6 replies to this topic

[ccslider]

Telluride had to evacute skiers from Lift 5 ('99 vintage Doppelmayr HSQ) last week due to a gearbox problem. You can read the local media account of the incident at:

http://www.telluride.../113004/ski.htm

[SkiBachelor]

Wow, another gearbox problem at Telluride within a year. Luckly Whister Blackcomb had an extra drive shaft, but I would figure that the lift mechanics at Telluride would have just removed the drive shaft from UTE and installed it for lift 5 since they are both of the same terminal design and UTE probably isn't being used that much anyway right now.

[floridaskier]

How would the drive shaft get bent, shouldn't it be stronger than that?

[Allan]

If a 400 horsepower motor (just using 400 as a number, as that's what our YANs are) is trying to drive a jammed gearbox, and the motor keeps driving without stopping - something's got to give until the overcurrent trip is reached or the operator notices a problem and shuts the drive down.

[SkiReg]

The shaft was not bent as the article notes. The inner race of the bearing had damaged the shaft. Their initial thoughts that only the bearing had failed changed when they went to replace the bearing and found the inner race had welded itself to the shaft, necessitating replacing the shaft as well.

[Allan]

That makes more sense than the shaft bending!

[liftmech]

What is it with gearboxes and drive bullwheels these days? Since spring of this year, we've had:
Telluride- Chair 9 gearbox issues
Copper- O-1-lift gearbox/output shaft rebuild
Loon Mt- gearbox failure
Copper- F-lift output shaft bushing replacement
Telluride- Chair 5 input bearing/high-speed shaft failure
...and others I probably haven't mentioned.