Leicester is hard on brakes
Few jobs work a vehicle's brakes harder than city driving. A bus on the Hop! city-centre circuit or the 30-mile Orbital route, a park and ride service running every 15 minutes from Meynells Gorse, Birstall or Enderby, or a delivery rigid working its way through the city's traffic all stop and start far more often than a lorry cruising the M1. Linings, discs, drums and adjusters wear in proportion, and the air system works harder to keep pressure up.
Motorway vehicles don't get off lightly either. A loaded artic coming off the M69 or the A46 into the city has a lot of weight to stop, and a trailer brake that is quietly underperforming won't show itself until the moment it is needed.
Testing that tells you something
A brake can look perfect and still fall short. A seized adjuster, a contaminated lining or a slow valve can take a real bite out of stopping power with nothing visible to give it away. So we test how the brakes perform rather than relying on a look at the parts, and DVSA expects exactly that at every safety inspection.
At our Melbourne workshop we test and repair the whole system: compressors, air dryers, reservoirs, valves and pipework; chambers and slack adjusters; pads, discs, drums and shoes; spring parking brakes; and the trailer side, including couplings and relay valves. Each repair is rechecked before the vehicle leaves, and the work is recorded for your maintenance file.
When the fault shows up on the road
Brakes are the one system where pressing on is the wrong call. If a driver feels the vehicle pulling, notices a soft or grabbing pedal, sees air pressure falling or smells hot brakes, the right move is to stop somewhere safe and ring 01332 916028. That might be on the M1 between junctions 21 and 22, at Leicester Forest East services or in a city street. Plenty of air and brake faults can be traced and fixed at the roadside; when the vehicle isn't safe to move, we recover it.
Winter and the air system
Moisture is the enemy of an air brake system. Water that slips past a worn dryer collects in tanks and valves, and on a cold Leicester morning it can freeze and leave a trailer refusing to release. A serviced dryer and regularly drained tanks prevent most of it, and we check both whenever the vehicle is with us.
Booking
Brake testing usually sits inside a PMI or annual test preparation, so one visit covers both. For a standalone test or a known fault, ring 01332 916028 with the registration and what the driver has noticed. The workshop is open for booked work Monday to Friday, 07:30 to 17:00.
