dan Arcy, Global OEM Technical Manager and Industry Trade Association Liaison, Shell Global Solutions Five common maintenance mistakes These errors cost your fl eet money Th ere are numerous things that can be done to optimize your maintenance practices to be more effi cient and save money. Here are a few easy things that you can avoid to start saving money today. 1. The Wrong Coolant Filter Extended life coolants (ELCs) are becoming very common. In a recent survey, worldwide research company Power Systems Research (www.powersys. com) found that nearly 80 percent of medium and large fl eets are using ELCs. One advantage of using an ELC is that they don’t require an SCA (Supplemental Coolant Additive)-charged fi lter. However, many fl eets are still buying charged fi lters and putting them in trucks that are running ELC. A charged fi lter typically costs $3 to $10 more than a non-charged fi lter. Using the correct fi lter in conjunction with ELC can save your fl eet money. 2. Know Your Transmissions Improvements in technology have brought a new generation of transmissions: automated manual transmissions (AMTs). AMTs get the fuel effi ciency of manual transmissions and optimize engine operating conditions to further improve fuel effi - ciency while improving driver comfort with the convenience of an automatic transmission. AMTs require special transmission fl uids that have only recently been introduced. Eaton’s AMT, for example, uses a fl uid that meets PS-386 SAE 40 – a new specifi cation introduced last year. You could fi nd other fl uids on the market, but if you don’t use a fl uid approved by Eaton you could risk damaging your transmission or risk performance issues – both of which can cause your fl eet to spend money that could have been avoided. 3. Too Much Grease on the Fifth Wheel It’s true. You can use too much grease. Greasing the fi ft h wheel does not generally need to involve spreading an entire tube of grease around its surface. Instead, a moderate amount can be placed on the back half of the bracket, with a small amount on the front half. Th e trailer will help spread it to the entire surface of the fi ft h wheel when it is connected. Most of the time, over-greasing just leads to spilling grease on the truck and on the road. While grease is relatively inexpensive, these small amounts of grease can add up to a lot of money. 4. Issues Discovered After It’s Too Late When it comes to maintaining your fl eet, identifying issues as early as possible paves the way for cost eff ective remedies before they escalate into bigger, more expensive problems. Th is is especially true if you identify a problem with your truck aft er its warranty period when you have to absorb the entire cost of the repair. Th ere are many tools that can help identify problems early. Oil condition monitoring, for example, is a proven method to identify abnormal patterns in wear metals, contaminants and other important factors. Of course, you always could tear down your engines and look for signs of premature wear and When it comes to fl eet maintenance, identifying issues as early as possible paves the way for cost effective remedies before they escalate into bigger, more expensive problems. Photo courtesy of DK Communications other problems. However, that would require valuable time from your technicians that you can’t spare. An alternative would be to use an engine scope that can look inside your trucks’ engines without having to tear them completely apart. Services like Shell LubeVideoCheck can identify issues quickly and effi - ciently and require only minimal preparatory work from your technicians. 5. A Focus Only on the Direct Cost of Lubricants Lubricants can be expensive, especially if you opt for synthetic lubricants. Transmission and diff erential fl uids in particular can carry a big price tag. Moving up from conventional engine oil to synthetic potentially could cause a signifi cant increase in procurement costs. However, the benefi ts of high-quality synthetic lubricants not only off set added procurement costs, they also can decrease overall maintenance and fuel costs. Dan Arcy is global OEM technical manager and industry trade association liaison for Shell Global Solutions (www.shell.com/business-customers/global-solutions. html), which provides technical services and licensed technologies. His responsibilities include technical support to OEMs, representing Shell in the heavy duty engine oil technical committees and working with Shell’s on- and off-highway field testing programs. He served as chairman of the New Category Development Team (NCDT) and was responsible for leading the NCDT in defining the PC-11 performance standard for the next generation heavy duty engine oils. As Shell’s representative to the American Petroleum Institute (API) Diesel Engine Oil Advisory Panel (DEOAP), he has held this position as a voting member for more than 20 years and has actively been involved in the development of the last three heavy duty engine oil performance categories. THE PURPOSE is to detect problems early. 28 FLEET MAINTENANCE ❚ AUGUST 2016 ❚ VehicleServicePros.com
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