Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems has engineered the Bendix GC Spin-On Air Dryer Cartridge, the North American heavy-duty industry’s first spin-on style air dryer cartridge using recycled desiccant for the aftermarket, the company says.
Being the only air dryer remanufacturer in the industry that reprocesses its own desiccant means that, with the GC, Bendix can provide original equipment manufacturer performance with a replacement cartridge priced for aftermarket customers. Designed and built by Bendix, the GC – the letters stand for “Green Cartridge” – will be available on Aug. 20, 2017, through standard authorized Bendix aftermarket distribution channel partners.
“Bendix understands the value of listening to customers to provide the best solutions. It’s been a part of how we do business for more than 85 years,” says Richard Nagel, Bendix director of marketing and customer solutions, Air Charging. “We’ve heard from many fleets and owner-operators who work hard to maintain their trucks for long-term life cycles, as well as customers who are second and third owners of used trucks – and one of the things they’ve told us is that they really want an aftermarket spin-on cartridge that delivers genuine Bendix reliability.”
The Bendix GC can be used on any North American air dryer that calls for a standard 39mm, right-hand thread spin-on dryer cartridge, although Nagel noted it is not suitable for applications requiring an oil-coalescing filter.
Desiccant, which is the material inside an air dryer cartridge that attracts moisture during a charging cycle and releases that moisture during the purge cycle, needs to be tough for trucking applications. Through thousands of cycles a year, it’s subjected to pressure cycling, high temperatures, and road vibrations, and exposed to air saturated with moisture and oil aerosols passed by a truck’s compressor.
“We’ve been remanufacturing our desiccant for over 20 years and continue to improve and invest in the process,” Nagel says. “The Bendix GC reflects this, with a performance range that’s near the air drying efficiency of our brand-new, OEM-grade cartridges. In fact, our proprietary remanufactured desiccant mix is often better in the long run than the new desiccant found in most comparable aftermarket cartridges.”
It’s a common misconception, Nagel explained, that new desiccant is inherently superior to remanufactured. For example, Bendix testing has shown that while low-cost aftermarket spin-on cartridges may perform satisfactorily out of the box, their desiccant often begins to degrade – impacting system efficiency and air quality – within just a few weeks of normal operation.
