I've been doing this for about 22 years now, and I keep seeing guys under 5 years in the trade messing up door zone bypass adjustments. They treat the leveling switch like it's a simple on/off deal, but in my experience those old Otis switches from the 90s need a specific gap tolerance down to like 1/16th of an inch. I watched a kid last month in Pittsburgh spend 3 hours chasing a ghost fault because he had the switch too tight against the cam. The car was hunting for level every stop. His senior mechanic finally came over and just loosened the bracket 3 turns and it ran perfect. Why do they always think tighter is better? Has anyone else noticed this trend with the younger guys coming in?
Back in 2012 I worked on a 1992 Otis that still had the original relay logic. Smooth as glass, never a complaint. Then last month I serviced the same model after a Motion 4000 retrofit. It stops fine but there's this little jerk at floor level that wasn't there before. My partner says it's just a gain setting, but I've tweaked everything I can think of. Has anyone else noticed a difference in ride quality before and after a controller swap on hydraulic elevators?
Back when I started out 8 years ago in Detroit, an older mechanic named Frank took me under his wing. He spent a whole afternoon showing me how to trace a stuck relay on a Mowery freight car. He said 'son, if you can read this diagram you can fix anything with wires.' It stuck with me because he was patient and didn't make me feel dumb for asking questions. I still use that same method on every hydraulic controller I work on. Have any of you had a mentor who really shaped how you approach the job?
Last Tuesday in Phoenix, I ignored his advice and swapped in a used cable off a junker Otis, and the car dropped three feet during a test run before the safety caught it.
Back in 2018, a guy with 30 years in told me to always grease the guide rails on hydraulic elevators, but I found out the hard way that just makes the safeties slip. Has anyone else had an old-timer's advice backfire on a job?
Back in 2019 an elevator mechanic named Frank pulled me aside after I finished a governor test and said my tension sheave was off by a hair. I shrugged it off until three months later that car oversped during a load test and the safeties barely caught. Has anyone else had a seasoned guy point out something that saved your license down the road?
I grabbed a pack of 10 for $22 off Amazon last month to keep on the truck. Installed one at the Maplewood Towers in St. Louis on Tuesday and it failed by Friday - car was stuck between floors with the doors open. Has anyone else had these knockoffs crap out way faster than OEM parts?
Ngl bought a snap-on torque wrench for $150 thinking I needed the best. My old $50 harbor freight one was actually more accurate when I tested them side by side. Anyone else find the expensive stuff ain't always better?
I was working a service call last Tuesday on a 20 year old Otis in a downtown office building and a retired mechanic came by to grab some stuff from his old locker. He saw me fighting with a sticky rail and just laughed. Then he told me he used to pack his guide rails with a specific mix of grease and paraffin wax instead of the expensive stuff we buy now. I thought he was messing with me but he showed me a can he still had and said it ran smoother and lasted twice as long between services. I tried it out on two cars yesterday and I swear the ride felt quieter. Anyone else ever use anything besides the standard rail lube for older elevators?
I was reading through some old elevator maintenance logs last week at a building in downtown Cleveland and noticed they track door open times to the millisecond. Turns out the average elevator door is open for about 8 to 12 seconds per stop, but I found one log where a door was staying open 22 seconds because of a tiny sensor misalignment. The weird part is nobody had flagged it because the tenants just got used to the slow doors. Has anyone else run into hidden time delays that just became normal over the years?
The smoke came out right during morning rush with 3 cars on dispatch, so I pulled the main disconnect and swapped in a spare I had in the truck, but now I'm staring at the damaged board wondering if it's worth my time to trace the short or just toss it and order a new one.
I was doing a routine inspection on a 1988 Montgomery unit in a 12-story office building downtown. Popped the governor cover and heard a loud TWANG, then something hit my safety glasses. Found the spring had snapped clean in half and launched across the machine room. Never had that happen before on this model. Anyone else seen sudden brake spring failures on older gearless units?
I was bidding a job at a 12 story office building in downtown Portland. The old geared traction unit was shot, bearings grinding like gravel. I had to pick between a used 2009 Otis Gen2 that was sitting in a warehouse or a brand new MRL from a smaller supplier. I went with the Gen2 because I knew the controller layout like the back of my hand. Saved the client about 8 grand upfront but I spent an extra day sorting out a bad encoder that the warehouse didn't tell me about. Would you guys ever gamble on a used unit again or stick with new every time?
