Do brake chambers have brake fluid in them?

i was told back in my learning days in driving school, that the air brake system is a "safer" braking system, because unlike hydraulic brakes that can fail at any time, you will have no brakes.

where as in an air brake system, if there is a failure, like loss of air, those brakes are coming on, and you are stopping. so they are better known as a "fail safe" braking system

and i was also told that if fluids were used for big trucks for a braking system, the amount of heat generated by braking, would cook away the fluids, thus having no brakes. surely you must have walked around your truck/trailer when you stopped to "squirt the dirt" and felt all that hot air around your bakes? and that's with them cooling down, imagine the amount of heat, as they are trying to stop all that weight, loaded or empty?

 

Air brakes for what it is worth came from the Rail Road industry, they used air for decades and it was considered a better fluid to use than any thing else.

 

Biggest advantage is not having to bleed brakes every time you hook to a trailer. Both systems have pros and cons. Air is simply just the better option for trucks.

 

This is still a great resource 50 years later. I recommend anybody learning about truck brakes to watch it.

 

I appreciate the finer points of the brake operation in a 18 wheeler which I am familiar with already. I was referring to just the differences between fluid for braking and air used for braking. It would be easier to leave off the absolute wrong and all that jazz and simply stick with the reminder that the application mechansim whatever it may be is relatively isolated away from the brake pads and drum or disc surfaces that will have the heat source downgrade.

I still contend you cannot operate fluid at the pressures and volume needed to apply the braking force. As you can air.

For me it's too #### early in the morning waiting on the coffeepot. I'll take your post as a good one and forget that there was any issue with my understanding of the actual big rig brake hardware. I am focused strictly on the properties of fluid and air. If Fluid was good for trucking we all would have had it. But it is not. And so we have air.

 

Cut him a brake (hehe). He’s new atleast he’s asking around trying to know better. Hell when I first heard about diesel exhaust fluid I thought they were playing me for a fool so my dumb self retorted to “she also needs her blinker fluid changed annually and the exhaust bearings frequently inspected huh”.

 

Westinghouse designed a system for trains when Congress mandated braking systems that does not involve brakemen winding wheels on each individual car working towards each other (From each end of train) in all weather day and night in all situations.

Too many times badly wound brake staff wheels caused part of the train to escape it's couplings and now the Engineer had a problem in physics if downgrade. Open the locomotive wide open and whistle shorts 000000 repeating for every station down the line as he blasted through followed by the broken train section hoping it can be switched off the main before it kills a passenger train full of people.

Todays train braking when they suffer a absolute pressure loss, they go into what is called a big hole. ALL of the affected rail cars go into emergency and stop quickly. Air also passes the word between say a 2 mile string of railcars in a hell of a hurry near the speed of sound covering the entire train in what would be a few moments..

I better stop writing about topics like this for now. Its too early for me to deal with this in it's possibilities.

Overall its way better for trucks. Hook and go. Trains are the same. Just bigger.

I understand we are approaching a era of electric braking. I dont have a problem with it provided it has the existing air brake fall back. Not to have power is a bad thing and frightening common here.

 

Sorry, that's not entirely true either. Years ago, when air brakes were in their infancy, there were no "piggy back" brakes, and if you ran out of air, it was reach for the door handle. Those trucks still used the old band brake parking brake which was worthless in a runaway. Also, hydraulic brakes have been used for years in heavy duty trucks.( not recently, I don't think) I drove a Louisville Ford dump truck that had juice brakes. It wasn't the fluid boiling, but the "Hydra-Vac" assist units were junk. Had some scary rides in those juice brake trucks.

 

You can have 20+ years experience, still won't have heard it all

 

yes, but you are talking old trucks, and the weights, roads for the time. todays trucks are faster, heavier. then too, that dump was a straight truck, not tractor trailer.

frankly , i cannot recall driving anything with hydraulic brakes for commercial purposes.

my career started in the mid to late 1960's? (i cannot recall the exact year right now)

the old tractor-trailer set ups of years ago, didn't just the tractor have brakes, since a line for fluid could not go to the trailers? otherwise, i'd not know how they handled the stopping of those trailers.