Big Loads - Post Photos Number 2

no worries

what do you not like about your dt12vx?

 

trail king dolly’s have worked mostly the same way for a long time, they reengineered the steering mechanism not to long ago

Trail King Updates Steerable Dolly

 

It's slow to shift which causes slow acceleration. Even loaded to legal weights it can be hard to get up to speed. That's also partly down to how I geared the truck though. Went with 3.73s in back since I do just as much legal lightweight work as I do heavy. Let's me get a max speed of 75mph.

Every so often it will get stuck. Like it just doesn't know what to do for the next gear. It will just sit there for about 5 seconds and go nowhere even with my foot to the floor. It usually happens if I come to a quick stop and then immediately try to accelerate hard. So it was downshifting fast for max engine brake RPM and then all of a sudden I'm asking it to start pulling. Only really an issue when running local streets with lots of lights. So it's really just operator error from me. I know what causes it and how to avoid it. I just hit the throttle too soon sometimes. It's just trying to keep the dummy in the seat from breaking stuff.

After having both the Allison 4700RDS and DT12VX I'd go Allison on my next truck again. I gave the DT a try because it lowered the build time by 6 months at the time and I wanted to get the Detroit Assurance system for adaptive cruise/brakes. Now Detroit Assurance is available with the Allison I believe. It wasn't an option for the first year of the 49X.

 

thanks

my dealer is trying to convince me to go away from the Allison to the VX

I am more worried about the redoing I do when I get under wires and trees and eating up the clutch

 

So I’m running about 17,17, 17 and 15 on the joe dog. Our shop modified this one so we could slide it further forward and also moved the fifth wheel forward, beefed up the rest. We don’t used it much but it comes in handy

 

thanks

I am trying to see if I could get 15 on steer and 72k across the drives plus the Joe dog

 

Another option is to add a pin-on fourth axle. The owner has one set up for his and it works well. It’s just a rather expensive option seeing that the pin-on axle was close to 50k.

 

I have done a pin on in the past on my heavy 3 axle - just mostly a pain to wrestle on and off.

I appreciate the help, It is not a common situation - so the people to ask questions are few and far between.

 

When you’re on route and have to stop traffic on the interstate so one can crawl under a bridge.

 

I had to do that on I24 south of Chattanoga last year for 3 bridges in a row. They even sent us the drawings and we had to go under them left right left in under a mile. 3 loads and 9 pilots. We ####ed up traffic that day. Almost had one of my pilots get hit by a ####### in a KW who cut around us all because he was impatient.