Been on the road a few days and finally got home last night. I'll clean up the story some. It's a little long so I hope you all can get to the end.
I was working as a field mechanic for the Komatsu dealer who also was dealing Timberjack all those years ago and happened to not have a project that day so was given a job in the shop. The foreman sent me back to the weld bay where there was one of these garden trolls sitting. A nice gentleman was there who had a French Canadian accent and told me we had to change out a couple of hydraulic valves. He was acting like it was a simple job and would only take a few hours. In those days they put a tent like roof made out of plate steel and didn't have the sense to put any doors on the top so there was access to stuff inside. The only way into the guts was through a bolted door on the back of the machine where there should have been a counterweight. I hadn't had my second cup of coffee yet but was trying to be somewhat pleasant making a comment or two about how something like this got off the drawing board. When I opened the rear door I starting to get the feeling like things might be a little tough and I was sure I was going to leave some skin inside the internals of this machine.
The first thing I noticed was that the valves were mono blocks and they were mounted vertically on bulkheads that were welded to the longitudinal frame members coming down from the boom mount. There were two valves on each side and access was by crawling into the tunnel. The valves were lined up one in front of the other. Typical of those days all the hose and pipe ends were big JIC fittings so all the tricks had to come out. You couldn't get a big wrench in to turn a nut more than a quarter turn then you took the wrench off and flipped it over and turned the next quarter turn. Now Frenchy was starting to make noise about how long this was taking when one of the big hoses popped off the last thread and the hydraulic oil drained on the only thing that it could drain on, me! I kind knew this was going to happen but as there wasn't any other way to do the job without taking a torch to the roof so I kind of accepted it. Having finally gotten all the dribblers unhooked and most all the oil soaking through my coveralls and into my skin I was finally ready to start unhooking the first valve.
Now Frenchy was telling me the valves were mounted with a key hole design so that when the nuts were loosened, all I had to do was pick the valve up slightly on the slot and the nut would clear on a big hole and the valve could be pulled away from the bulkhead and handed down. What he didn't tell me was that even though there were only four nuts to loosen, I had to use an open end wrench in the quarter turn scenario that had previously aggravated me when taking the hydraulic hoses loose. What also wasn't realized was with the valves in line with each other a standard wrench could not be used on the bolts on the back side of the valve. I crawled out of the tunnel at that point obviously peeved and made some comments again about the parentage of whoever designed such a mess. I went to the locker room and changed my coveralls and mopped up some of the oil seeping into my arm pits and down the side of me and went back out. I also had to think of someway to get those back bolts out and came up with measuring the length I needed and cut a wrench in half and welding a nut onto the stub end so I would put a longer wrench on at an angle. Frenchy wanted to know what I was doing so I told him in an annoyed voice and got it done. I crawled back into the dripping mess and got the back nuts loose and then asked Frenchy if he know how much the valve weighed? Of course he had no idea and I could only guess so figured may be seventy or eighty pounds. Now there is only enough room to lay on my right side so I can't get leverage to really push hard to get the valve block up to the big hole on the key hole. I also noticed that some ignoramus had put fender washers between the nuts and the bulkheads and every time I got close to clearing the big hole one of the washers on a different hole would not clear. I also noticed that this block was real heavy and I might have a bit of an issue when it finally did come loose. Just when my mind drifted to that point the valve was coming down. It landed on part of my chest, the biggest part on my right arm and the rest wedged against that vertical bulkhead.
One trait you should note of nearly all experienced mechanics is that they develop a fairly entertaining use of language when something happens that might be a little unexpected happens that causes pain without doing a lot of damage or injury. Now I had been turning wrenches for about twenty years at that time and had heard plenty of shall we say "entertaining language" in my time but hadn't realized just how much of it could be remembered and stated so fluently in those few moments. About all I remember now is something about what kind of insect could have evolved into something this stupid and how I was going to stuff that engineer into that hole and weld the plate in over the top of him and flush that machine into some ocean somewhere. When I finally was able to crawl out of the hole Frenchy was nowhere to be found. Since I didn't need him around I thought nothing of it and went back to work on the next valve for the rest of the day.
I came in the next day and another French Canadian guy was there to watch over me but this guy was really pleasant to work with. He actually worked with me and we were able to wrap up the job by the end of the day. I was kind of curious though and asked him what happened to the other guy. He told me he went back to Canada suddenly. I made some comment about how little help he was and he wasn't receptive to my comments at all. Ya, the new Frenchy says, he was the chief designer of this machine and he seemed a bit agitated when I last talked to him. Then he smiled and said eh.
