The Technology & Maintenance Council took a “deep dive into emissions aftertreatment system maintenance” during their annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday.
Panelists discussed the various ways they tackle aftertreatment maintenance issues.
“We always check gasket, clamps, bellows, and the EGR systems,” said Bryan Stewart, of Jones Logistics. “With the EGR system you can look for soot.”
“We implemented a smoke detection system to look for leaks and that has worked well.”
Stewart said his company developed oil analysis standards to get a snapshot of where his fleets are. He said soot levels can be an EGR valve or DPF filter stopping up and he always wants a TBN of no less than 3.5.
Stewart said his techs make filter changes at 100,000 mile intervals.
“We are constantly preaching to the drivers about cleanliness.”
“We change air filters based on 18,000 gallons of air per gallon of diesel fuel and we change air filters every service. That saves us $1,656 per truck per year.”
Stewart said that he feels fleets should use predictive maintenance instead of preventive maintenance so they can look ahead and know what to expect.
Mark Collins, director of maintenance and engineering transportation fleet for UPS, said that “with the exhaust aftertreatment systems, you have to look at the base of the duty cycle.”
Collins said that UPS began using a single sourced cleaning provider in 2015 and has since seen a great deal of improvement.
“It took a while to do this, but we took a snapshot and saw that in February 2016 we had a 46 percent fall out rate, in October 2016, we had a 51 percent fall out rate.”
He said that since that time, UPS has been taking the units that didn’t pass the bake and air blow process and ran them through the wet wash process.
“We looked at four different locations. We are seeing between two and 25 percent improvement now. In January 2017, our snapshot saw a 37 percent fall out rate.”
Tom Chase, of Bellavance Trucking in Vermont, said his fleets undergo “very extensive, time consuming PMs.”
“We don’t want to see the trucks between PMs,” he said. “We look at all codes during each PM. I also mandate a forced regen at every PM to prevent possible drivability issues.”
Bryan Lewis, of Southside Community College, said it’s time for heavy duty techs to begin using diagnostic tools that have been used in the auto industry for some time now.
He said some tools provide efficient and simple ways of testing for exhaust leaks.
Technicians need to select the proper tools to collect data and interpret that data and specialized tools for diagnosis, he said.
