 3 Common Reasons Why Your Webasto Thermo Top C is Failing A Webasto Thermo Top C is a high-tech (and highly welcomed) engine warmer that fits into your fuel line and keeps your engine from freezing up – all without having to idle the engine itself. As with any technology, it’s amazing when it works, but there are a lot of components and sometimes they fail for what seems like no reason.
We see a lot of these Webastos at West Tech Mobile, and some of the reasons for failure are far more common than others. Here are the top three that we see again and again in the course of our work.
0 Comments
 Calgary Food Trucks ServiceOver the last few years, a new craze has popped up in cities all over North America – the food truck. Once just a hallmark of places like New York and Los Angeles, the food truck phenomenon has now spread to every corner of the continent, including right here in Calgary.
Food trucks are the ultimate win for a sole proprietor that loves the business: portable, efficient, and on a small scale, they can quickly be moved to a new location as needed. But what happens when the “truck” part of the business starts to show more than the “food” side?  Benefits of Mobile Truck ServiceIn the modern age of tight deadlines and the necessary efficiency, it isn’t always easy to take time out of your schedule to keep up with the maintenance on your heavy equipment. Aside from being needed on the job site, they can also be inconvenient or simply too large to move. As a result, if they get pushed too hard for too long, they may stop working altogether and break down on the site, or become unsafe to operate on highways or city streets. It could be costly to tow, or to spend weeks waiting for repairs that cost valuable productivity. What can be done to prevent this?
 Avoiding Department Of Transportation Fines With Our Spring Special! It looks like warm weather has finally returned, and as the old saying goes, that means it’s time for our second-longest Canadian season: construction! Trucks, rollers, pavers, cranes, and all kinds of other vehicles will be out in force in the coming months, working hard and doing what they do best.
But many of those vehicles have been sitting idle for several months, as the cold weather really blasted Calgary this year. That means all the hoses, pipes, and connections could have suffered damage over that time, and even the quality of the fluids inside the tanks and reservoirs could be reduced. And having a vehicle with multiple issues isn’t the kind of spring start you likely envisioned.  Fifth Wheel Safety and Maintenance If you’re a truck driver or a heavy equipment operator – or even if you’re just someone who loves to camp! – then chances are good that you’re familiar with fifth-wheel configurations. These setups, in which a trailer is hooked into the tractor or semi by a “kingpin” held in place in the centre of a disc or other mechanism, are very common and can be seen all over the roads you travel.
There are many different kinds of fifth-wheel connectors. Aside from the common vertical pin type that you’ll likely see on semis and tractor-trailers, there are also pintle hitches, which use a hook and a ring to allow greater flexibility on rough terrain; gooseneck hitches, which are used in pickup truck beds to pull campers and horse trailers; ball hitches, which usually attach to the back end of a truck for a variety of towing needs, and low-mount car-haulers – kind of like miniature flatbeds. With so much variation in style and capability, it’s easy for some telltale signs of danger or incorrect weight distribution to go unnoticed. And that means bad news!  CVIP versus Preventative MaintenanceIt’s not always easy to maintain a single vehicle that gets used every day, let alone an entire fleet of them. Between dust and debris, bad driving conditions, extreme temperatures, and just plain old wear and tear, it won’t take long to run into trouble somewhere if you’re not keeping up with inspections! Today we’re going to talk about two similar maintenance and inspection routines – different, but each necessary in their own way.
The first one is the CVIP, or Commercial Vehicle Inspection Program. These mandatory inspections have high standards, set by the government, and are intended to ensure that any vehicle on the road is actually worthy of being there! They check out your brakes, steering, structural integrity, emissions systems, and the other parts of your vehicle that keep it running smoothly.  Synthetic vs. Mineral Lubes for Gears Every engine, from those in the smallest toy trucks to the ones in expensive high-end vehicles, uses gears of some kind. These gears transfer movement from the engine components to the axles – which means that they need to be in proper working order for the vehicle to perform at its highest standard. And with constant friction, hard metal parts, and often-dirty work environments, keeping gears lubricated is a must if you want your powertrain to do its best.
When it comes to lubricants, there are two kinds to know about: synthetic and mineral. Synthetic is more expensive, but more stable; mineral is cheaper, but not as versatile in extreme temperatures. How can you know which one to use on your powertrain gears?  It Might Be More Than Just Worn Out Semi Truck Tires... Vehicles, and even more so specialized work vehicles, have a lot of complicated moving parts – there are plenty of circuits, hoses, valves, pipes, hydraulic lines, and belts that can wear out over time. But there’s one part that consistently gets overlooked when it comes time to maintain your truck – a part that might get the most wear and tear of all. We’re talking, of course, about your tires.
Tires are incredibly tough, and they have to be. They put up with the punishing cold air and blistering heat from the asphalt, and they experience friction along the rough road surface literally every time your truck is used. And despite all this, they can last a very long time…but it also means that if something is wrong with your tires, it’s going to affect the rest of your unit’s performance.  Calgary Stampede Heavy Truck Trailer Repair Summer has finally arrived in Calgary, and the long days here in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains can only mean one thing: it’s almost time for Stampede! Hitting the city for ten days every July, this internationally-renowned event draws hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.
Of course, with all these people come all the logistics, and getting Stampede Park ready for more than a million visitors is no easy feat. Dozens of trucks, tractor-trailers, forklifts, and other heavy equipment roll through the streets, and plenty more campers, motorhomes, pickups and horse trailers, and buses follow behind them. Even though everyone hopes for the best, the fact is that sometimes there are unfortunate circumstances and unforeseen problems.  When You Should Change Your Truck Gear LubesModern trucks have come a long way since their start over a hundred years ago – from the simple engines and mechanical parts of the first trucks, we now have trucks that are specialized for all kinds of heavy-duty tasks. As their capabilities and environmental pollution standards increased, the amount of necessary equipment under the hood did, too, and today, we have finely-tuned machines that will perform their duties incredibly well…provided that they are maintained properly. Some of the most important components in a truck transmission are the gears, which allow the generated movement to be transferred to the axles and the wheels. An improper gear alignment can wreak havoc on the vehicle’s ability to perform well, and the sound of grinding gears is one that no owner wants to hear while they’re on the road. To prevent this, and to keep your truck at its top abilities, it’s a good idea to make sure that your gears are not only set properly, but also lubricated correctly. 
|
Archives
May 2020
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
