THE ADVENTURES MK III - Still doing it my way

I have seen a few people post on this forum here that said they didn't go with Schneider because they read these requirements and thought that their truck didn't qualify. Speak to someone who is more than just a recruiter that is reading off a prompt - proof right here that you can bring on a truck that doesn't meet exactly what is written there. My truck is over 10 years old, weighs WAY more than 20,500lbs, the wheelbase I'm not 100% sure of but I know it approaches or maybe exceeds that 260" limit. Some of it may have to do with the fact that I have been a SNI company driver and a lease operator for just short of 2 years prior to buying my own truck, but honestly I don't think that they would be super picky about this kind of stuff regardless. The biggest thing they want to see is a safe truck (pass DOT). The only thing they got me for was my 5th wheel which they ARE very picky about - especially with the Hollands, mine had to have that stupid plate thing welded on it to protect the pin that sticks out from the front from getting damaged. That cost around $230.

The best part about that plate is the only way to damage it would be by high hooking a trailer - which Schneider will fire you for anyway. "So, driver, we'll fire you for high hooking a trailer, but we don't want that pin to get damaged that could lead to you dropping a trailer so we're gonna require you to spend $230 to have a plate welded on to protect that pin, but still if you high hook anyway we'll fire you.". LOL. Now of course, I can technically make sense of it, the driver high hooks a trailer, pulls out from under it and damages the pin on the 5th wheel, doesn't report it, hooks to the trailer but because of the damaged pin the jaws can't engage all the way and the trailer gets dropped. I'll put a picture up of it when remember to grab my phone out of my truck... it took 20 minutes for them to prep/weld it on the 5th wheel and all it is is a piece that was made in a cast that is probably worth about $10 at a scrap yard.

 

Well I pulled my batteries out today and they didn't look too bad. They were just short of 2 years old, so getting there, but none of them appeared to need replacing. All of the voltages were similar. I don't have a load tester so I couldn't load test them, but I think they will be OK for now. Guess that kinda messes up my theory of while the TriPac is running constantly. I'll have to play around with that more and see what the alternator on there is outputting. Maybe there is a bad ground. Or, it could go back to being something completely different like a bad coolant temperature sender. I found the programming manual for the tripac and will try to disable the coolant temp sensing (if it even has one, I haven't looked) and see what happens.

Since I got the money from the maintenance account, I decided now was a time to get some work done on the truck, so I took it out to a small shop I have dealt with before and left it with them. That way if I decide the day after Christmas I'm ready to roll, I'm not sitting around through the New Year waiting for everyone to open up and get back to work. I'm having them do a full PM changing every filter on the truck, and going over everything else, finding and fixing an exhaust leak that I don't want to deal with myself because of it's crappy location (somewhere, lol), and doing the brakes on one drive axle, both if the price is right. It's supposed to be done Monday assuming everything goes as planned, but who knows. If it is maybe I can squeeze that first load in and then get back by Wednesday. We'll see... can't screw up and miss a family event so I'll have to be careful.

I hate leaving my truck with someone else, but until I have a (heated) shop of my own there are some jobs that are best left to the guys that have the correct space to do it in instead of a gravel driveway.

 

Tell me about it. Nice 70* weather? Let's tear that engine down, we'll be done by lunch. 20* weather? Well I guess spending 17 seconds to install that magnetic XM antenna is 17 seconds too long, it can wait.

Thanks, I'll check that out! Do you know if that wire runs from the computer box back to the alternator? My truck has a long wheelbase and the Tripac is mounted way back, and on the opposite side of the battery box. I'm wondering if the voltage drop from the long cable runs could be making the TriPac think it's not charging the batteries up to the level that it should be?

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I don't care what brand of truck you have, they all have something on them that makes you go WTF... here is the battery box on my T600. It has two levels (the lower level behind the plate that is still attached). Notice the mass of cable that run over the top level of the batteries, many of which are attached to what appear to be isolators on the side of the battery box, or attached to the batteries on the lower level, making it a requirement to disconnect pretty much EVERYTHING just to replace the batteries, or try to fight the batteries out with everything catching on the cables. Not to mention getting to this box requires unbolting the side fairing, unbolting the step, unbolting the lower cover, and unbolting the upper cover. The Cascadia battery box you could access with no tools, and all the batteries are in a line, and connected by a negative and positive strip that run the length of all 4 batteries. All the cabling is connected to those strips so they can be easily moved up and out of the way, then the whole battery box slides out where you can easily pick the batteries straight up and out.



And here are the pictures of that thing they welded to my 5th wheel.