I was going through my paperwork on Tuesday and realized I just did my 500th inspection since I started my own company back in 2019. That's a lot of doors opening and closing, man. It made me think about all the little quirks I've seen across different buildings around St. Louis. Has anyone else ever kept count of something like that and been surprised by the number?
I went with the smart relay over the old GAA board because it was cheaper but now I'm fighting voltage drops and wondering if I should just swap back, has anyone else dealt with retrofitting older units with newer parts?
I usually trust my old bubble level for everything, but last week I used a digital level from my buddy for a pit alignment at a hospital in Spokane. It kept giving me readings that were 0.3 degrees off from what my bubble saw, and I almost redid the whole job. Turns out the digital one was just too sensitive for the rough concrete base we were working on. I learned that sometimes the old school tools handle real world conditions better than fancy tech. Has anyone else dealt with digital levels being overly finicky on the job?
I've been fighting with a MRL elevator in an old building downtown for weeks. The problem was the brake pickup voltage kept drifting after about 30 hours. Turns out the contactor points were just slightly pitted from years of use. I replaced them last Tuesday and the test passed without a hitch. It felt good to finally close that call after the third time the customer called me back. Has anyone else had a similar issue with older MRL units in commercial buildings?
I keep seeing guys mount the switch facing the wrong way on the car top so you gotta reach over the rail to adjust it. Did 3 callbacks last month just because of that one mistake. Who else has dealt with this on the MCE 4000 series?
So I was on a service call at this old building downtown, working on a Gen 2 with a busted door hanger cable. Thought I'd be clever and use a zip tie to hold the cable in place while I adjusted the tension. Heard a snap, then my phone hit the pit floor. Cracked the screen. Learned that zip ties are not the same as proper clamps. Anyone else got a story about using the wrong tool for a quick fix and paying for it?
We pulled an old Otis unit out of a building near downtown Cleveland back in May. The customer wanted a new MCE controller and we had it all wired up by Thursday. Friday morning came and the doors started cycling randomly, car would go to the top floor and just sit there. Took me 12 hours over the weekend to find a ground fault in the main drive cable that wasn't showing up on my meter. Come Monday, a junior guy on the crew plugged a temporary light into the controller cabinet and almost got cooked when the short finally let go. The factory wiring diagrams had the phase rotation labeled backwards from what was actually on site. Has anyone else run into MCE boards that show phantom faults after a swap like this?
I kept burning out door controller boards on an old Otis in a building near downtown Denver. After the second one I stopped and traced every wire back to the machine room. Turned out a ground wire had a tiny crack inside the insulation that only showed up under load. Put in a fresh ground and its been running smooth for 3 weeks now. Anybody ever find a hidden wire issue that drove them nuts like that?
Honestly, I hit 500 straight repairs last month without a single callback and it kind of freaked me out at first. I work mostly in older buildings downtown where the controllers are ancient and things go wrong all the time. This was over about 14 months of work, maybe 80 some jobs in total since some were multi trip fixes. I kept waiting for something to slip through the cracks, like a door lock adjustment I missed or a leveling issue that would show up a week later. When I hit that number I just sat in my truck for a few minutes thinking about all the times I second guessed myself on site. Now I'm at 523 and I still get nervous every time I finish a job and hand the keys back. Has anyone else tracked their callback rate and found it changed how you work?
I was on a service call in a basement in Pittsburgh last Tuesday, and some contractor had cut right through our controller wiring for the elevator pit. They didn't call 811 before they started digging. I had to reroute all the cables through a new conduit, which took me half the day. The worst part was the building manager didn't even know they were doing excavation work. Has anyone else dealt with careless digging near their equipment?
I spent a whole Tuesday troubleshooting an intermittent leveling issue on a 2019 Otis Gen2 where it kept stopping about an inch low on the third floor every fourth or fifth run. Turned out the door zone bypass was just barely failing and the controller was getting a false signal from a loose wire on the limit switch. Has anyone else had a gremlin like that eat up a whole shift?
I fought swapping out the old fluorescent tubes in our machine rooms for years. Kept saying LEDs were too finicky and didn't handle the vibration from the motors well. Then we had a call in a 1970s Otis bank where the ballast blew and took half the lights with it. The building manager was on my back so I threw in some Philips LED tubes just to get them running again. That was 14 months ago and I haven't touched those lights once. Meanwhile I'm still swapping fluorescents every 6 weeks in another building down on Johnson Street. The color temp is a little cold for my taste but they take the constant starting and stopping without any flicker. Has anyone else had them hold up in a high-vibration machine room or did I just get lucky?