New O/O with some basic PM questions

If this was my truck...

since you are servicing the vehicle. By rights this would all be considered "On-Duty" time.

Consider the cost of your oil. 11 Gallons. That's gonna run you just under $140. Filters. Filters are gonna run you $40-45. Grease, another 5 bucks or so. If you have two filters as some do, you are already pushing $200-220 bucks.

Tranny and differentials seem rather high, but at $20-something a gallon and 4 gallons or so needed, it's close to $100 in lube alone.

Again, what's your time gonna be worth?

I called a couple of different shops locally and they know I will be a repeat customer if they take care of me and are getting me discounts.

I drop the truck off, give em the keys with a list and come back and pick it up.

I go manage the truck, they do my grunt work for me.

Can you do the work? Sure. Is it worth doing the work under the gun? Not in my experience.

Heck, I even enjoy smelling like 80w90 at times. But I have other things more important that need attention as well.

Besides, it's nice having a trained tech look at the truck every now and again. Your eyes get blind to things dwindling apart and they might catch that next thing that gets you on a roadside before it shuts you down.

And that's exactly how I put it to the service writer too when I set something up.

I learned a long time ago, it may seem foolish to just go in at the annual DOT and dump a new exhaust even bi-annually, brakes and tires in , but it sure as hell beats the OOS and shut-down if they find it in the scale or someplace I need to be turning wheels.

Maintenance may cost, but down time will cost you more. Managing that downtime is to your benefit.

 

Just repeating alot of what has been said already but here is my 1 cents worth. I always do my own service. No one is going to take the time checking and "puttering" with truck like a proud owner is going too. Sometimes i spend 4-5 hours doing a service. There is never a good time to cut corners. Your truck is not the place to start. Any linkage gets oil or grease, includint clutch linkage, slack adjuster pins, door hinges, door locks, hood hinge, seat, etc, etc. If it moves, lube it. Oil and grease is much cheaper and more convenient than parts, any day. I take alot of pride in taking care of my truck and i like to think it shows with fewer break downs and repairs. Drive it the with the same pride and your truck will be as trouble free and long lasting as any truck out there. Best of luck, whatever you decide...

 

If you're going to service the truck yourself, do yourself a favor and buy your fluids in bulk.....5 gallon buckets of oil are the smallest containers I will buy. Not only will it generate less "waste" (you won't have a bunch of useless 1-gallon jugs laying around)....but you can easily pop the lid off to pour the used oil into so that you can take it to town with you to dispose of it properly. If you know anyone with an oil-burning furnace in their shop, they'll usually be more than happy to take it off your hands.

It'll take roughly 10 gallons of oil to change the engine oil...some use a gallon or two more, some use a gallon or two less...but it'll be in that general neighborhood. One thing you certainly will want to be sure to do is FILL THE NEW OIL FILTERS WITH CLEAN OIL prior to installing them. I know on my truck, each filter holds a little more than 1/2 gallon of oil. Think about how long the engine would have to run without oil while the filters filled up if you didn't already have them full when you installed them.

For the differentials, transmission, and front hubs, I just use gear oil in my truck...again, bought by the 5-gallon bucket. I've got a lid with a pump on it....just pull the plug to check the oil level, and if I need to add any, I just stick the hose from the pump into whatever I need to fill and start pumping until oil comes out of the plug. I've never really drained & refilled my differentials or transmission to know off the top of my head how much oil you'll need to do so. As a general rule, I don't reuse fluids. If I drain anything out while performing other maintenance/repairs, I replace it with fresh stuff.

You're also going to want to have a couple gallons of diesel on hand in a jug to fill your new fuel filters. Sure, you COULD take it from your fuel tanks....if you have a way to pump it out. Much easier to have a can with diesel that you can pour a little into the filters.

So, before you service the truck, including draining & replacing all of the oil in the engine, transmission, and differentials, you're going to need:

Two or three 5 gallon buckets of engine oil, probably two 5 gallon buckets of gear oil, and at least a gallon or two of clean diesel fuel (reuse a 5-gallon oil bucket for this if you want a "cheap" gas can).

You're also going to need drain pans big enough to hold the oil you're getting ready to drain out....and either a way to pump the oil out of the drain pan or a helper to help lift it up and pour it out.....or do like I do and have 2 drain pans and swap 'em mid-stream. If you're going to do that, you're going to need some oil-dry, too.

It really isn't any different than servicing a car....except you're using bigger wrenches and dealing with larger quantities of fluids.

