My first stuck cab in a high rise back in 1998

I was at the Hancock Building in Chicago on the 42nd floor when a car just STOPPED between floors with a family of four inside. The old relay logic on that Otis system was acting up and I spent 2 hours tracing a bad solder joint on a timing relay. Has anyone else run into those old relay panels that just give you weird intermittent faults?

2 comments

2 Comments

james_butler20d ago

That old relay logic on that Otis system" brings back memories. I wasn't working on elevators back then but I had a 1972 Chevy pickup with a similar problem. The truck would just die randomly on the highway and then start right back up five minutes later. Turned out to be a cold solder joint on the voltage regulator. Took me three weekends and a lot of cussing to find it.

shane24420d ago

Think about how many other ghost problems like this are still out there in old equipment that nobody ever bothered to fix properly. I’ll bet there’s a ton of stuff running right now with a loose wire or a cracked solder joint that’s just waiting to fail at the worst possible moment. Guys back then didn’t have the tools we have now, so they’d patch it up with electrical tape or a jumper wire and call it good. That fix might last years until the vibration or heat finally exposes it again. It’s a reminder that sometimes the hardest problems to find are the ones that are almost invisible until they’re not. Good on you for sticking with it though, most people would have just traded the truck in.