I am speaking from experience on my 07 Freightliner Century. But some of this is just general knowledge too. Some of this information is also since this is a public forum, other operators with different types of equipment might be seeking answers for stuff too.
Anyway....
I bought my truck in July 2012, in Aug 12, I had to put kingpins in. It would scrub tires off in about 7000 miles. It was checked by 3 mechanics before I bought it to verify the kingpins were good/bad. The dealers mechanic, a 3rd party mechanic out in Wash and my own mechanic back home as well as myself. After 3 weeks of driving the truck, I noticed a wear on the right steer, I had a driveline vibration and a pull all at the same time. I bought the truck with 708,000 miles on it. It came from Pride Transportation originally, then a company out of, I want to say Medford OR, that went bankrupt. They had mainly yellow trucks. Hauling produce in WA, OR and CA primarily.
If you have 1/2" of freeplay in your tire, you have MAJOR issues. To the one that recommended that, WOW. Where does that come from? If you have discernible movement in the front, you have issues. On my Airtek (air-ride) axle, that is measured with a dial indicator of like 0.010" or less is spec.
Hendrickson and all the manufacturer's put their component literature online for people to download. Just a matter of finding them.
http://www.hendrickson-intl.com/Part...uck-Literature
The other thing I found out for my "pull" and vibration was that I had an incorrect ride height. It was a good 1 3/4" off. We correct that.
I had a 3-axle alignment done as well to find out that I had one axle pushing to the center 3/16" and towards the ditch at 1/8". I forget where they corrected it to, but it changed the truck dramatically.
We installed Dunlop SP384 tires on the same time we did the kingpins and 3-axle. Within about 20,000 miles, I noticed the right side wearing funny. Feathering like it was off on toe. We checked it and rotated left to right and it was still there. At 48,000 miles, it was so bad, I had to replace what was now the right steer tire. At this time, I had swapped my dry van for a reefer and knew I'd have this trailer for a while. I did a 5-axle alignment as well. I changed the tracking on the trailer by about 4". I could have the steers/drives on the left of the center line and it looked to have entire centerline plus a bit more to the edge of the trailers. It was done under "warranty".
I ran those tires another 45,000 miles and finally had to replace the right side tire again due to wear issues.
This time, we replaced them with Goodyear G399LHS tires. In about 7000 miles, I noticed feathering on the right side steer. A third 3-axle alignment was done. We also noticed at this time a major lean in the cab on my truck. It turned out that Hendrickson has a dual height control valve conversion for their Airtek axles in mid-late 2009. I only had a right side HCV and they added the left side to it. Freightliner wanted $300+ for the kit plus labor to install. I called and talked to Hendrickson about it and they shipped me the HCV and bracket for free. I had to purchase $30 worth of bolts and air line + fittings to complete the conversion. It too me about 30 minutes to cut two huck-bolts and install the bracket and HCV.
That link above? It also has links to the
literature to order (for free) the height gage for the Airtek front axles. It makes it really easy now to take 20 seconds on my walk around to check my front axle over to include my ride height.
After this last go around, I have now gotten about 30,000+ miles on the tires and they are wearing normal finally. I can actually take my hands off the wheel if I want to and it just goes down the road if there's no cross-wind etc. It takes little effort to drive this truck really.
