Super Bee @ Copper
Boeinglover
09 Apr 2005
liftmech, on Mar 27 2005, 05:26 AM, said:
Here's the story.
As Grant mentioned, we lost one of the electric motors and are currently running on the diesels. Brad apparently was skiing the day we lost the cooling fan pump on one of the engines (the radiators are set in the floor and the fans cannot be driven directly by then engine; they have a remote hydraulic motor driven by a pump on the engine). We pulled a 16-hour day between cleaning up the coolant from the engine overheating, diagnosing the problem, and then fixing it. We're not running without a backup; we can evacuate the lift on one diesel if we lose the other. I haven't heard when the motor is coming back.
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As Grant mentioned, we lost one of the electric motors and are currently running on the diesels. Brad apparently was skiing the day we lost the cooling fan pump on one of the engines (the radiators are set in the floor and the fans cannot be driven directly by then engine; they have a remote hydraulic motor driven by a pump on the engine). We pulled a 16-hour day between cleaning up the coolant from the engine overheating, diagnosing the problem, and then fixing it. We're not running without a backup; we can evacuate the lift on one diesel if we lose the other. I haven't heard when the motor is coming back.
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I was there skiing that day with a friend. We were on our way to the Super Bee when three ski patrol members stopped us. They notified us that the Bee had broken down... three times! Had we gone ten minutes earlier, we would have been stuck on the lift. (I don't like poma anymore

Bill
09 Apr 2005
Whats it have to do with Poma? Its not a 'Poma' thing. Doppelmayr and Leitner and all the other lifts in the world work on electric motors and those can fry just as easily. Its a machine, machines WILL fail, its a matter of when. Good maintenance will minimize the chances, but they still are there.
Boeinglover
09 Apr 2005
Bill, on Apr 9 2005, 05:48 PM, said:
Whats it have to do with Poma? Its not a 'Poma' thing. Doppelmayr and Leitner and all the other lifts in the world work on electric motors and those can fry just as easily. Its a machine, machines WILL fail, its a matter of when. Good maintenance will minimize the chances, but they still are there.
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I know, but highspeedquad is bugging me saying that it's not the engine's fault and it's the gearbox's fault (it was made by Kissling). I really want to oppose that by saying that it's Poma's fault.
liftmech
09 Apr 2005
How about this- it's NO ONE'S fault. Let's not turn this into a finger-pointing excercise. Poma designs the lift. They buy a motor or two from GE or whoever, and a gearbox from Kissling. There are brake pumps manufactured by Ethywag, sheave liners by Semperit, diesel engines by Cummins, and so on until you have a dozen different manufacturers anyway. If you had read my post about what actually happened, you'd see that it was a failure of a piece of equipment that is both impossible to see and impossible to test. To reiterate- it isn't anyone's fault. As Bill said, it is a piece of machinery and it will fail eventually.
Duck
10 Apr 2005
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams
highspeedquad
12 Apr 2005
Like everyone is saying, nothing is impossible. They said the Titanic was unsinkable. It sunk.
Zage
12 Apr 2005
Hey John, is this you and one of your daughters inside the Bee, in the far left at the end.
This post has been edited by Zage: 12 April 2005 - 08:49 AM
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This post has been edited by Zage: 12 April 2005 - 08:49 AM
liftmech
12 Apr 2005
That's Abby- she tagged along whith Cameron and I when he came to visit last summer.
Kicking Horse
12 Apr 2005
liftmech, on Apr 12 2005, 07:20 PM, said:
That's Abby- she tagged along whith Cameron and I when he came to visit last summer.
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I'm going off topic for a few mins. John, Do you think Abby or any of your kids will get into lifts? (either op's or maintaince)
liftmech
14 Apr 2005
They're three. For all I know, they'll be on Mars when they're my age.