old school observation.... tire whacker

rv2go wrote:
I guess I am still "old school". I thump the rear duels with a small ball-peen hammer and use the hand test for temperature difference for the tires.

X2. Hammer sits in the garage bay where I store my wheel chocks. Thumps each tire when I do my walk around.

I am a tire thumper on the DRW. Two weeks ago I thumped them befor departing And thumped one set again when I heard a very slight difference that I might have just put down to just the angle of the contact with the hammer. However I broke out the gauge and the inner was down to 20 psi. Durn valve extender leak again. Point is the thump difference was slight so thumping may not be the best way to spot trouble but it helps.

The other alternative to thumping is the temperature of the tire.

Warning some times they can be hot enough to burn your hand, that is why I use a lasser thermometer, the hot tire is the one with the low air or some other problem and yes there is a slight variation on the temps from tire to tire, the ones exposed to the sun and the ones that are inside the duallis are different in temp but only slight, after a few trips you will be able to read the whaker sound or the temp fairlly acuratelly.

I also check the toads sound and the temp.

navegator

We are "thumpers". No less than every two hours they get thumped and hand checked for tesmperature. Anymore than 6 or 7 pounds is extremely noticeable as far as pitch goes and one has to take into account whether the tire is in the sun or not. We do the same for the trailer tires including checking the bearing area for heat. Have caught 4 or 5 anomalies in the last 20 years this way. I'll probably still get a TPMS someday but its not high on the priority list right now.

My dad, professional trucker, 35 years, 4 million miles, no accidents, taught me how to check a rig.

Starting at the drivers door and waking all the way around the rig. He taught me what to check in each area, including thumping all the tires.

I do it the exact same way at every rest stop.

If was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.

No duals here. Look and feel at every stop.

beemerphile1 wrote:
When I went to school learning to drive truck, the instructor warned us we would look like an idiot thumping a front tire. The technique is used on duals because you can't necessarily tell by looking if one is flat. You can sure tell by the difference in sound and feel when they are thumped.

Those that can...... do.

Those that cannot....... teach.

With all the modern technology, ground crews and scheduled maintenance most commercial airline pilots still do a preflight walk around. Tire thumping not only performs a tire check, it assures that the driver does a walk around and looks at all sides of his rig. At&t requires it's technicians to place orange cones in front of and behind their trucks when parked. It isn't to prevent people from parking too close. It assures that the technician walks around his truck before driving off.

Bobbo wrote:
My dad was a professional interstate bus driver. He kept a ball peen hammer in his "grip." That is what he called the carryon bag he always travelled with. He never got in a bus without "whacking" each tire on the bus. He said he could tell within about 5 pounds of pressure whether it was right or not. Of course, he had been doing that for 40 years.

My dad drove for Greyhound from 1953-1983 and I went on many trips with him as a boy. He always thumped his tires, too. :-)

The other side of the "thumping" coin:

It’s a scene played out countless times a day: A truck driver climbs into his cab and cranks his rig. While the big diesel is warming up, he reaches down behind the seat or into the storage space in the door and pulls out a heavy wooden club. He climbs out and walks around his rig, thumping each tire along the way to ensure they have the proper air pressure.

According to industry experts, he’s wasting his time.

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