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That simple bearing swap turned into a 5 hour nightmare
Had a bridge crane at the Port of Houston with a seized trolley bearing. Figured it would take an hour, tops. Ended up fighting seized bolts and misaligned rails for five hours. Anyone else had a simple job spiral out of control like that?
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murray.robert12d ago
Bet you found out who over-torqued those bolts last time.
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bailey.jennifer12d ago
45 minutes on 8 bolts tells me you were using a 3/8ths ratchet instead of a proper breaker bar. 2mm is nothing for rail alignment, that'll pull straight with the first load cycle if you know how to work a shim.
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elliot_roberts12d ago
Holy crap, I gotta be honest here - I used to be the guy saying "torque to spec is the only way" and thought anyone who talked about rail alignment pulling straight was making excuses. But @bailey.jennifer, you changed my mind after I watched a 30 ton crane self-align a track that was off by 3mm after one full cycle. That shim trick you mentioned is something I'd argued against for years, but now I see it's a real skill, not a hack. 2mm is nothing in the grand scheme of things once the load settles in. I still hate seized bolts though, nothing beats the satisfaction of a torch and a breaker bar winning that fight.
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The 8 bolts on that trolley took me 45 minutes just to break loose. One was so seized I had to heat it with a torch for 10 minutes straight before it even budged. @murray.robert you called it, someone definitely went gorilla mode with the impact wrench on those. And to top it off, the new bearing had a slightly different inner race width, so the whole rail alignment got thrown off by maybe 2 millimeters.
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