Doing your own Preventive Maintenance

I do. Napa has a sale on filters about every 6 months. I just stock up. I have a friend that has a oil furnace in his shop so I have a place to get rid of the oil. Bought a rolling drain pan from Northern Tool for $160 and have a barrel to put it in. A lot of times Walmart has the best price on oil. Last time I got oil it was $12 gallon at Wallyworld and $17.50 at Napa. I should probably look into buying it by the drum from the local oil jobber. I also have a Lincoln cordless electric grease gun. With the discount I get from Landstar at TA/Petro I don't really save much money, maybe $40, but doing it myself gives be a good excuse to get under the truck and make sure everything is OK.

 

If youre going to do your own PMs try to buy your filters in bulk online, buying a 9 case or 12case will save you a lot of the dealer upcharge. As for oil, call a few distributors and check prices on oil in bulk. I know a few people who buy Rotella 15/40 in 55 gallon drums from Sams/Walmart, drops the price down to about 11.50$/gal after taxes.

 

Suggestions above are good. But the best part about doing your own PM's is it forces you to crawl all over and under your own truck, getting to know where things are and what they look like in normal and abnormal condition. Only you are going to get to EVERY grease fitting and know the ones that aren't taking any.
I credit the fact that I have done my own PM's with saving large sums of money on maintenance whether I did the repair or took it to a shop, mostly because I found it and got it fixed on a scheduled basis instead of on the side of the road or on the hook to a strange shop which gouged me.
Good luck.

 

Can anyone tell me if I can use the bottom sleeper window of a piterbilt 387 for kw t700... Cause I own a kw t700 and the window is broke and i would like to replace it.... So do they fit each other....
I mean the bottom sleeper window which is the big one not the one on top.....
And thanks guys for anyone who would reply to me.....

 

I do it myself. At first it was the inconvenience of having to go to the city an hour away to get things done. But like others have said, it's a great way to keep an eye on things that the shops miss by using their rookie mechanics.
Things I've found doing it myself:
- missing clamp to support transmission coolant line, would have worn through a hole in the line causing at least a mess, at worse transmission failure.
- rear shackle of left front axle spring not taking any grease. After jacking the front of the truck in just the right spot and applying 10,000 psi to the zerk the grease finally went in and a bunch of rust came out. Apparently the dealer didn't get any grease in at all in its first three tries before I did it myself.
- noticed a wet spot where there shouldn't be one, turned out to be a coolant line from the fuel cooler to the oil cooler. Would have lost a bunch of antifreeze if it had of blown.
I don't think I have saved myself much on the oil changes and grease, but I have definitely saved a couple of service calls and down time.

 

Don't you need lots of heavy duty equipment guys?

 

Two things:
-something to catch the oil. I use one of these.

-a grease gun. I got tired of having to change cartridges all the time, so I got one of these.

 

Thanks men

 

if you don't want to spend the money for the equip in uncleal13 post here is what I have done for years.
Put a "quick change" valve on the pan. Like this http://www.fumotousa.com/
You can catch it and control the flow into whatever containers you are using.
If you are in a northern climate there are guys looking for waste oil all the time. What I did is get a surplus 275 gallon fuel oil tank, and when it was full a local salvage oil dealer would pick it up for free. Please dispose of the old oil properly.

This is not a fleet, grease cartridges are a little more expensive, but you are already saving so much money $6 per cartridge isn't exorbitant. And using a manual grease gun gives you a feel for what is going on at that fitting and point of movement.