Antenna Inspections

During my tenure as an electronics technician in the U.S. Navy in the mid-sixties I witnessed specialists performing antenna inspections on our so called "antenna farm", and I'm amazed to this day at the bravery of those inspectors.

Our communication antennas were supported by what were called strong backs. The antennas, (around thirty of them) exited the communications building, and they rose 150 feet into the air to the "strong back" cables which were strung between three towers that formed a triangle around communications building.

The inspectors would climb the towers, connect their safety belts around the strong back cable (which was three quarters of an inch in diameter) and pull themselves along "monkey style". When they came to an antenna they would clip their safety belt to the near vertical antenna and lower themselves down hand-over-hand while inspecting the antenna until they got to the roof of the building.

They would then climb the tower again and repeat this process until all antennas were inspected, which took two days. This inspection was done annually by two men.

The antennas were made from half-inch cable, and I asked an inspector what it was like to come down the antenna to the roof of the building. He said you have to squeeze the antenna down to three-eighths of an inch to keep from sliding out of control and crashing into the roof. These guys got no recognition, and didn't want any. They were just doing their job. I don't think many people would leap at the chance to do what they did.

Roof Rakes

Thirty years ago, removing snow from the roof of a home was an arduous task at best. For those of you in warmer climates, this ordeal probably sounds crazy. We climbed on our roofs with snow shovels and scoops and prayed we wouldn't punch a hole in the shingles before we were done, or worse yet, fall off of the roof and not land in a soft pile of snow.

On a really cold day, just walking on the roof could dislodge the brittle shingles, because the tarred adhesive strip underneath would be frozen solid, doing little to hold the shingle in place. The shingle would easily tear around the nails or staples, creating a leak that would be difficult to repair until Spring.

Then twenty five years ago or so, someone invented the roof rake. One could work from the ground or a ladder and not walk on the roof. The roof rake was much safer and an improvement alright, but no comparison to what was to come.




Around five years after the roof rake, came the device that made people look forward to removing snow from their roofs (well almost). It was a metal hoop around sixteen inches wide with small wheels on it to protect the shingles and an attached sheet of polyethylene around eight feet long that would provide a surface for the snow to slide on as one pushed this unit UP the roof. You could buy it with handle sections ten feet long and attach as many as you needed to get the job done. My first exposure to this tool made me a believer.

I was standing on a six foot step ladder as I started to push the unit up the roof. I got about six feet up the roof in snow over a foot deep and all of a sudden, WOOOSH! Down the snow came, knocking me off of the step ladder. I added another ten foot section to the handle (for my own safety) and removed the rest of the snow from the ground (one story house).

Total time to remove the snow? One and a half hours compared to four to five hours the old snow shovel way. It is much safer (other than the knocked off the ladder incident) and faster. In fact, I even drew an audience the first time I used it, because I was the first one on my block to own one, and no one could believe how fast it worked.

I loaned it out three times that day.

When ever I use it still hear my father saying, "Spend as little time on your roof as possible. Walking around for no reason will only cause leaks".

Rain Gutter Maintenance

Getting the debris out of rain gutters now that the leaves have fallen in the Midwest, will help ensure that when the first "frog strangler" rainstorm arrives next spring in the form of an inch of rain or more, you won't have water somewhere in your home where it doesn't belong.

Gutter performance is greatly enhanced by periodic cleaning and you benefit by having rain water directed away from your home's foundation.

There is a neat little gadget for doing this job, that eliminates the need to stand on a ladder with a hose, blasting away in a dangerous position. It's just a simple curved tip for your hose, with a rigid handle. The handle extends so you can reach most gutters from the safety of the ground. It's always nice to find a tool that makes life easier...

Winterizing Summer Power Equipment

It's that time of year again in northern Minnesota. Time to put away the lawnmowers, weed trimmers, leaf blowers, and any other summer gas operated equipment. Adding a gas stabilizer is a great way to ensure the tools will start next spring. But, just adding stabilizer to the gas tanks isn't enough.

The equipment should be run for about a minute to insure the stabilizer gets into the carburetor and throughout the fuel system, protecting the entire machine from gumming up. This small amount of maintenance will help ensure you don't end up with "gorilla arm" next spring from pulling rope starters.

Past experience has shown me that stabilizers work well, as I once stored a boat for four years after adding stabilizer. The gas smelled sweet and the outboard engine started immediately when I finally put the boat back in service.

