Just some work pics

[f311fr1]

10 micron for a breather.

 

[crane operator]

Nothing wrong with that all. I'm excited to see that truck once your done with it.

I don't know- I'm probably just going to get tired of spending $ on it and just run it. I'm kicking around painting the cab, should have done it before I put the hyd. tank in. The paint isn't too bad, just weathered. The top of the cab is all beat up, so I don't know how I'd deal with that. I may just take the roller to it.

 

[crane operator]

Unit yesterday, sun was in my eyes,

Trusses today, sun was in my eyes,

I think its a conspiracy......

 

[crane operator]

Well- its really not a crane project, but I'm posting the pictures anyways. Last fall, my son lost the engine in his 97 camaro- a 3800 v6. I told him he could watch you tube and learn to fix it, or get a job during school and pay someone else to fix it.

He was really just too worried about doing it himself, and I'm not a great teacher. He's been suffering with no wheels and no $, which is a learning experience in and of itself. I think he's learned, that if there's smoke coming out from under the hood, you should probably stop and see what's going on.

My mechanic and I snuck it into the shop tuesday morning. Jim could pretty well stay on it, and I threw in between crane jobs. We got it pulled tuesday. On wednesday we swapped all the externals to a 3800 I had from a front wheel drive bonneville (had the motor from the wife's old car) . I stayed late yesterday and finished exhaust and wiring. Then this morning we shoved it back under and got it running this afternoon.

The camaro's of that era have the motor shoved way up under the dash. I looked around youtube, and read up on some forums. It is possible to pull it out the front, but everyone says out the bottom is the real way to go. So rear axle up on some rims, and the front on some jack stands. Once we had everything loose, we raised the body up with the gantry, and used the forklift underneath the engine. Pulled motor, trans, and front subframe all together.

Seems to be working well this afternoon. It runs and drives, I went and fueled it and gave it a bath. He's pretty happy having it back together.

I'll say this too, I'm too big and old to drive it. I can't hardly get into the stupid thing. I about have to lay down on the ground and roll into the drivers seat. No dukes of hazzard in through the window, it takes me a while to pretzel around the wheel, and get into the seat, and that's with the door open.

 

[davo727]

It seems to me that you have a ton of energy. I am impressed with all the stuff you get done. How old are you?

 

[crane operator]

There's all kinds of people that get way more done in a day than I do davo. I just happen to take pictures and post them up here. Most people that really get a lot done, don't have time to take pictures. When I used to set concrete forms and pour concrete all day, I was too tired to lift a camera, let alone care about posting.

I'll be 46 this summer, and I hate to admit it, but I can't work like I could 20 years ago. But I really think I can do what I do now, for another 25. I've got a operator that works part time for me that's 69. He'll work circles around guys half his age.

My grandpa worked every day until he was 88. The last job he was a handyman at a motel, and I don't think he really wanted to quit, but they told him the date of his retirement party.

I was talking with my brother-in-law's dad at a wedding last summer, a few guys were kidding around about him still farming. He said "I don't read much in my Bible about retirement". He enjoys farming, and he's still healthy enough to do it- why quit?

I probably just like having too many projects. I think when I quit dragging home stuff to meddle with, there won't be any reason to call the doctor, they just as well call the undertaker. I hope its that fast.

Some people count their days to a retirement, I really can't handle a 3 day weekend.

 

[Natman]

I may down size to one of these:

 

[Bumpsteer]

Retirement isn't for everyone......

Mom was teaching ait kids, 2 ait rooms & a kindergarden in the building.
Janitor was 88 years old, supertendant talked him into retiring, he died the next day. They took away his life.

Ed

 

[crane operator]

I may down size to one of these:

I've done a couple jobs where I could have used one of those. Mostly just built a gantry instead. If you lived in a place with a lot of indoor/ high rise building work, rigging and such, I could see using one. Put it in a elevator to the 9th floor to set a statue in a vice presidents office, it would be just the ticket.

The 25-35 feet per minute line pull would get kind of old though. Not really built for cycle work. Maybe for coffee break kind of cycle work.

 

[crane operator]

Did you ever have one of those days? When the things just kind of pile up in the bad category. I had a afternoon of that.

This morning went and did a tree, 25 ton, and everything went well. It was right next to a trailer house, they built the deck roof around it.

 

[crane operator]

Then right after lunch, we went on a little drive down into arkansas, to load up some loaded conexes with the 70 ton, and that actually went ok too. Of course they wanted the conex from the middle of the row.

 

[crane operator]

It was after the conex was loaded that things went bad. They had a couple steel pieces that they needed loaded up, and they were up a paved little driveway, onto a truck dock/ landing. They drive rgn's up and down it all the time, it's not really that steep, its just at the end it breaks over pretty fast and flattens out.

Evidently, it oscillated the front tandem up, just a little bit further than it usually goes, and I was turning. I got up into the flat, and went to shut down the engine and engage the pumps, and when I hit the engine kill, the starter was engaging.

