The Dallas truck show is now over and a great show it was. We stayed busy in our booth all three days, met with many old friends, and made many new ones, as well. We have been in business for 38 years and working truck shows for 25 of those years. Truck shows are like reunions – we ship many of the parts we sell to our owner operator customers, so we rarely ever get to see them – except at the shows. I also spent four days in Austin, Texas prior to the show and was very impressed with the city, Lake Austin, the Hill Country and the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas. In fact, the food is so good in Austin and Dallas, that I gained ten pounds in just 11 days!
Our booth was busy at the truck show. We had Lynn Livermore representing Vibratech Torsional Dampers, Gary Dalton representing the FilterMags, Eric Wheeler representing the CL-8 engine cleaning system and David Yacobucci representing Maxwell starting capacitors. I know Kevin Rutherford has been talking about the Maxwell starting capacitor for about two years, and we have been installing them for about the same period of time. However, I have never written about the Maxwell because I did not know the advantages of the product, and I won’t talk about something unless I fully understand it.
I typically stand in our booth in a spot near the Caterpillar engine we have on display and, this year, I had David Yacobucci right beside me so I could learn from him as he spoke with owner operators about his product. Here are the advantages of the Maxwell starting capacitor that I feel are important: 1) It only weighs 19 pounds; 2) It offers 1,800 cold cranking amps from a range of 140 degrees to minus 40 degrees; 3) It is shock and vibration resistant; 4) It has built-in overcharge protection; 5) It comes with a 4-year warranty; 6) It takes less than 15 minutes to recharge and will start the engine nine times consecutively; and 7) It is assembled in the USA.
The Maxwell Engine Start Module is rugged, lightweight, low maintenance, and provides consistent and reliable engine cranking performance for thousands of starts. The Maxwell works in tandem with the batteries, extending the life by providing reliable bursts of power at start up, anytime, anywhere, regardless of the outside temperature. All the batteries in the truck have to do at startup is supply enough energy to the ECM to allow the electromagnet on the injector to open to accept fuel. This is about 9 or 10 volts – which is about the output of a motorcycle battery.
We have all tried to jump-start a truck with a car or pickup and know that it takes hours of charging to get the engine to crank. Now, even if the batteries are dead, any car or starting pack will supply enough voltage to the ECM and the Maxwell will do the cranking.
Now for the bad news. Like all great products, they are not cheap (about $1,050 plus labor to install). But, if you have a TV, refrigerator and other electronic devices in your bunk and run the batteries down until the truck won’t start, you will wish you had a Maxwell, because the engine will start and you’ll be on your way down the interstate. I try to avoid aggravation in my life (I’m too old for it), so the Maxwell will be in my T-600 the next time it goes back on the road because I can’t stand the problems created when an engine won’t start.
Now for a word from the engineering department. Last month I mentioned that we have rebuilt or repaired three instrument panels that were supposedly junk – our engineers were able to bring them back to life – and as of this writing, we have repaired another fifteen of them. So, if some or all of your gauges fail and the ECM is still good, bring the truck to our shop or ship the instrument panel to us – we just might be able to save you a couple thousand dollars.
It has been three years since we started doing emissions testing for all of our products and the other companies that develop engine parts that we sell. As it turns out, every three years we have to send the testing equipment back to the manufacturer for re-calibration, so we are not doing any testing right now. But, we should be back up and running very soon, hopefully around the middle of October.
Here is another success story about the FilterMag. We received a letter from a company that has a Dodge/Cummins pulling truck with well over 1,000 hp. During a 300-foot pull the oil pump disintegrated. The engine completed the pull, but then the driver noticed there was no oil pressure. They thought the engine was going to be wiped out from all of the metal debris the oil pump presumably put through the system. But, upon disassembling the engine, they found no metal in the oil galleys, so they cut the oil filter apart and all of the shrapnel from the failure had been captured on the sides of the filter housing because of the FilterMag magnets. These magnets really do work, and they turn your standard full-flow filter into a super filter! I have had mine on my Cummins since 1998, so they can last a lifetime.
If you have any comments or questions, I can be reached through Pittsburgh Power in Saxonburg, PA by calling (724) 360-4080 or via email at bruce1@pittsburghpower.com.
