Re: Pile Driver OB

There is some serious weight to this equipment. In '98 we had finished up on a project and decided to go do a quick fix to the 06063. It is the idler for the OP derrick. There is a cribbing rack to hold the weight of the boom during transit. The cribbing is not over a truck and the idler car was sagging pretty heavily. Roy and I built a smaller, portable cribbing stand for the end of the beam to sit on that was almost over the truck. Then we started to tighten up the truss rods and straighten out the car. We tightened them just as we had done on may cars a bit at a time on all 4 rods. We had a great piece of steel rod we used for years that fit right into the turnbuckles. You could turn the buckle or wedge it against the rail to turn the end nuts. But the idler 06063 has no turnbuckles on the truss rods. The only car i have worked on that didn't. Roy pulled the under car duty with a 3' pipe wrench to tension the rod and I worked the nuts on the ends. After slipping the pipe wrench a couple of dozen times, the last time, Roy called from under the car asking what happened. Ugh, we broke that truss rod just at where it goes through the upside down queen post (king post) at the bolster. The quick fix turned into a two day job pulling the deck and picking that truss out. Any day working in Chama is better than the best day working a real job!