Do’s & Dont’s on clutch & clutch brake!

I do like @Ridgeline says. I have many vintage trucks and have never had to replace a brake. Got many of them with years of miles from other owners and still have those brakes in them. Only use the brake to nudge it into gear from forward to reverse or vise versa, or at dead stop but Most of the time you can feather the clutch to let it mesh into a gear when at a stop. If you leave it in a gear to the stop. If truck is on an incline most times it will slip into gear without touching peddle by just controlling the roll speed to start in lowest gear it will go in. And most of all do not push peddle all the way down with truck moving.

 

In the 44 years I’ve been driving, and trucks I’ve driven, NOT ONCE has the clutch brake ever failed.

 

I’m willing to bet that being in the dump truck game the peddle is going all the way to the floor and brake is getting hit every time the truck goes from forward to reverse or vise versa and every time a bed lift is done With the truck still moving. That will kill it fast. I’ve seen guys do it without them really realizing it. In some busy locations being in a hurry to get dumped or loaded and out to the next round.

 

Shifting a dump truck on soft ground is a great way to misuse the clutch brake but so what they’re cheap and easy to replace…. I do it frequently and it’s my truck and I pay the bills. On an otr truck they will typically last as long as the clutch….500k maybe 1mill depending on the driver but dumps and concrete mixers seem to be more like 1-200k on a clutch and maybe 50k on the brake and usually the failure for us is the tabs that engage the input shaft wear/shear off.

 

From what you've described I don't think you're doing anything wrong. But please tell me that you use the clutch brake when you engage the PTO before you lift the bed every time.

It sounds like the weekend driver abused the clutch.

Being that this is a dump truck, I would suspect that this self-adjusting clutch isn't actually adjusting itself properly anymore due to improper lubrication, the possibility of material getting up inside there, or both.

 

put pto in gear before you take trans out, no reason to use the clutch brake

 

That works too, as long as the input side of the trans is stopped when the PTO switch is thrown.

I had to teach one of our new drivers how to engage the PTO with with an automated transmission the other day - which his trainer should have done before they signed off on him.