Truly Understand the Pre-Trip

You make a valid point, & if I was in a newer company rig I might not pop the hood daily. But a few times a week like you did sounds respectable. I just feel if other drivers did it at least 2-3 times a week they wouldn't all be staring at me like some weirdo!!

I really got into the habit because when I 1st got it, it had a small crack in the radiator. Well it didn't leak until I shut it off. Since I try not to idle at night, I always had to put a quart-half gallon of coolant in the AM depending on the angle I was parked at. LoL

My truck has at least 1.1million, maybe 2.1million. Dont really know as the old DDEC II ecm is only showing hours for some reason. I like to check the frame out around the hangers for cracks from possible metal fatigue just from being so old..

I also had the frame stretched 36", so I like to look that area over pretty good to make sure the weld back there is looking good too..

You are right again. Can tell if it's down on oil a bit just by the psi guage at idle. Can tell when she was dripping coolant by the smell of it, or when oil was dripping on the exhaust manifold by smell. Or when it blows a hole in rusted out exhaust pipe by sound. You really do get to know your rig like a woman after you've spent a few years together, crawled around all over her, & let her have access to the bank account.. lmao

 

Get a frickin gauge and check the pressure... the pre trip at the dmv u just need to memorize the "not cracked broken or missing" bs they want u to say. U are not actually doing a pre trip for the cdl exam u are showing the examiner that u know how to do a pre trip and check all the components.... Focus on the air brake test... if u miss any portion of that it is an auto fail. Anything else u miss just adds points not auto fail. Also make sure dont forget to check the pesky abs light , that was the only one i missed on my exam

 

Ok tire thumping 101. A flat tire or tire with no air will not bounce. I used a mini baseball bat. When you hit the tire? It makes a thunk noise. Listen to the tone of that noise. When you whack other tires the pitch of the other ires will be approximately the same pitch. A tire with less air will have a low sound. A tire with normal tunk noise will have a higher tone.

Now for the bad part anout sticking a tire to read the tire pressure? If it is in the dead of winter and you measure the tire preassure you may find you have a flat tire. The headache is the tire may have water in the casing when it was last aired (humidity). Whe you put a test gauge to the tire, some of that air will bleed out. Unless the shop aired those tires with nitrogen. As well as preheating the valve stem with an open flame? Some moisture will get in the schraeder valve. That moisture will freeze, when it does, it will cause the tire to deflate slowly. Or quickly depending on how the moisture froze. Tho todays wheels come with transponders and one doesnt need to "stick" the valve stem anymore. You just walk up to the tire with a bluetooth device and take a reading.

 

Real world is if you own and live with the truck 24/7 and do all the maintainance and tinker with it and rub and massage it all the time you don’t need to do a pre trip everyday. You know when something is wrong because it tells you and you can instinctively feel it. Just like a mother and baby.
A lot of the stuff on the pretrip is a joke because that stuff rarely ever breaks and you should be looking at that stuff during stops multiple times a day anyway. Getting under a truck and shaking drivelines and scraping grease off of the chassis looking for cracks. Getting covered in grease checking crossmembers and the bottom side of the fifth wheel were the working parts that actually wear out are. Maybe a bolt or rivet worked loose or fell out under the cab somewhere on that last stretch of bad rd construction last night at 2am. Need I go on.