Gabriel® (Ride Control, LLC), the inventor and industry leader in automotive ride control technology, announces the release of its updated FleetLine® commercial truck, trailer, and bus shocks and GasSLX® shocks. The launch announcement was made at the Heavy Duty Aftermarket Week 2016 conference, January 25-28, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
FleetLine shocks are designed as a direct replacement for commercial OE shocks, and are built to meet or exceed OE specifications and quality standards. They feature valving rates that compensate for initial truck suspension softening to deliver top performance, as well as a pre-loaded piston ring that compensates for wear.
The GasSLX is a premium adjustable gas shock for long-life commercial vehicles that delivers customizable comfort and control in a high-performance, durable product. The GasSLX’s gas cell design creates a physical barrier between gas and the high-temperature fluid to allow it to adapt to diverse road conditions and payloads without fade or reduced damping.
The updated FleetLine and GasSLX products feature an improved anti-corrosion coating and a drastically improved misting reduction seal, thereby reducing maintenance downtime and extending service life. Gabriel experts formulated these updates after extensive discussions with customers to determine real-world needs.
“Our engineering team has been working hard to solve the most common problems in heavy-duty vehicle ride control technology that customers simply believed to be inevitable in all shock absorbers,” said Duncan Greathead, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Gabriel. “With the introduction of our updated FleetLine and GasSLX products, we have proven that it is possible to reduce corrosion and misting significantly in shock absorbers, and therefore to keep customers’ fleets on the road more consistently.”
The highly varied, harsh road conditions present in heavy-duty vehicle applications has traditionally caused extensive corrosion to the mountings where shock absorbers attach to the vehicle chassis. In turn, this corrosion has caused extensive downtime when shock absorbers must be replaced, as it makes removal of the shocks extremely difficult. With the improved anti-corrosion coatings introduced in this product update, Gabriel offers customers a drastic improvement in corrosion resistance on mounting surfaces, thereby allowing vehicles to get back on the road more quickly due to reduced maintenance time.
Highly demanding heavy-duty vehicle applications also cause misting in all shock absorbers over time. Misting occurs when the oil within the shock absorber that is critical to top performance becomes atomized and slowly vaporizes past the seal in the product, causing diminished performance and eventual product failure. With Gabriel’s improved misting-reduction seal technology, oil loss is reduced by 70% over time. This leads to extended service life for the FleetLine and GasSLX shock absorbers, as well as improved performance as compared to competing technologies.
