Had a rough day at work. Sorry if this gets 'technical' and long. I am the mechanic at the lumber yard I work at, so I see some interesting things sometimes. People can be quite creative in breaking things. Today was rather frustrating. Our largest crane truck, got a new crane, engine and transmission at the beginning of this year. Sounds good but very expensive. Since then, I have given it a new muffler, and extended the tailpipe, replaced the alternator and all four batteries and the crane mechanics have been up to fix issues three times (possibly more). Oops forgot to mention the engine shop didn't do the exhaust manifold right so it blew the gaskets about a month ago, which got fixed this week. Two weeks ago the starter decided that it was time to begin the death throes (why wasn't a new one put on the NEW engine?). After a week of trying to get a new starter, we finally got one. The next day the drivers had to smack the old starter with a hammer to get it to crank the engine. Then it worked ok but was a bit labored. Today, the truck did not have any deliveries and no trailers to pick up so I took it out of service to do the starter. Everything was going good, had to get an extra pair of hands to get the last bolt out while holding the starter up. The darn thing weighs about 50lbs. So we get the old one out check it against the new one, looks great. Crawled back under the truck, get handed the new one, hoist it into place, this one is heavier, and the helper puts two bolts in. Moved to the third bolt before anything is tight, like proper procedure, it just makes it in over half way and gets tight. What the heck? Pulled that bolt out, tightened the other two then took one out and tried it in place of the one that wouldn't go in. Same deal. Took the starter back out and checked the length of all three bolts, all the same, thought so. Hmm is one bent? Put starter back in place, bolted up, rotated bolts, same thing. Took back out, said What the TRUCK?!! Checked the three mounting holes, look ok, tried all three bolts in all holes, ok. Crawled back out and looked at old grungy starter. Scraped some grime off the mounting end,
there's a frippin spacer! No wonder it wouldn't bolt up. The bolt that would only go half way was going all the way through it's hole and butting into the flywheel. Mumble mumble cuss. Put the spacer onto the new starter, hoisted BACK into place, put all three bolts in, fantastic! Now to connect the cables, they aren't wires, they're cables as thick as my index finger and they don't bend nicely, but they do hold their shape when they do bend. There are nine or so cables two of which can be called wires because they are comparatively small, and three terminals to connect them to. Hooked them all back up according to the mental map I had, then reconnected the four batteries. No power. Nothing, no lights, not a thing.
Jaws picked up off the floor, time to find out why. Traced each individual cable back to the battery box, everything seemed ok. There are four positive cables and four ground cables and a little positive. After too long checking for power we go back to the starter and retrace everything again. Finally we discovered that my mental map was the issue and one ground cable was connected to a positive terminal and a positive cable was connected to a ground terminal. We had made a closed loop system, power was returning to ground before it went anywhere. So we had to disconnect all the cables to switch the two that were wrong. In order to do this, one of the fuel filters had to come off again, it was taken off in order to get the old starter out. Stupid hidden bolts. One thing I was taught was, when you take a filter off, don't reuse it ever (even if it's new?) unless it is an air filter and isn't clogged. The filter that came off at the begining was chucked (had been in service for about two weeks) and a new one installed before we found the power problem. I said buggrit, this new filter has never had fuel through it, I'm reusing it and reinstalled it after the cable swap. Crawled back out from under the truck, reconnected the batteries again.
Lights work woot! Jump in, clutch pedal down, turn key...never heard that truck crank so nicely before.
Finally finished, what time is it, twenty to five. Started the job somewhere near 11 am, never went for lunch, time to clean up. Now it's my weekend, I have two days off and because they don't like to pay sales staff overtime (which is the other part of my job), I don't have to go back to work until 9am Tuesday morning instead of 8.
Venting: Accomplished! Feel good now.