If you have never tried gas stabilizer before, it is available in most hardware stores and stores with an automotive department. It takes only a small amount of stabilizer to prevent gasoline from breaking down into a terrible mess of sticky sludge during the winter or long storage.

Coghead the Answer for Maintenance?

I recently learned about an interesting new development. For those of us who are trying desperately to find just the right software to manage our maintenance activities, this may be just the ticket.

Check out Coghead.com

These guys are hot on the trail of offering the non-programmer with a REAL tool that works for building custom applications, without the pain. They are still in BETA testing, but the word on the street is somebody with basic computer skills can assemble easy to understand graphical elements on the screen, and connect them together to make truly custom applications. Wow!

So, maybe you have been frustrated by the lack of a user friendly CMMS, or you have no scheduling software. No worries, according to the rumors. In short order, the future will be full of simple, "It just works!" options for the working person. We'll have to see what you guys do with this new tool. Keep us posted!

Kneeling in Concrete

Maintenance craftsmen need to be aware of the dangers of kneeling on wet concrete without something like a small piece of plywood to kneel on to isolate them from the high alkalinity of the wet surface. A mere 30 minutes is all it can take receive severe burns that could require skin grafts or worse. The concrete doesn't have to be soft to be very caustic.

The possibility of this happening is increased in today's multi-craft culture where a millwright may become a cement finisher during the course of his/her shift. To avoid future long-term problems, knee pads are highly recommended as well to protect your joints and ligaments.

A common theme with younger workers is "It won't happen to me", so it's up to the seasoned craftspeople to be alert for dangerous tasks that look safe to the untrained eye.

Buck Fever

It's that time of year again! The Minnesota rifle deer season is nearly upon us. I remember my first deer season in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I can't forget it. I'm haunted by it. Every deer season I relive the horror.

Here is the scene:
I'm fourteen years old, and my father convinces his hunting gang to let me hunt with them. I've got my trusty $10.95 JC Penney 303 British Enfield with a Williams peepsight sighted in at 100 yards to a 2" group! I am "stoked" using today's vernacular. I didn't realize it at the time but the guys positioned me in the very best ground stand in the area. I think they all wanted me to get my first buck more than they wanted to bag their own. Well, the guys began the drive and I was positioned behind a log overlooking a round clearing about 75 yards in diameter. All of a sudden, I heard a loud snort (I had never heard a deer do that before) that scared the hell out of me. I look to my right to see a large buck (they're all large on your first hunt) looking over his shoulder walking into the clearing where I was posted. He walked 50 feet in front of me (I measured it later) and I was able to count the "points" on his antlers. There were 10.

My heart was pounding in my ears. I counted them again. Yup,10 points. All of a sudden he was gone! In a couple of minutes the guys showed up and asked did you see the buck? I said I sure did, he had 10 points and was huge! They looked at the tracks in the snow and saw that he had walked 50 feet in front of me. "Did your gun jam?", was the next question. "No", I answered, "Why do you ask?" Someone replied, "Well, how come you didn't shoot?"

I looked at my father first and did everything in my power not to burst into tears in front of everyone. The only answer I could come up with at that instant was, I forgot. But I knew I was a victim of the scourge of Buck Fever.

Without another word, I took off on a dead run following the tracks of the buck figuring I could catch up with him and ambush him. After about a mile I ran out of air (and hope) and came back to the guys, ready for the ridicule of my life. It never happened. They spared me and I am grateful to this day, as I would never have been able to stand up to their jokes without crying like a baby.

I was a victim of Buck Fever several more times in my hunting career, but I look at it as good thing. If I didn't love deer hunting as much as I did I probably would never have gotten Buck Fever. Good luck to you this hunting season, and please be careful out there. All of us at nobreakdowns.com hope you get your deer, but if ya get Buck Fever, we won't kid you about it.

Wooden Boats Need TLC

Growing up in a small town near Lake Superior, I was always proud of the fact that my grandfather was a boat builder. In our little town he was the only boat builder. He had two boat patterns, one for a fourteen foot boat and one for a sixteen footer. I lost count of how many boats he built over the years.

My father received a sixteen footer as a gift one year and when the boat was about eight years old my brother took it out on Lake Superior for a short run. A little chop (rough waves) developed during the ride, and the boat started pounding pretty badly. My brother steered toward shore "just in case". About one hundred yards from shore the pounding broke the keel about four feet from the bow, and the the boat started to take on water quickly. My brother tried speeding up to raise the bow, and the entire four foot bow section broke away from the rest of the boat on the next big wave. Can you say, "Oh, $#@*!"?

