摘要: |
The AMTs retain a conventional friction clutch, although the transmission's operation is controlled automatically via vehicle electronics. They are now standard equipment on most vehicles across the heavy-duty truck sector. Analysis using the fleet's own internal maintenance and repair data, which was designed to evaluate whole life costs of AMTs versus full automatics, revealed a 58% clutch failure rate on one premium make of vehicle equipped with the chassis manufacturer's own AMT from 2020-2022, with the primary cause being thermal overload. Besides the clutch itself, other components requiring replacement after clutch failure included flywheels and flywheel bolt sets and clutch actuating forks and bearings. Similar failures and failure rates appear to have occurred on the other makes of trucks in the study equipped with OEM-supplied AMTs. |