FALL MAINTENANCE CHECKS 

By: Cameron Maynard

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone. I’m Cameron Maynard from Parts for Trucks, and I’m a Service Manager here in Dartmouth, and today I have with me Helen Graham. She is a technician here in Dartmouth. And we’d like to talk to you about some of the key things to target on your fall maintenance.

First and foremost, you have to be able to get in your vehicle. If you can’t get in your vehicle, you can’t drive your truck. And the number one reason you can’t get in a vehicle is a frozen door lock with a little lubrication.

You shouldn’t have that problem. If you do one thing to remember, if you do happen to use lock device or when you are frozen out, always make sure to lube your locks again as the de-icer will wash away any lubricant that you have in there.

All right, next, we’re going to look at her batteries. If you don’t have batteries, you don’t have anything, you can’t start the truck, you can’t check your accessories, you can’t do anything. First and foremost, you want to look at your connections.

And as you can see, we’ve got some green corrosion. That is a perfect, perfect scenario where it’s got to be cleaned and coated. The positive or the negative side looks very good, nice and clean, but it should also be taken apart and cleaned as well.

If you’ve got corrosion in there, it creates a barrier for your amperage to go through. So when you’ve got your battery cables all apart and you’ve cleaned everything up, it’s always a good idea to have your batteries load tested.

If you’re not equipped with a load tester, you should always take it to a qualified facility and have them check your battery for you. If you’ve got a four battery system and you take one out of the mix because it’s got a faulty cell, you’ve taken 25 percent of your starting amperage away from you.

So next, we want to look at. Save yourself a lot of headache down the road with lights and electrical accessories, is all your wire connections. Good opportunity to do it as in your fall maintenance. Go through your truck and look at any plugs, if there’s any kind of deutsch connectors or anything like that.

You should always good practice to pull them apart, clean them if need be, or just lubricate them some good quality dielectric grease. This simple maintenance tip could save you hours and hours and hundreds and hundreds of dollars just by doing this once a year.

Next spot we want to start is with your heater controls. That’s the one thing that tends to get forgotten about until it’s too late. Most people go through the warmer months and they use their air conditioning on full blast.

What they don’t ever do is check your mixer, your temperature and your fan speeds. It’s very important to do that now, because if you’ve got a weak motor or anything like that, the first cold snap, your motor will fail.

So it’s good to check that your mixer is moving it to all your different vents, your defrost your floor or any combination of now that we’re up under the hood around the power plant. It’s a great opportunity to check all your belts and hoses.

Have a look at all your hoses. Make sure the clamps are tight. Make sure there’s no weather cracking. No leaks. No distortions, no kinks. Anything that could potentially cause you an issue down the road if you’re happy with all those,

move on to your belts, make sure their condition is good. You’re going to check for fraying, weather cracks. Have a look at your tensioners, make sure that the belts are tight, if they’re tight, typically, your springs will be OK.

Most important part of your air system is your compressor. You want to check to make sure it’s functioning properly. Easiest way to do that is by pumping the breaks down until you hit about 50 PSI or cut-in pressure for your compressor.

Once you have it down, start your vehicle and let the compressor run at roughly one thousand or twelve hundred RPM, monitor your time before it goes to blow off. So after you’ve done your blowdown test and ran your compressor up, the blow off at 125 to 130 pounds based on your manufacturer, it’s always a good idea to

have a look at your air tanks. Your tanks will tell you a lot about what’s going on in your air system. When you pull your air drains, always look to see what comes out. If you’ve got water, you’ve got an issue.

If you have oil, you’ve got a bigger issue. Typically, oil can sometimes mean a compressor issue. Water can mean an air dryer is not working properly. Moisture has been introduced in your system somewhere. So ideally, when you pull your drains, you want air to come out and

no moisture. One part of your air system, not to neglect, is your air dryer, checking to make sure all the components are functioning properly if it’s equipped with a heater. Make sure that’s working. If you’ve got a purge valve like this one and it’s got oil in it, you need to go a little bit deeper.

If you’ve got a nice clean purge valve, you should still check that purge valve to make sure it’s functioning properly.

So the next area we want to just have a quick conversation on is your fuel system. Getting into the winter and fall months, you don’t want to give that fuel system.

If you have any moisture in your system at all and you don’t do regular filter changes, you’re going to run into problems.

It’s always a good idea to change your cartridges if equipped or if you have a spin on type filter, make sure you change those on a regular basis. If your filters equipped with a drain, you can drain it periodically.

If your filter is also equipped water sensor, always make sure your water sensors are good conditioning or connections are good. Next thing we want to look at is a block heater. You want to make sure your plug is in good condition.

There’s no corrosion. Make sure your cables get continuity and check it for resistance. And you also want to check the block heater itself to make sure it’s functioning properly. Thanks for watching, everyone. If you have any questions, please feel free to visit one of our locations or visit www.partsfortrucks.com.