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Air Dryer


53wlee53

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Yea, those are commercial, the other ones are line filters I think that Summit Racing has. They are not running air brakes on their race cars are they?

 

If your compressor is leaking oil, or you live in a wet climate and get sweat inside your tanks, every year is about right if your not running 100,000 miles a year. Lines, air tanks and fuel tanks sweat. All your big trucks have petcocks on the bottoms of the air tanks (or used to). Before air dryers, we drained our tanks every day. You will sometimes get what looks like a milkshake color of gooy stuff coming out of the tank. It is a mixture of oil and water trapped in the system. Good to get rid of it.

 

Bill

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It is definitely good to get rid of it. And as part of a pretrip I DO drain/check my tanks. Well - I go through the motions, anyway. In almost 14 years of using an HDT in the fulltime lifestyle I have never gotten ONE drop out of any of the tanks. I change my desiccant filter about every two years or so.

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I have never seen one on a truck before either. Heck, I thought he put a sight glass on his tank and filled it with green coolant! But yea, its just a little indicator that turns pink when humid and green when dry. So it'll catch your dryer the day it dies or the day you over work it or something along those lines. I didn't talk to him too long about it so I didn't ask him how often he has to change the paper card or if it screws up at all. His was also kind of crusty as it wasn't a brass or plated piece. I dunno, it was just one of those things that caught my eye and made me think 'neat idea'.

 

They don't appear to give much for specs so I'd guess it is the larger of the two bung styles as you'd need 1/2" NPT. The ones with the beads and the window I'm not sure I'd trust until I saw one in my hands. If it breaks off the front of your supply tank you've got a bad day coming.

 

Also regarding the slobbery Holset compressors mentioned above, check into the coalescing dryers/cartridges that came out recently. They are more expensive but do a pretty good job with the oil.

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We use those plug style moisture indicators at work. They're installed into a threaded pipe "tee" on the plant side of the air dryer system. The lifespan is essentially unlimited, but we will change them out, once they've done their duty. I have seen them change back to their original colour, once the air is dryed back down, but for the price, most customers want new.

I have been wrong before, I'll probably be wrong again. 

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I have never seen one on a truck before either. Heck, I thought he put a sight glass on his tank and filled it with green coolant! But yea, its just a little indicator that turns pink when humid and green when dry. So it'll catch your dryer the day it dies or the day you over work it or something along those lines. I didn't talk to him too long about it so I didn't ask him how often he has to change the paper card or if it screws up at all. His was also kind of crusty as it wasn't a brass or plated piece. I dunno, it was just one of those things that caught my eye and made me think 'neat idea'.

 

They don't appear to give much for specs so I'd guess it is the larger of the two bung styles as you'd need 1/2" NPT. The ones with the beads and the window I'm not sure I'd trust until I saw one in my hands. If it breaks off the front of your supply tank you've got a bad day coming.

 

Also regarding the slobbery Holset compressors mentioned above, check into the coalescing dryers/cartridges that came out recently. They are more expensive but do a pretty good job with the oil.

Hi Scrap,

 

I am always curious about new things. In this day and age, there are so many new things to keep from breaking down. I welcome stuff like this, as we may be able to use it for another application. Really, thinking about it, I am surprised trucks never had something as simple as this.

 

Anyway, Happy RV'ing..Catch ya down the road.

 

Bill

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I spun a new filter on my drier a couple of weeks ago as it was the last unknown on the truck and figured I better just do it as cheap insurance.

 

There was some mixed water/oil residue in the housing and I noticed the filter came with a larger o-ring that appeared to go on the threaded tube? There wasn't one on it before, but I put it on there anyway as I figured it would just slowly bypass around the filter without it.

 

Thoughts on the oring?

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