Old timer told me to change my rail adjustment technique, saved me 3 hours

Last week in Philly, a guy who's been doing elevators since the 80s told me I was wasting time with my rail alignment method. He said stop shimming every bracket twice and just run a string line from top to bottom once. I thought he was full of it, but I tried it on a 4-stop Otis install. Finished the rails in 2 hours instead of 5, and the alignment was better than usual. Has anyone else gotten a tip from an old hand that actually worked out? What's the best shortcut you've learned from the veterans?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith_king1mo ago

Ngl, I had a buddy who was fighting with an old MMC controller for a whole day until a retired mechanic walked up and showed him how to jumper a specific relay to bypass a safety circuit for testing. He said it cut his troubleshooting from 8 hours down to 45 minutes easy. Honestly, those old timers might talk slow but they know every trick in the book.

smith.anna1mo ago

Wait, did anyone stop to think maybe that retired mechanic was the one who originally installed those safety circuits back in the 70s? I remember working on a job where an old guy walked us through a whole pneumatic control system, and it turned out HE had designed the damn thing thirty years prior. They don't just know tricks, they built half the equipment we're still fighting with today.

ellis.leo1mo ago

Isn't that the truth, @smith.anna? I had a similar thing happen years ago with an old conveyor system. A retired electrician came in, didn't even look at the schematics, just walked over and flipped a hidden disconnect switch that wasn't on any drawing. He'd installed it himself back in '78 when the plant first opened. Those guys don't just know the theory, they remember exactly why a certain wire was run that way or why a breaker box is placed where it is. It's like having the original engineers on speed dial, except they actually retired twenty years ago.