Do brake chambers have brake fluid in them?

Clearly, you can't have juice brakes for a trailer. The old "one line" trailer brakes you are thinking of was for trailers with the old vacuum brakes, which were just as bad. Lot's of straight trucks had juice brakes and hydra-vacs well into the 90's.

 

Make sure you put your favorite flavored air when adding air in tire , strawberry banana , orange etc ....but you cant mix air of different flavors !

 

You are correct, pressure is not a reason for using air brakes over hydraulic brakes. If higher pressure were a factor manufacturers would put hydraulic brakes on class 8 vehicles. Hydraulic brakes regularly are working around 1500+psi.

 

I'm not going ready this whole s%÷&show but there's fluid in the air brake system during the winter. Tequila works good and you can drink it later. By pass the air dryer. Cheers

 

Hydraulics may have higher pressure but its acting on a much smaller surface area and does not have the mechanical advantage of a slack adjuster or the ramps on the S-cam. So kind of a moot point about pressures.

 

Mechanical advantages can be designed, but I’m just saying there are several very good reasons (Some of which have mentioned in this thread) why hydraulics are not feasible and lack of pressure is not one of them. With the pressures hydraulic brakes work at, engineers would seemingly have more problems not over advantaging them.

 

You know, you don't have to reply to every thread... you just don't. And you really shouldn't when you're so egregiously wrong, like you are in this case.



The correct answers have been given, but to summarize; air brakes are used on semis (and trains) because, unlike passenger vehicles (and straight trucks), they are not "closed" systems. Air is made continuously available and replenishes the system which accounts for system breaks (coupling/uncoupling), leakage, poor maintenance, etc.

Air is compressible... hydraulic fluid is not. Air can NEVER provide pressures even remotely close to that which is achievable with fluid.

So, air is not ideal for providing high pressures, but it is ideal as a continuously supplied "fluid."

 

I wish I could thank your post twice, not4hire.........