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Grease that fifth wheel
Page 16
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• CM must apologise to coupling manufacturer Fontaine VBG, and issue a correction: in our recent article on the firm ( CM 25-31 October) we made an error regarding the lubrication of fifth wheels.
Quoting Roger Darling of Fontaine VBG, we seemed to suggest that operators do not need to grease their couplings and can run them dry or lubed with light oil. As Darling points out: "This advice only applies to drawbar couplings—most definitely not to fifth wheels. The reason that we can use oil or run the coupling dry is that any grease will attract the road dirt and as the coupling is much closer to the road this will form a "grinding paste" and wear even a hardened steel surface quickly. Drawbar couplings are designed for different loadings and a different environment and the materials and the choice of lubrication is taken into account at the outset. On a fifth wheel you have a wide contact area needing a lubricant that will not be washed off easily and certain types of grease perform this function well.
"In the case where an operator is using our 150CILM Low Maintenance Fifth Wheel, he will have low-friction material bolted to the topplate and in the throat at the back of the kingpin, and will only need to apply a small amount of grease to the locking mechanism—but he must not run it dry or even rely on only a light oil."