The rear portion, where my brother was seated, started to sink immediately, and the 18hp engine dragged it down even faster. My brother was, and still is, a strong swimmer so he grabbed onto the floating bow section and kicked his way to shore. It was in the month of August but the water was still pretty cool. When he got to shore he broke out his Zippo lighter (we all smoked back then) to start a fire and burned the only real wood around, namely the bow section. When he warmed up and dried off, he walked the five miles back to the launch and his car.

The next day, he and a few friends retrieved the the remaining section of the boat which was in about ten feet of water. Looking at the remaining portion of the keel and applying a little RCFA (Root Cause Failure Analysis) he determined that lack of preventive maintenance caused the keel to rot, thus allowing it to break as it did. The engine ran fine after removing the water from the cylinders.

Bottom line? Wooden boats require tender loving care, or problems will occur. Things haven't changed all that much since the Good Old Days.

By the way, Lake Superior is not to be trifled with, and it will kill you if you are not prepared. The water may not be salty, but it really is an inland sea, with icy cold water.

Repair Copper with Stainless Steel?

I was employed at a copper smelter in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, as a maintenance craftsman. One day, I happened upon a fellow craftsman struggling with patching a hole in a copper radiator for a local town fire truck. The man was trying to weld a small puncture in the radiator tube with oxy-acetylene torch using a brass filler. He was getting nowhere because the copper radiator was conducting the heat away from the puncture, and he could not get the area hot enough to melt the filler rod.

I asked if I could give it a try with our TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) rig. I cleaned the area with a stainless brush and used stainless wire as a filler. The parent copper melted immediately and the stainless wire worked great as a filler rod. The hole was patched quickly and passed the leak test.

I've told this story to numerous people and had one person respond by saying that my story was fabricated. After we went to the plant welding shop (different plant) and tried it again, my friend became a believer. It can be done.

Sign Up for The Drift Email Newsletter

Hey! If you enjoy our blog posts here, and are interested in MORE useful information and humorous stories for maintenance professionals, our new weekly email newsletter, The Drift, will be going out every Wednesday starting November 8, 2006.

The newsletter contains maintenance related articles, a calendar of events, special offers for great products and services, money-saving coupons and useful web links for making your job easier and more efficient. If you are tired of boring newsletters, this one is totally different and fun to read. We're busting all the rules, and having a blast doing it. Everyone gets a laugh at their own expense in The Drift.

It's simple to subscribe, by simply clicking on the link below. We don't send out spam, and your privacy is respected at all times. We double confirm your wish to receive the newsletter, and if you choose to drop your subscription, it is a simple click of the mouse to be removed from our list. We only ask for your email address and your first name, so we can communicate like human beings. If you prefer to use a fake name, like Rubberneck or Stink Bug, knock yourself out! We don't mind. Just remember, once you do that, as far as we are concerned, it is your name FOREVER. The newsletter will show up in your inbox with a great big "Hello Rubberneck" (pick your poison) in the heading. This could be fun!?!

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Cleaning the Scroll Wheel on a Mouse

A few days ago, a coworker was assisting me with a computer problem, and noticed that the scroll wheel on my mouse wasn't scrolling very well. I had noticed this, but hadn't been too bothered by it. The scrolling problem worsened, until I had almost no scrolling capacity, which slowed me down to a crawl when I was working on the blog. We can't have that! This prompted me to look for a solution, which I found by using the common computer screen wipe. The wipes are moistened with a mild cleaner and when I wrapped the wipe around my finger and worked the scroll wheel I had almost immediate results. In about ten seconds my scroll feature was working like new.

I hope this "tip" works for you. It also works on the rollerball on the underside of many mice.

Outboard Motor Emergency Repair

A long long time ago my grandfather and I were fishing on a lake not known for hidden rocks. This was long before depth-finders of any kind so we had no real idea what the terrain looked like below the surface. Well, Murphy was riding shotgun that day as we hit a rock and broke a shear pin on the propeller of our 8hp outboard motor.

My grandfather checked his repair kit and determined we had no spare shear pin. Since we had a considerable distance to get back to the boat landing, my grandfather devised the fix shown in the attached pictures. He took the propeller off and removed the three pieces of the broken shear pin and arranged two of the pieces as described in the drawings below. After placing a piece of electrical tape over the hole to keep the pieces of shear pin from falling out he slid the the prop over the pin and we proceeded at a slow speed with one half the shearpin strength back to the landing.


