There are times I don’t want to phone a dealer partsman and wait for them to take a serial number and look up a part. Having the Accessfreightliner website at your finger tips is a huge advantage to finding part numbers and technical information for all freightliner chassis vehicles. In our case it’s the C2 school bus which of course has a freightliner chassis. The local dealer has a lot of the parts in stock since all of their medium duty trucks are built very similar. Once logged in and at the website the link for PartsPro 6 is on the homepage.
In the video once I entered the last six digits of the VIN I could scroll down and find the major component and break it down to one particular part I’m looking for. In this case under ‘driveline’ I located the rear #3 center bearing. The driver called in explaining he had a thumping noise coming from the rear. It was a tough problem to troubleshoot over the 2 way radio. Once one of our mechanics got to the bus location he knew right away what the problem was.
When I heard what the failure was I was surprised because of the fact that we have not replaced a steady bearing in our fleet for over 15 years. Maybe a misaligned rubber support but rarely for a seized bearing. The tow truck was the only option with this one. While the bus came in on the hook I looked up the part number for the rear center bearing and had it ordered before the tow truck got to the shop.
Another great bonus with PartsPro 6 is the ability to look for schematics using EZ Wiring. If I was looking for the schematic inside a module I go to ‘search’ and use a keyword like ‘module’ to bring up any parts in the database with that word in the description. Once the parts list shows up highlight the line with schematic in it and then click on ‘EZ Wiring’ where you will have a very good chance of getting your hands on a detailed schematic.
Sometimes the schematic is not available but most times you’ll get something that will help out. There is also information on other links on the site like ServicePro that provides technical information on how components and systems work relative to the VIN you’ve entered at the start. The saying every mechanic should live by is ‘knowledge is power’.
