Brake condition

Better question is how a driver checks it as part of a proper pretrip?

A trooper has a toolbox, coveralls, and a creeper.

 

Simple answer - you can't.

All we can do is peek through that little "viewing hole" and look at the wear indicators.

As was already said, neither can the driver.

 

Good reason for dust shields,keeps the DOT from looking too close.

 

Kind of like inspecting some air disc brakes and feeling like you have one eye tied behind your back.

Best regards

 

The old wedge type brakes are even more fun.

 

Thankfully there are few of them around. We have a volunteer fire dept that has a military surplus tractor with wedge brakes that they are gracious enough to allow us to use for show and tell. Happy to see them dinosaured.

Best regards

 

My buddy has wedge brakes on his older 1990 ford LTL 9000 dump truck, we were going to replace his wedge brakes with drum's and we were told by an old timer that ran the truck shop/salvage yard and he told us to keep the wedge brakes because they are actually better when kept adjusted properly...

 

Better is somewhat subjective. The wedge brakes of today are among the most powerful of brakes, but that can be a bad thing as well as good. They are more complicated than others, requiring more servicing and even with the auto adjusters can be a pain. They are also as mentioned more difficult to inspect. The old style wedges which did not use the tappets (for lack of a better word), and manually adjusted were a super pain. Some automobiles manufacturers are starting to use electronic wedge brakes and I would not be surprised to see them in large trucks at some point in the future.

Best regards