There are a lot of these old outboard motors still in use today so I'm sure this trick could help someone else someday.

Working Snowmobiles

Here in Grand Rapids, Minnesota snowmobiling is very popular to say the least. I bought my first snowmobile new out of the crate in 1966. I remember it well. It was a red Polaris Super Pacer with a 10 horse power Kohler engine. It wasn't real fast but it had tremendous pulling power. In fact on one page in the owners manual it said, "Do not pull more than 800 pounds".



I wonder how many of today's snowmobile owner manuals limit towing to 800 pounds.The machines were slower, but I'm not convinced that was a bad thing. I miss that machine.

A Better Use for a Tennis Ball

Everyone has witnessed black shoe marks on the waxed tiles in offices or meeting rooms,especially if the tiles are a light color. Removing these marks can be time consuming for a maintenance custodian.

I have a trick I learned from my custodial background. Take a tennis ball and cut a small slit in it about 3/4" long and insert a broom handle with the aluminum threaded end on it into the slit. Then simply place the tennis ball on the shoe mark and rub gently from a standing position. The mark will disappear without removing the wax, eliminating the need to bend over to remove the mark with a rag.

This applies more to the seasoned custodian who might be experiencing the "short skin on back" syndrome, and greatly speeds the removal process.

Weather Dependent Maintenance

Wow! As you might already know, nobreakdowns.com is located in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. It is October 14, and we have snow on the ground! Usually, we don't see that until the second week in November or so. It caught us by surprise.

Don't forget about weather dependant tasks on your list. When it is getting hotter or colder, and plant conditions change, we have some things to deal with for maximum results.

Examples:
- Air conditioner maintenance/covering
- Heating system tests, and cleaning
- Window repairs, sealing
- Roof inspections, storm water system cleaning
- Pavement repairs
- Lighting
- Grounds keeping etc...

Just a reminder for busy people. Keep on wrenching!

International Maintenance Conference (IMC) 2006

The International Maintenance Conference (IMC) 2006 is being held in Daytona Beach, Florida this year, December 5-8. it's the 21st annual event, and is sure to be a great maintenance gathering.

We have participated in this conference for years, in a variety of capacities, and it is always a first rate production. The conference is hosted beautifully by our friends at Reliabilityweb.com, and they work hard to make each event a spectacular opportunity to learn and make contact with others who share our reliability goals.

It's only 52 days until IMC 2006, and the Daytona Beach Hilton will be filling up fast. Check it out, and make your reservations. The word is that there will be close to 1000 people in attendance, and it never hurts my feelings to have to go to sunny Florida!

We will be hosting a display in the Coquina Exhibition Hall this year, so please stop by to visit.

Despair.com - Maintenance Hero

I don't know about you, but we are tired of those motivational posters and slogans that are plastered all over the walls in many workplaces. Do we really need a poster to remind us of the need for teamwork, a good attitude, leadership and good communication?

One of two things seem to be true in almost all cases; Your workplace has none of these highly touted attributes, and the posters are a $50 attempt to drive change, or you are doing these things well, and someone decided it would be a good idea to make sure that it stays that way by hanging up posters. In either case, the posters AIN'T GONNA WORK! They're demeaning and irritating at best.

How about this for an alternative? Check out Depair.com, and see the future! We decorated our corporate office with posters (they call them lithographs) that make fun of the motivational posters in grand fashion. It is really interesting to see the reaction from visitors when they realize that the posters on the wall at nobreakdowns.com are "different".

I personally guarantee you will laugh your head off when you see the online versions of their products.

Removal of a Seized Bolt

Here's a method of removing seized bolts that often works if you have unsuccessfully tried rust penetrant, or do not have any available. Try beeswax!

Heat the bolt and surrounding metal just enough to melt the beeswax, but not so much that the wax catches fire and burns. Liquified beeswax works well as a penetrant, soaking into the tightest fits with ease, and the additional heat also helps to loosen stubborn bolts. I used this method with good results in the gas turbine repair industry for years, and sometimes it works when nothing else will.

A common source of beeswax is toilet seals, commonly sold in hardware stores. They are cheap, and much easier to obtain than beeswax directly from the bee hive! Be aware that not all toilet seals are made of beeswax, so read the label.

