I looked under my coach today and found this hanging from the hose & wires! Wow what a disaster it would have been had I not noticed it! I bottomed out the coach a couple of trips ago and it must have cracked the weld on the bracket. I was able to UN bolt both sides of the bracket and called a mobile welder I have used before and he was there 30 minutes later and it is all back together. I am not sure what this is but I am guessing it may be something to do with the retarder? I am glad it was just a near miss and we are leaving in the morning for a trip. I will add looking under the coach to my typical walk around before I pull out
I'm not sure, either, but when I started reading your post I wondered if it was the retarder bracket that had a weld fail. There was a Service Bulletin about it in, I think, 2007. That's when ours was checked at FOT, according to our receipts:
Campaign # FC0102 Retarder Accumulator Mounting
Michelle
That's what it is: the Retarder Accumulator. Don't ask me exactly what it does. Once of the "Dave's" or Brett W. will answer that.
The possible recall is interesting. I was blaming my bottoming to but I did not see any marks or scrapes on it. So it may have just failed. The weld did look kind of meager.
I did a quick search of the archive for info on the retarder bracket issue. Apparently it affected 1998-2007 coaches with 450-500HP M11 or ISM engines.
Michelle
And some great info on Barry's site with photos
Retarder Accumulator Bracket Failure (https://wiki.foreforums.com/doku.php?id=technical:transmission:retarderbracket)
(BTW - I edited the topic name now that we know what the problem was)
Yep, you are on the money! My welder did place a bead on both sides but no gussets like the new part. I think it is much stronger than before but now I think I should buy the new bracket as it looks much stronger.
Thanks for the info. I hope it may save someone from having a much bigger problem!
Will be checking mine in the morning!!!! Thank you for the post.
john
Phil, Glad you did not have a worse problem when the bracket failed. That is the accumulator for the hydraulic retarder on the Allison Transmission. It holds a supply of fluid that is used when you activate the retarder.
Gary B
There is no recall, but FOT will always check it for free if asked when your coach is in for service. I check mine whenever I'm under the coach. In 115,000 miles it has been fine.
yup, I replaced mine with the gusset version with a double weld.
I also replaced mine with the improved version from FOT several years ago when I first heard of the problem although original still looked good.