That week in 2008 when the old Otis in the Polk County courthouse chewed me up and spit me out

I was doing a 3-day service contract on a 1950s Otis at the Polk County courthouse in Des Moines. Day one, the main brake shoe snapped on the machine room floor, stuck the car between 2 and 3. I had to hand-crank it down with the overspeed governor tripping twice. Day two, the selector tape snapped while I was testing the releveling, so I spent 4 hours splicing it on a ladder. By day three, the door lock on the 6th floor failed and I had to crawl out of the car through the hatch because the hoistway was so tight. My foreman called it a hat trick of failures. Anyone else have a job where everything seemed to break at once?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_max15d ago

Was that old selector tape the woven kind with the little brass pins or the flat plastic style?

logan_young2915d ago

Why would you want the brittle plastic ones over the woven tapes, @the_max? The woven ones with brass pins lasted way longer and didn't crack when you bent them around a splice. I'd take that woven tape any day over fighting with those plastic strips that fall apart after a season.

faithcampbell15d ago

@the_max that was the flat plastic style with the little metal contact strips running through it. Actually those old flat tapes were a pain because they'd get brittle and crack around the pin holes. I remember having to patch one with electrical tape just to get through a Friday.