You're also going to need a couple tubes of grease and a good grease gun. When I say "good", I mean one that you don't have to manually squeeze the trigger. That gets old REAL quick. Unless I'm forgetting some (just going off the top of my head), you're going to have 9 zerks for the steering (steering shaft u-joint, drag link (x2), king pins (2/side), and tie rod (x2). Each wheel is going to have zerks on the S-cam as well as the slack adjuster....so that's 2/wheel end, or 12 more fittings. The clutch will have 3 more. Then each u-joint along the drive shaft will have another fitting...plus the slip shaft will have another fitting (for example, my truck has 8 more fittings on the drive shafts). You might find 3 more grease fittings on each front spring. The 5th wheel will likely have another fitting on each side to keep the hinge lubed. Don't forget to smear some grease on the 5th wheel plate, too....

30-40 grease fittings, and that's JUST the tractor! Got a trailer to do too?

Do yourself a favor and just get one of these: http://www.lincolnindustrial.com/asp/products/greaseguns/air.asp

If you don't have an air compressor at your shop, get the battery powered version. I like air power, because me & batteries don't get along.

 

I was a maintenance NCO in the Army for 14 years and for a large part of that what they call a TAMMS clerk. The Army Maintenance Management System.

Annual services for me would be new wheel seals all around, drain and fill front hubs. New exhaust, new brakes, new belts, new tires (or recaps), new fluids front to back. Includes anti-freeze, power steering, oils, trans, diffs. replace every filter on the truck. Fuel, oil and air.

I saw a LOT of oil saved from not just dropping it when it said 10,000 miles or whatever the hours called for in an oil analysis. The testing fee is cheap. It will tell you the condition of the engine AND the condition of the oil. I have seen it spot head gaskets, turbos and inter-cooler's before you even had an indicator it was going out.

I have seen them come in and say to drop oil and put on a new filter. I have seen them say just put on a new filter. I have also seen them say to drop the oil, run it for 200 miles and re-sample. Only to send the truck in for a main bearing. You never even heard a noise. Got by with only a minor and replaced the main bearings instead of a lot more. The bearings didn't even look all that bad to the naked eye. But look at them under a scope, you could see which one caused the ruckus.

going off some rough numbers, It's costing me at minimum, $30 per hour in profit for every hour that truck is not moving. Revenue is about $66/hour and expenses are about $36 / hour.

So at $66/ hour, I'd have to be done in less than about 3-4 hours to make it worth my time to do my own oil change on all the gear boxes.

And don't forget, that's another 4 hours of driving time and being productive so you could almost say you have lost 8 hours at $66 just to do all that work.

A days wages. You spent 4 hours in overhead doing your service costing you 4 hours of driving creating revenue.Cost benefit analysis.


AND

plus 50 on getting a lincoln cordless greasegun. You can grease the truck in about 1/4 the time of a regular grease gun. You can get by with the 12v and don't need much more than that. Cheapest I have found them is at http://www.buzzardgulch.com/ You can hit your grease points on down time on the road if it comes to that.

 

One thing I like to check is cracks in the frame, xmembers, diff housings etc. If your throw out bearing doesn't have an extension on it, a shop will rarely grease it. They won't bother removing the inspection plate because it takes another 120 seconds. Also check that the u joint caps aren't spinning in the yoke. This usually means a needle bearing has scarred the cap so it won't spin freely. Replace the joint before it fails on the road even though it may seem tight. Also, if your brakes have dust sheilds on them, a shop might not see a leaky wheel seal. YOU will!!

 

when its all said and done how much do you really save by doing it yourself?

 

I am ALL FOR doing an occasional scrub the truck over. Coveralls work wonderful for it too.

You will always find more than some oil monkey will from a truck stop. They are under the gun and focused on pushing you out the door.

Yop, I'll be the first to admit it.

But there's a reason there are other skilled trades too.

 

+1 on the Lincoln grease gun...we have two batteries and one air gun. We use the batteries on the yard...and under the tractor. The air is nice ecspecially on the loaders due to the amount they need...will zap a battery.

I agree on the time spent...how much is your time worth? But I also love the work...and as said earlier...having "your" eyes and "your" hands on it can be worth alot more to you in the long run....and in getting to sleep at night than those hours.

Put it on paper....crunch the numbers. Maybe you could just do dry services and checks...leave a wet service up to a tech. I don't know...we could send you a hundred different ways with a hundred different ideas but it comes down to what you want to do...what its going to cost you...and what your time is worth to you.

 

They way I see it is this, if you want it done right do it yourself. Yes the mechanic may catch something you don't but at the same time who drives it everyday and may catch something the mechanic didn't because he has never driven it. If your at home because your on say a needed 34 hour reset, how can that be costing you money by not turning the wheels? What if you stayed out and ran into your 70 and had to sit and made yourself a day late because you didn't get a needed 34. Do it yourself especially if that will give you a warm and fuzzy. I know once I get a big truck I will. I have always done it to my diesel pickup since I bought it new. 250k later and 8 winters of snow plowing, still has not broken because I go through it with a comb when a pm is done.