Just another day in paradise

[Nige]

We had Beford KMs as service trucks on the opencast coal mines many years back. I never worked on them but it was a regular sight to see one in the workshop with the cab off, so I can only assume that more than one fitter on our job sites knew "the trick" of making space to work on anything in & around the engine area.

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

One of my customers has a 930M loader. One of the loader functions stopped working. The wiring harness for the loader functions runs between the pivot point of the frame. A hydraulic hose was put in the way of wiring harness. Like a bending a paperclip back and forth..........a bunch of those 16-18ga wires broke. The wires are sheethed in a 1 wire hydruaulic hose. A couple hours to find where the problem was. Gingerly split the hose with cut off wheel, splice wires back together. Oooohh, and the wire were broken inside the insulator sheeth. Needed to do pull test on each wire........about 24 wires in there. CAT wanted $4k for a new wiring harness, which was a week out............and this was in the middle of a snow storm. I've spliced it 3 times so far. Always in the middle of a snow storm...........not nice and sunny and warm. So this past winter I ordered a new wiring harness............just told the owner "We're buying one." (He's good like that............doesn't fight back when I put my foot down)
Had CAT email me the instructions to put it in................STEP 1) REMOVE THE CAB
I emailled those over to the owner............he called me and said "Are they kidding?? Remove the cab to put a wiring harness in??!!"
They want the cab removed so you can drill and tap 2 blind holes on top of the pivot point on the frame..............I welded a couple of studs. And the bolts are to hold a piece of sheet metal bracket for the new wiring harness.

MIKE L...........my heart goes out to you!!LOL Remove cab, replace O ring, put the cab back on................how hard can it be?? See.........easy, peazy!! (heavy on the sarcasm)

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

Don't know where I would find telephone books nowadays lol

Whats a telephone book?? LOL (direct quote from my 15 year old daughter)

Remember when the telephone book was your only source for finding a distributor of parts and supplies. Paper catalogs were gold.
Hey, I need to run to the pay phone and hunt down this thing............who's got change?? I need quarters, nickels and dimes. The 10' cord on the handset was awesome because it reached ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE ROOM............but was most likely tangled in knots and needed to be untwirled to get the knots out!!
Try explaining that to the kids..............no you tube (Just you tube it!! It will show ya), no google, no finding the distributor across the country, finding their website, and see their stock and offerings...........Back when the MEN were men!!LOL

 

[Birken Vogt]

Yeah but when the distributor has a couple of 8s and a 0 in their phone number you wind up calling someone else because it would take too long to dial.

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

Speed dial was when you forced the rotary phone back to start so you could dial the next digit quicker.
Push button was a luzury because it cost more on the bill to have push button instead of rotary dial!!
Am I showing my age?? I still want to be that indestructable kid who can do anything, anytime, anywhere.....work all day, party all night, then try to work the next day........without repercussions to mind and body.

 

[Old Doug]

I always kept my ash tray full of change and always cleaned up shaved before a trip in case i had to hitch hike. If the truck was realy sketchy i would make sure i stopped to eat or had exrtra food with me its alot easyer to dream up a fix along the high way if your not starving.

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

I always kept my ash tray full of change and always cleaned up shaved before a trip in case i had to hitch hike. If the truck was realy sketchy i would make sure i stopped to eat or had exrtra food with me its alot easyer to dream up a fix along the high way if your not starving.

Bringing back memories..........LOL.
People see a hitchhiker now, they jump on their cell phone and call the cops........much easier to rat someone out who just needs a ride with a cell phone than stop and give them a ride.

 

[Birken Vogt]

Years ago hitchhikers walked with their back to traffic and their left thumb out. They were walking with a purpose to show they were going to get there one way or the other, if you gave one a ride that was fine and if he had to walk that was fine too.

Nowadays they sit in a wide, shady spot and do not move a muscle until someone picks them up.

 

[skyking1]

I remember the good old days of hitchhiking. I had a '66 mustang and I picked up one college student at one exit, then spotted two more and put all the backpacks in the trunk and hauled 3 young guys to Central Washington state college. They did not know each other when we started out but they did when we got there. It was about 2 miles out of my way to drop them at the dorm.
I had a kayak that lived on top of the Datsun pickup for the month of July. I'd drive up the Yakima Canyon to the top and put in, float the river, and then hitchhike back to the truck. I did not wait at all for a ride in those days.
That same attitude carries over to the folks at the boat landing who watched my kayak while I went for the truck.

 

[DMiller]

Have not had a need to hitchhike since the late 70s, let my ride get a little too far down a bad track of maintenance and it laid down. Raining, nasty day but had rain coat, was within a few blocks where needed to go to get help and a car Stopped, said thanks and left them go on, figured was my penance for the day to walk wet.

 

[John C.]

In 1980, me and another guy had to fly to Juneau, Alaska on a Sunday just before the 4th of July on Friday to do warranty work on an H90 Hough logger. Flew out to the logging camp on Monday and got right to work.

The transmission oil looked like that aluminum colored anti seize so we figured that either the transmission or the torque converter had a bearing or something missing. There was no way to remove the transmission with the cab on and there was nothing that could be used to remove the cab. Removed the seat, floor mat and then cut a hole in the floor above the trans. Made an eye bolt with a grade 8 bolt and a hard washer. Removed the window frames on both sides of the cab and strung a chain over the top of the cab and found a come along in the shop. Had the gear box on the floor in a few hours. My partner went though the box while I removed and went through the converter. Found the issue in the converter where a spacer was missing. Dumped out cans of flat washers for something close, used a chain saw file to get the hole size right and then back together it all went. Rubber mat hid the hole in the floor.

