Wet Kit Installation for a Blower Trailer — Ames Hydraulics

Wet Kit Installation For A Blower Trailer

Pneumatic dry-bulk trailers — blower trailers — have the highest continuous hydraulic demand of anything we install wet kits for. The trailer’s onboard blower moves cement, plastic pellets, dry chemicals, or granular material through a pipe by generating pressurized air, and that blower is driven by a hydraulic motor that pulls high, continuous flow from the truck’s wet kit for the entire unloading cycle. A wet kit installation for a blower trailer built with dump-trailer or even walking-floor specs will overheat the fluid, wreck the pump, and fail. It is a specialty install.

Our shop is in Ames, Iowa. We install wet kits for blower trailer operations for owner-operators and small fleets hauling cement, plastics, and dry-bulk materials. We do these on Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack, and International trucks.

Blower Trailer Hydraulics Are Different

The hydraulic motor on a blower trailer is driving a positive-displacement blower — Gardner Denver, Tuthill, DuroFlow — that consumes 40-60 gpm continuously at 2000-3000 psi for the entire unload. Unloading a full trailer takes 45-90 minutes of continuous flow. That’s an order of magnitude more work than a walking floor and completely different from a dump trailer’s single-lift cycle. The pump, tank, plumbing, and cooling all have to be sized for that continuous heavy duty.

Piston Pump Is Mandatory

Wet kit installation for a blower trailer requires a piston pump on the truck side. Gear pumps cannot handle the continuous high-flow, high-pressure duty of a blower application — they overheat and fail. We spec Parker P50 or Rexroth A10VSO piston pumps at 40-60 gpm displacement. The pump alone runs $2,500-4,500 depending on size and brand. This is not optional and it is not cheap.

Three-Line System With Case Drain

Piston pumps require case drain — the third line back to the tank at low pressure. On a blower wet kit the case drain is especially important because the continuous high-flow operation generates significant case-side leakage. Undersized case drain lines will destroy a piston pump’s shaft seal within a few unload cycles. We use #12 or larger hose for case drain on blower wet kits.

Tank Sizing And Oil Cooling

Blower trailers run continuously for 45-90 minutes. That means the returning oil doesn’t have time to cool naturally in the tank between cycles — it has to be actively cooled. Every wet kit installation for a blower trailer we do includes an oil cooler in the return line. Usually a large plate-fin air-cooled cooler mounted on the frame with a hydraulic-driven fan. Sometimes a shell-and-tube heat exchanger tied to the truck’s engine cooling loop. Without a cooler the fluid will hit 220°F+ on a long unload and pump life drops from years to months.

Tank sizing on a blower wet kit is 60-80 gallons minimum. Anything smaller cannot store enough fluid to keep the pump fed AND allow returning oil to cool. We build steel tanks in-house at these sizes with proper baffling, sight gauges, breathers, and correct port orientation for high-flow suction and return.

PTO And Drive Ratio

Same PTO rules as any wet kit install — match the transmission. But on blower applications the PTO gear ratio has to spec the pump at its rated RPM even at engine idle, because the driver often unloads at low engine RPM to reduce noise and heat. A 1:1 PTO ratio matched with a pump rated for 1800 RPM at 1500 engine idle is typical. We spec after we know the truck’s transmission and the pump’s rated RPM.

Filtration

High-flow continuous-duty systems are unforgiving of contamination. Every wet kit installation for a blower trailer gets a large return-line filter — 10-micron or better — mounted where the driver can service it easily. Fluid contamination kills piston pumps faster than any other single cause on blower applications.

Cost Ranges

Three-line wet kit installation for a blower trailer runs $7,500-$10,500 depending on pump displacement, tank size, and cooling package. Add $1,000-2,000 for a heat exchanger if the customer wants engine-coolant integration. Retrofits (correcting a bad prior install) add $500-3,000 depending on scope. Every job gets a written quote before work starts.

Turnaround

A blower-trailer wet kit is a two-week job in our shop. Piston pumps and larger tanks sometimes have longer lead times so we confirm parts before quoting timing.

Independent Scope

We are not a truck dealer and don’t do warranty work. Blower-trailer-side blower repair (Gardner Denver, Tuthill, DuroFlow) we can also do — see our dry bulk blower repair page. Truck-side hydraulic install is our specialty.

Common Questions About A Wet Kit Installation For A Blower Trailer

Why is a wet kit installation for a blower trailer so much more expensive than a dump-trailer install? Blower trailers have the highest continuous hydraulic demand of any common trailer type. That means a bigger pump (piston, not gear), a bigger tank, active oil cooling, and heavier plumbing. Every component costs more.

Can I run a Gardner Denver blower off a two-line wet kit? No. Almost all pneumatic blower trailers require three-line piston-pump systems. Two-line will not deliver enough flow and lacks the case drain required by the piston pump.

What tank size do I need for a wet kit installation for a blower trailer? 60-80 gallons minimum. Anything smaller cannot store enough fluid to keep the pump fed AND allow returning oil to cool.

Do you install the blower itself, or just the truck-side hydraulics? Truck-side wet kit is our specialty. If your Gardner Denver, Tuthill, or DuroFlow blower needs service, we handle that too — see our dry bulk blower repair page.

Get A Quote

Call or text 515-292-2599. Tell us the truck model, transmission, blower trailer make and blower model. We’ll ballpark the wet kit installation for the blower trailer on the phone and firm the quote when we see the truck.