Drakefield provides a step-by- step guide on how to use its latest tool when working with brake caliper potentiometers.
The company’s latest tester, designed for testing and calibrating brake caliper potentiometers, is now available. Specifically, the tester is used to calibrate replacement potentiometers or check the existing potentiometer, to determine the wear of the brake disc and brake pads and ensure the potentiometer is giving a true reading.
The practice of checking a potentiometer for faults and replacement could save commercial vehicle operators money by avoiding complete caliper replacements.
Here are the steps:
- The procedure for checking the potentiometer can be carried out with the caliper installed on the vehicle or with the caliper removed.
- Connect the appropriate test cable or adaptor to the tester via the phono connector at the top of the device.
- Connect the cable to the potentiometer being tested.
- Turn on the tester.
- Press the ‘select’ to scroll through the vehicle/potentiometer choices.
- Press and hold select button to choose your potentiometer.
- If a message appears: “Failure, please attach potentiometer”, this means either no potentiometer is connected or a faulty one is connected.
- Once you have a good potentiometer connected, observe the pad wear percentage bar graph and voltage from the potentiometer being tested, and adjust to suit your requirement’s by turning the center spline in the potentiometer.
- Fit the new potentiometer to the caliper and check the vehicle dash, which will now say “100% pads”.
The types of potentiometers are as follows:
- MAN/Mercedes3WireGold
- DAF/Mercedes2Wire
- Scania/Iveco/Mercedes3WireSilver
The Volvo plunger type potentiometer can also be tested with with the Volvo adaptor cable. The tester comes with two standard adaptor cables (screw type and clip type), a USB charging cable, an instruction booklet and built in rechargeable batteries – all supplied in a sturdy carry case. Drakefield says that now is the time to start testing and replacing potentiometers to save money today.