Pilot Bushing Removal Tip

For those garage mechanics that do most of their own repairs, especially on vehicles with standard transmissions, this tip might assist you one day. Removing a worn pilot bushing from the flywheel can be a difficult without a puller designed for the job. For those of you without the special tool, try this little trick.

Fill the hole behind the bushing with grease through the pilot bushing with a grease gun or your fingers. Leave enough room in the bushing cavity to allow the tip of a spare front shaft (the same diameter as the original front shaft ) to slide part of the way into the bushing bore. Then, take a two pound ball peen hammer or heavier and give the front shaft a sharp hit. It may take more than one hit, but the bushing will pop out from hydraulic pressure, allowing you to move on to other repair tasks with less frustration.

You can probably think of other applications for this simple procedure. Good luck!

Polaris Duel to Identify Toughest ATV on Earth

Polaris Industries has issued a challenge to all ATV manufacturers to settle the argument of who makes the toughest machine in the world. These 4-wheeled off-road vehicles are very popular in our region, and are used for a variety of recreational and industrial uses.

Take a look at the Polaris Duel website for details about the event, to be held in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 16, 2006. The site also includes access to the responses from other ATV manufacturers, including Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Bombardier and Arctic Cat.

It doesn't really matter whose ATV you favor, this ought to be pretty entertaining. There is nothing like a good, old fashioned, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is challenge. I wonder who will show up, and who will take their ball and go home.

Digital Camera as a Maintenance Planning Tool

In the recent past the maintenance planner was restricted to field sketches and at best a 35 mm classic camera. New technology and consumer demand now makes the digital camera not only affordable, but an invaluable tool for today's planner. Pictures can be taken in the field and reviewed immediately. In the past, the pictures had to be developed and even using one hour film processing took too long. To save time it was common practice to develop incomplete rolls of film to speed the process of getting the pictures into the work package. This was a waste of film. Not so today. Pictures can be downloaded and blown up with comments and location details drawn on them and then be included in the work package to make the craftsman job in the field much clearer and easier.

This might sound like an obvious point, since digitial cameras have been around for several years, and are commonly used in many facilities. However, we are still seeing some sites that do not use them, particularly because of restrictions on the use of photographic equipment inside the plant for security reasons. In this case, we have seen some of these sites do short term projects to photograph all of their equipment from several angles, with approval to do so. Then, the images are reviewed, edited to remove any proprietary content, and are then added to the equipment files (electronically or as hard copies). If you can't use cameras on a daily basis, this is a good second option, that will provide much better information for planned work.

Maintenance & Reliability Training on CD-ROM

You can access a great set of CD-ROM based maintenance and reliability training courses at Mastering Maintenance. One of the courses was developed by me, and is called The 5 Pillars: Maintenance & Reliability Professional Review, aimed at those of us working to prepare for the Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP) exam. You can find out about this certification at the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) website.

There are lots of other courses by well-known instructors, including Terry Wireman, Steve Thomas, Kevin Lewton and Howard Penrose. Check it out, and you may find just what you need, and avoid a costly trip to a live course.

Some examples of courses you will find there:

• Maintenance Benchmarking
• Key Performance Indicators
• Change Management for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals
• MRO Excellence
• Implementing Total Productive Maintenance
• AC Induction Motor Diagnostics

Pole Vaulting in a 1960 Chevrolet

Preventive maintenance starts at home, and in this case it starts with my car. I used to own a 1960 Chevrolet. As I was driving to work one day I felt a vibration from beneath my car. I took notice, but ignored it. A week later, on the way to work doing 55 mph, I noticed that the vibration had increased substantially, but still said to myself, "I'll get to it this weekend." Suddenly, I heard and felt a tremendous bang from beneath my car, and looked to my left to see universal joint bearing cups actually passing my car as the "U-joint" disintegrated. It turns out it was the front "U-joint", as I soon found out, because the unsupported front of the driveshaft dropped into a crack in the blacktop road and nearly stopped the car in its tracks. The result of the front of the driveshaft dropping into the crack caused a huge bend in the drive shaft, and it felt like it was going to rip the bottom of the car off. Remember, I was doing 55 mph when this event started to unfold, and by the time I hit the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road I probably had traveled 500 feet (at least). It took a couple of cigarettes to recover my composure and assess the damage. The noise was still ringing in my ears. Moral? Preventive maintenance is a good thing.