lisa_wilson87•18d agoProlific Poster

Old timer at the union hall gave me a tip about brake shoes that was dead wrong

Back in 2018, a guy with 30 years in told me to always grease the guide rails on hydraulic elevators, but I found out the hard way that just makes the safeties slip. Has anyone else had an old-timer's advice backfire on a job?

2 comments

2 Comments

karen_sanchez1018d ago

Oh man, that hurts to read because I've been there myself. Got similar advice from a senior guy once about using a specific kind of sealant on a pump housing, and it just made everything worse (the thing started leaking like crazy). It's tough because you want to respect their experience, but sometimes the old methods just don't hold up anymore. Really feel for you on this one, especially since it probably cost you time and money to fix the mistake.

allen.amy18d ago

Huh, I gotta disagree with you there. Old methods exist for a reason, they were tested through years of real world use before modern stuff ever came around. That sealant that guy recommended probably worked perfectly for decades on the older pump models, but maybe the problem is the new equipment being too cheaply made. I've seen plenty of cases where switching to a "better" new product actually made things fail faster because it couldn't handle the heat or pressure the same way. Sometimes the real issue is that we don't apply the old methods carefully enough or we skip a step, not that the methods themselves are bad.