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Seized swing brake on a 60 ton in Amarillo, and I had a load hanging when it happened
Was running a 60 ton truck crane at a tank farm outside Amarillo a few months back, lifting some pipe spools over a berm, nothing crazy, maybe 8,000 lbs on the hook. I swung left toward the drop zone and the swing brake just would not grab, the boom kept drifting past my mark while the spool was still up in the air. My spotter yelled to hold and I just bumped the swing the other way real gentle to stop the drift, then set the load down slow and shut everything off. Turned out the brake band was glazed and the linkage was half seized from dust and old grease, we had no record of it being opened up in a long time. I flagged it to the mechanic right there instead of finishing the lift, which did not make the super happy with the schedule. Now I do a swing test first thing in the morning with an empty hook before anyone hooks anything on. Curious what the rest of you do, do you test swing with a load on it or empty, and how often are you greasing that linkage?
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fionarodriguez28d ago
Tbh a buddy of mine had almost the same thing happen on a 50 ton down in Odessa, brake band was so glazed it would not hold and he ended up drifting a bundle of casing right over the edge of a rack. He got lucky and caught it with the foot brake but it scared him bad. He started doing a swing test every morning with a few hundred pounds of headache ball on the hook instead of empty, because he said an empty hook swings too easy and hides a weak brake. As for greasing, we hit that linkage every 50 hours now after what happened to him.
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