Doing your own Preventive Maintenance

I vote with the manual grease gun guys there is a much better feel of how the zerk is taking grease.

 

Definitely a +1 on own PM and repairs. It doesn't take real long and you learn things about your truck and trailer.

 

First you need to know exactly what you are doing.. Second where are you going to dispose of the waste oil and how much will it be.. Third you use the best filters you can find.. Fleet guard is the best.. No cat is not.. Wix filters which Napa sells under Napa is second best.. Cat filters are good but expensive.. Dont forget what ever spill that you do.. Could one day be a hazardous waste dump site.. And do you really want to get that dirty? Sometimes spending a little more.. Saves you alot in the end.. Buy a grease gun and grease your truck with a lithium based grease. At least you know that grease got into the fittings.. Plus you can have a good look at whats wearing and what is still good.. Ohh and grease on the outside of the zirk fitting does absolutly no good at all except makes a mess.. No matter what the idiot at the truck stop said..

 

Those Fumoto valves are great. You don't get your hands covered in oil like with a drain plug, the threads in the pan never wear out, you get a slow steady stream of oil so you can put an oil sample bottle under it, they're easy to use, they are good Japanese quality not cheap Chinese. I've got one for the pan for my CAT 3408, one for the Brakesaver, one for the APU, and one for my car.

 

I buy my oil (Caltex Delo 400) in 44 gal drums and dispose of the old stuff in a spare drum. When I've got 4 or 5 full drums an oil waste disposal company comes and pumps it out for free with no mess. So no problems there. Hey, I like getting dirty! On my own truck though, not someone else's.

 

My brother, Father and I do all our own maintence. Usually on weekends or if something breaks we get right on it. motor mounts, changing oil, exhaust leaks, greaseing, U-joints, Brakes and list goes on... Somethings we take to the shop as we just don't have tools for like a rear end that needs re-done or replaced. But for instance a new clutch is about 800 bucks in parts but 2500 in labor. The way we see it is we can work on it all weekend and save ourselves 2500 bucks!! pay ourselves instead of a rookie shop guy to fix it.

we have been lazy and sent a semi in to get a new water pump. 1200 bones later and were pretty sure they put the same one on with new gaskets as it failed 6 months later.

Dirty, Nasty, knuckle busting jobs sometimes but you know exaclty how the truck ticks.. what can wait and what can't wait. How to get you home while on the road.. and save yourself some money.

And we found that napa filters were costing us more than just a regular CAT filter for our 3406. Don't alway rule out a filter you think is high dollar cause its a cummins/cat/etc filter. Sometimes they still cheaper so check around for prices.

 

On a related note, has any one use Detroit Diesel brand oil filters? I went into the local dealership yesterday and that's all they have now. Not sure I want to use them

 

Check out www.ryderfleetproducts.com

 

I just let speedco do my pm. I'm able to watch them and everything gets done including tire check and inflation, rear diff and trans fluid check and top off fluids plus 5th wheel grease for about $295 and I'm on my way in less than a hour. $314 when I get the oil sample done.