I had one of the drivers of one of the boss's International 7600's come back in off the road, brought it up to the shop, and insisted that the truck was making a strange " clinking" noise and that he didn't want to keep driving it, and either wanted another assignment to a different truck or he was going to go home until it was fixed - I got in the cab with him, told him to show me what he meant, after which he started it back up, backed away from the shop, and once he had a long clear run, he nailed the fuel pedal to the floor with the truck in a forward gear, and then released it just about as fast, he did this again, and then looked at me and said" See? - It clinks when I do that" - The truck was carrying a full lugger box on its back - I explained that the truck had three pedals on the floor, that normally you use the clutch to give it time to change gears, not just redline it and try to slap shift a truck this big with a full load - Just nailing the fuel pedal to the floor and not doing anything else would sooner or later break something in the driveline -He still didn't get it, I told him to just park the truck in the line, and go to the office, explain it to the boss, and I would look at it more closely when I had a few extra minutes - It turned out that it was a case of not enough sleep the night before, and too much coffee in the morning after -The boss sent him home for the day and put a relief driver back in the truck and sent it back to work - I noticed the "clinking" noise wasn't there any more when it left the parking lot -

Roger Rutledge
Technician/Shop Foreman
Riverside Landscape Contractors Inc
Brantford, Ontario, Canada