Machine was running Wednesday night and we were on a plane on Thursday morning before the 4th on Friday. Back then the Alaska flights served wine free and all those loggers coming home for the 4th made for a little bit of a wild ride. Not sure who was tougher, the loggers or the flight attendants.

 

[kshansen]

Had to drop the transmission out of a H400 years back. We were lucky because the quarry where our shop was located had several 3 foot blocks of concrete they used to keep stock piles separated. So all we had to do was line up some of them by the back ramp to the shop wide enough for the tires to sit on. Tow dead loader out on the blocks and using truck crane lowered transmission on to a steel plate laying it down on it side so it would slide out the back of the machine. Kind of looked like it was getting help giving birth! Reverse to get back in once rebuilt!

 

[hosspuller]

Speed dial was when you forced the rotary phone back to start so you could dial the next digit quicker.
Push button was a luzury ......snip .

That brought back memories .. 40 years ago, I bought this dialer out of pocket. It's been in a closet the last 35 years since office phones had speed dialing built in. Just dug it from the recycle bin for this photo. I still like the dialer better. Each number has a button. And each contractor or supplier had a name beside the button. It saved lots of time & effort back then. Today, there's no place to hook it to. No house phone anymore, just cell phones with voice dialing. Technology marches on ... for better or worse.

 

[DMiller]

Believe it or not, we still have a Hardwire Phone, have a OLD Princess Handset phone we use in power failures when the Cell crap does not work either.

 

[mekanik]

I used to work as a mechanic for an electric utility before I retired. I was often sent to out of the way places to fix broken trucks and machinery. One day I had to make a trip to Masset on the island of Haida Gwaii to repair damaged hydraulic lines on a digger derrick. I made the 90 mile drive to Prince Rupert and loaded my gear and tools and oil on a De Havilland Beaver then made the flight to Haida Gwaii. It took a couple hours to replace the steel lines and top up the hydraulic system. I had a couple hours to kill before my flight home so I walked around and explored the town. I was walking back to the seaplane base and I decided to sit down on the "Hitchhiking Bench" to rest for a few minutes. A red car went by then stopped and turned around and then turned around again and stopped right in front of me. The window rolled down and this gorgeous woman asked me "Do you need a ride I'm going to Port Clements?". I told her no I'm waiting for the sea plane to take me home. She looked very disappointed.
I can't imagine anywhere else in Canada where a woman would feel safe picking up a male hitchhiker.

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

Believe it or not, we still have a Hardwire Phone, have a OLD Princess Handset phone we use in power failures when the Cell crap does not work either.

We have a copper wired landline too. 911 calls ............if we ever need too and power outages..........like the fire extinguisher and smoke alarm.....just in case.

My daughter has a rotary dial princess phone in her room she found in the house. She thinks its quite the novelity. Shows all her friends when they are over. AND explains how it works.......I get a kick out that. You have to spin the dial??? To dial???!!!!
They are/were 'upgrading' the lines to fiber optic. Problem is, you need to have a fiber converter, that takes a battery, and needs to be charged, so its plugged into an AC outlet in your house. Guy in a pickup showed up one day w/ Granite State telephone on the side to inform me it was happening.........Nope, don't want it.......all set.......thanks. A month later, bucket truck in the driveway stringing fiber to the house. Told the guy.......I realize your only doing what the work ticket says............but I've told them I don't want fiber, leave my copper line, and don't touch the house please. It's hanging on the last pole on the property before the house.

Remember when they were running out of phone numbers and needed to add area codes because everyone had a house phone, phone number for their modem, and a phone number for their fax machine??? Phone companies never saw the cell phones taking over!!

 

[Birken Vogt]

My copper line has some kind of midpoint conversion to fiber not far from the house. When the power goes out, it only stays up for about a day. After that we are pretty well isolated. About 50% of the time the phone co brings a genset to keep the fiber converter going, but the other 50% they don't seem to bother. Ah, progress.

 

[Truck Shop]

The old days-A pocket full of quarters looking for a empty booth in a bank of phones along one wall
at a truck stop. Clip board with paper and pen, all the pages had been ripped out of the phone books
just the jacket hanging there. A call or two to dispatch and a raft of calls to shippers. Restaurant booths
with phones everywhere you looked in a truck stop there were phones. Now days a driver looks like
a cyborg with the phone crud stuck to his head. And more wrecks as a result.

 

[Monkeywithawrench]

I've got a Wilson cell signal booster in my work truck, pickup truck, on the house, and at the camp in Maine. Got into them working in Boston when we had Nextels (RIP). For some odd reason, you go to certain spots in Boston........no nextel signal. Put that in my truck...........BOOM........strong signal (no idea why crap signal in the middle of the city........and it seemed only on the jobsites). I'd come out and find a bunch of guys hanging around the cab of my truck with there phones up against their ears............bye, I'm leaving.........wait, let me finish my call!!

Was out on a job..........no service on the phone........needed to download software for ECM. Put cellphone on tip of boom of crane. Straight up 30 ft..........picked up signal, was able to download pretty well.....I was dubious about whether it would work. Figured I might be shinnying up the boom to get the phone to connect to the computer............I was honestly shocked and pleasantly suprised.

 

[Truck Shop]

The Mob in Boston was jamming the signal to keep construction sites busy.