Importance

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Abstract

A fifth wheel coupling comprising essentially a fifth wheel plate and a pair of pillow blocks for the attachment on the frame of a truck tractor. The fifth wheel plate pivots around an axis in relation to the pillow blocks and on its underside, is equipped with a pair of hollow cylindrical bearing troughs, while the pillow blocks have corresponding cylindrical bearing surfaces. Below the bearing surface, the pillow block is equipped with an eye for the penetration of an attachment bridge. The object is to reduce the weight of fifth wheel couplings of this type and to lower the manufacturing cost without thereby complicating the assembly or having to omit an adjustment to differing mounting widths. The solution proposes on the one hand, the manufacture of the pillow blocks as one piece from a casting with a vertical mounting flange to permit the direct lateral attachment to longitudinal members of the truck tractor; and on the other hand, the use of bearing shells with side walls of differing thickness, in order to be able to implement a closely stepped, if necessary also continuous adjustment within the framework of a separately specified coarsely stepped adjustment to given mounting widths.

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First Claim