I'm replacing all my air brake chambers along with new seals and slide pins on the Rockwell Meritor air disk brakes. I founds 2 chambers on the tag axle which I read the date code (AI did) and they are 1993 and that scared me, the drive axle is 2012 and 2013, the front steer chambers where the same as the drive axle.
What is everyone else doing as far as time? AI says 5-7 years or 500k miles.
(10-05-2026, 08:21 AM)Jack Houpe Wrote: I'm replacing all my air brake chambers along with new seals and slide pins on the Rockwell Meritor air disk brakes. I founds 2 chambers on the tag axle which I read the date code (AI did) and they are 1993 and that scared me, the drive axle is 2012 and 2013, the front steer chambers where the same as the drive axle.
What is everyone else doing as far as time? AI says 5-7 years or 500k miles.
It really just like anything else Jack, has a lot to do with the life of the coach. Almost all the coaches that I have worked on have had original brake chambers, they were 30-40 years old and still holding air fine. Is this a good practice, probably not. I would say at the 10 plus year mark you should inspect or replace the diaphragms on the service brake chambers. Your parking brake chambers the entire assembly will need to be replaced as you cannot get to the parking brake diaphragm. The main issue is the rubber diaphragm deteriorating and leaking, which is not good. Sometimes the bodies are not worth putting diaphragms in if they are badly corroded.
The tag 16/24 spring brake diaphragm was in dire need, manufacture date code 1993. Not sure about the steer and drive but all are new and I guess based on my age will be the last time I'll be doing this job.
Jeff thats interesting and scary at the same time that people don't pay much attention to that part of the brakes. I had to purchase separate haldex parking brake chambers and use the old bottoms with new diaphragm for the tag, some of the older bus and coach parts are becoming hard to find. Thanks for your input!
(10-06-2026, 02:43 AM)Jack Houpe Wrote: The tag 16/24 spring brake diaphragm was in dire need, manufacture date code 1993. Not sure about the steer and drive but all are new and I guess based on my age will be the last time I'll be doing this job.
Jeff thats interesting and scary at the same time that people don't pay much attention to that part of the brakes. I had to purchase separate haldex parking brake chambers and use the old bottoms with new diaphragm for the tag, some of the older bus and coach parts are becoming hard to find. Thanks for your input!
Yea those were due. So you have a parking brake on your tag axle? Mine is just a standard service brake, no parking brake on the tag.
Yea I had a similar issue with my Wanderlodge tag, I ended up just replacing the diaphragm because I could not find an offset clevis like the one that they used, and they changed the size of the threaded rod too so nothing matched.
Well the good news is that generally most of them were not being used and that is why they were neglected. I worked on an 1988 Wanderlodge with less than 50k miles on it, was sitting in an RV park for the last 20 years. New owners drove it from Florida to up north somewhere after I went through it and replaced and inspected all the major components.
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