That was strange, I stepped out and went to run the outrigger boxes, I just kind of slid in the pumps, and none of the outriggers would move. Then suddenly, there was a puddle of oil growing underneath the crane.

I quickly shut it down (kill lever), and went to studying things. I went underneath to look where the leak was from, and discovered the issue. The wiring loom had wrapped itself around the driveline, removing the wires from both outrigger control boxes, and pulling it down out of the swivel. With the wire's crossed somewhere, I think the flow directional on the outriggers was dead heading at the valve, and took out a o-ring or a hose, I haven't found out yet.

This is what I unwound off the driveline, I didn't even have to cut any wires, it had pretty well pulled them all out.

Somehow I still had 24v downstairs, I said a little prayer and bumped it over, and the detroit took off. I had the boom in the rest and all the outriggers sucked in. I'd rather fix it at home, so with Jim running as Bandit, I slipped it into gear and headed for home. I told Jim just to flag me down if the electrical fire got out of hand, and maybe it would burn down on the side of the road.

It made it all the way home, and I suppose that's tomorrow's problem, maybe a day or two more than that.

 

[crane operator]

But my day wasn't over yet. I had to go deliver the 35 to a job for tomorrow morning. About 10 miles from the shop, it did a little sag to one side, and I could see a hard hat sized lump sticking out on the drivers steer tire. I limped it another 1/2 mile, no where to get off the road, and it blew. I'm sure someone thought the terrorists were here.

I got to a parking lot a little further down the road. Called the wife to come get me, and I had the tire off by the time she was there. I had a tire and tube at the shop, and got it changed. When I went to put the chuck on the tube after I had it all remounted, the valve stem tip broke off inside the chuck. So I got to change the tire twice. I don't need that kind of practice.

Got it loaded up, back on the crane, and made it to the jobsite by dark (permits are for daylight travel only).

But it's 9:00 now, and I've done hung it up for the day, tomorrow will be here soon enough.

 

[Tradesman]

I feel for ya man my day was yesterday, no broken equipment, just the pleasure of running my own business, no details but it ended with me kicking my office chair. Now I've got a hole in the drywall to fix, I did feel a little better though that sick feeling was replaced with a sore toe.

 

[davo727]

Damn, that wire deal is a mess

 

[Bumpsteer]

I feel your pain.

LOML is opening a cafe, for the last month my life has been a slow motion train wreck getting the building in shape.

Hate to think how much gas & time has been wasted driving the mile back to the shop to get 1 damned tool.

Ed

 

[crane operator]

Extension on a boat storage building today. I asked them how they wanted to rig their upright frames, and they said just rig the center one, and maybe something to kind of hold the outsides?

I decided spreader bar and a roll hitch would be just the ticket. Picked pretty nice. The building assemblers had never seen such a thing, (I won't call them ironworkers), and they build boat storage buildings all over the country.

I asked a couple of them how they usually rig them, and no one gave a good answer, so maybe they've never built them this way?

 

[crane operator]

Boats in the racks in the existing building. And looks like they just got a new forklift to stack them with, and its a beast, tried to get the 35 in the picture, to give some reference for size.

. Also took a picture of a old timey paint job on another boat in a storage yard, looked like WWII plane nose art.

 

[crane operator]

Poor Jim, he was stuck at the yard all day dealing with this, while I was out setting steel.

I called him at lunch and asked him if he had just thrown his keys on the shop floor, and shut the gate on his way out, but he was pretty chipper, he said it could have been much worse.

I looked at it at 4:00 when I got back, there's one loom of like 9 wires that are all white with no numbers or marks, so we're probably going to have to chase those out. He also has three identical green wires, that we'll have to chase too.

He told me at noon that he had sparks flying off the wires in the morning when he first started messing with it. I told him he couldn't have, I had thrown the battery disconnect before I left. He was adamant that he had power, and checked that the disconnect was off. How could he have power with no ground?

When I got back to the shop I figured out what was going on. I had put the 70 ton boom in "float" this morning (it has that for dolly travel) at 5 before I left for my job, and picked up the boom with the RT so he would be able to access the swivel, and work some of the wiring from the top side.

I had shackled to the boom tip jib brackets, and put a pair of 3/4" chokers to the hook. I had no nylon's in between. The battery disconnect is on the ground, and he hadn't pulled the cables off the hot side. We were steel all the way through- crane to crane, and the hot power of the 70 ton, was grounding through the RT, to its batteries. Tomorrow its getting Nylons. That way they can isolate that crane separate.

 

[hosspuller]

The old hyd. tank that came off had a filter as a "breather" on the tank. It was all painted over, so I just went to o'riellys and got a oil filter that fit the threads of the adaptor. Any reason I can't use a oil filter as the breather filter to keep it from sucking in dirty air?

Some oil filters have a rubber flap as an anti-drain back valve. If your filter has that, it will restrict air flow back and forth as the tank "breathes" You won't want to see a collapsed tank from vacuum.