The Worst Place to Repair a Machine

NCWayne on the crawler forum was talking about repairing machinery in some bad spots,like tunneling under a machine to get belly pan off of a bulldozer. How about tell your most difficult or unusual repair story.
I was tearing down a huge two story house with an excavator and was on top of an 8ft tall pile of debris when Felt the travel go weak and the hyd. pump start to cavitate. What had happened a line going to one of the travel motors had blown out. One end only had to remove cover.The other required tunneling under machine to get up into the turn table. several hours later digging and chain sawing we were able to get under the machine and lay in the oil soaked debris and take the other end loose and replace hose.
My BIL was driving a big wrecker and got a call to move a garbage truck that had broken a joint at a busy intersection. He gets to the truck and juice and maggots are dripping from under it. He calls his boss explains situation and tells him that there is no way he is getting underneath that truck to take the drive shaft out. Boss tells him to do it or lose his job.BIL tells him he will be back to the shop to park the wrecker in just a few minutes. Boss relented and told him to hook to the truck and get it out of the road he would get the municipality to send someone to remove drive shaft so he could bring it in.
How about Yall?
Ron

a friend of mine here in nj told me his father was a mechcanic at the johns manville factory many years ago , He fixed machines that buried scraps from the abestos siding factory, He died of cancer,so did many of the people that worked there

Few years back at work we were dozing snow to freeze in a skid road across a swamp around the end of January. Dozer was down a steep hill and in the middle of the swamp when the motor up and quit. Turns out it broke the end of the crankshaft off. Needless to say we pulled the motor right where she died and hauled it back to the county road in the jaws of a grapple skidder (about 3/4 of a mile). While we were working it was snowing 6"+ a day and temps were well below zero.

Lost many tools on that job. Somebody should put their hip waders on and get out a metal detector. haha

Broke front axle, on 185 AC in three feet of snow on a hidden stump. Walked two miles, hauled a portable generater and welder back with a smaller tractor JD 1830. Took all day. Towed the JD home with the AC. -26C. Character building.
Chas.

Broke front axle, on 185 AC in three feet of snow on a hidden stump. Walked two miles, hauled a portable generater and welder back with a smaller tractor JD 1830. Took all day. Towed the JD home with the AC. -26C. Character building.
Chas.

Got the Deere 603 hung up in deep slow. Killed the engine in the process and quickly hit the starter while the engine dieseled backward. Broke the nose cone on the starter so I had to dig the snow out from under the tractor and pull the starter right there. Had to remove loader brackets to get the flywheel cover off. Don't remember being real cold, probably because I was so steamed about the dumb series of events that got me to that point. Jim

Had to rebuild a drive motor and reduction case on a skid steer after it stripped the splines of the drive motor shaft while I was digging silage out of a bunker silo... Most unplesant is probably tire chains that come off over the inside of the wheel while pushing manure... and then can't move until I get the chain off. Had that happen in over a foot of slop once. That really wasn't much fun...

Rod

I had to R&R an injection pump on a generator at a sewage plant. Water being sprayed up in the air next to me. Guess which way the wind was blowing.

A couple of years ago I worked for a large milk and dairy products company. We had a 25 year old reefer trailer that had an aluminum floor when built. They put in steel diamond plate on top of it so the milk cases would slide easily. Naturally over the years some cartons leaked and milk ran under the steel and soured. The steel eventually rusted out so I got the job of removing it. I had to use exhaust fans and could only work about 15 minutes at a time without a break for fresh air. I also wore respirator. It took two days to get all of the steel plating out.

One dealer I used to work for had a guy that pumped out the sewer sludge that towns and cites have. He has a MFWD tractor with a loader with big floater tires to push the sludge to the manure pump. HE broke the front axle knuckle in one pit. We had to fix it in 3-4 foot of sewage sludge. Two of us mechanics did the repair. We both went and bought hip waders to wear in the pit. It was in the middle of July when we did the repair. We smelled real good when we where done. The wife would not let me in the house when I got home. She hosed me off in the back yard with a garden hose. LOL the well water was really cold. It took a few days for the smell to completely go away. The dogs where real interested in the smell.

I broke a spindle on a gravity wagon one time on the overhead bridge for a major highway going over another major highway AND less than a quarter mile from the NY state Thruway exit in December with a couple of inches of snow on the ground (the road itself was clear) going to the mill a couple miles further up the road.

603! Where's my brain this morning! It's a 630!!! Jim

Neighborhood mechanics talked about the rendering truck coming into the shop one winter, needed some repairs in the brakes or driveline I forget which. As it warmed up in the shop they talked about various fluids dripping out of it, as well as smells getting stronger.

I won't go any farther on that, it's close to dinner. Wasn't a pleasant discussion.....

--->Paul

I worked with a guy 35 years ago that was in the navy in WW2 and was on a Sub Tender in the pacific. They were sent out to fix a sub that had a broken crankshaft. They towed a floating drydock and replaced the crank at sea. The block was split at the crank and they unbolted it and lifted the top half of the block. The new Crank was brought in thru a torpedo tube. They had it fixed in less than a day. The submariners were upset that they didn't get a trip to Pearl Harbor and a few days onshore.

One of the worst jobs I ever got into was helping putting the swing reduction gearbox back in a Insley hydraulic tracklaying backhoe at night. The gearbox had cracked apart and then been brazed back together when a ball from the big pinion shaft bearing in the swing pinion reduction gearbox dropped between the swing pinion and the big rotary gear. We used a Case 580 CK backhoe to lift the gearbox back in place and used an Airco welder generator for lighting to see what we were doing. The Insley was contracted on a P G and E facility relocation job when the California 101 Highway was relocated near Hollister, California, it was 1974 I believe. The weather was hot during the day....100 degrees plus, but cooler at night , Thank God.

I was changing a pinion seal on a '78 F250 4X4 on a friend's truck, on a cool spring morning, in a garage, when my torture began. Friend is one of those dorky-looking guys with a hot wife. Wife appeared and asked if I wanted something to drink. Didn't think anything of it at the time, until she appeared 20 minutes later. In a pair of cut-offs (and I'm not talking tractor wheels) that couldn't be cut off any shorter. She'd make Daisy Duke look like Mother Theresa. The truck was jacked up high enough so I could see her face when she crouched down. Oh, the pain! After the third time, it occurred to me to get my sun glasses, and nearly killed myself trying to get to my truck and back before she came back; I would explain that rust was dropping in my eyes and I didn't have my safety glasses with me. Well, she never came back. She must have been in the house 'aving a laff' on me!

Not a repair, but in college I worked a summer job where we pumped out septic tanks part-time. One slow day boss said we were going to clean the truck. Opened trap door on bottom of tank and handed me a trenching shovel. I poked my head up inside the tank and there was sludge at the front that we had to crawl in and scoop back to the trap door. I said "No way" and quit on the spot. Buddy of mine worked most of the day at it with a couple of other guys. Said they could only stand 5 minutes at a time. He was sicker than a dog for a day or so. That helped me decide to stay in college. :lol: