My boom angle indicator was off by 6 degrees for 3 months

I kept noticing my loads felt heavier on one side of the site at the Port of Seattle. Everyone told me it was just wind or ground slope. I spent 2 weeks adjusting my rigging, checking slings, and re-leveling outriggers on every pick. Finally got the OEM tech out here with a calibration rig. Turns out the sensor bracket had shifted 6 degrees after I hit a pothole back in March. That means I was running with bad data for over 90 days and never caught it because I trusted the screen. Has anyone else had a sensor fail slowly like that without throwing a warning code?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam1863d ago

Man that's brutal. 90 days of running with bad data and no warning light to tell you something was off. I had something similar happen with a load cell on my crane a few years back where it would drift by a percent or two every week and never triggered a single code. The worst part is you start second guessing yourself and thinking you're losing your touch when really the equipment is just lying to you. I bet you learned every bump and dip on that job site by feel alone over those three months. Makes you wonder how many other guys are out there right now trusting a screen that's slowly going bad.

shane_morgan3d ago

Is there anything more maddening than trusting your equipment and finding out it was gaslighting you the whole time? I had a similar thing happen with a skid steer I ran on a pipeline job back in 2018 where the tilt sensor took a slow vacation over like four months. No codes, no lights, nothing, but the bucket kept acting like it was half full of wet concrete when it was actually empty. I spent weeks messing with my seat position, changing my grip on the controls, and even blaming myself for getting sloppy after lunch. Finally I had a buddy hop in and run it for a day and he called me out on it right away. The fix was a twenty dollar bracket and a half hour of my time, but those months of doubt and wasted effort still piss me off when I think about it.

park.aaron3d ago

Wait, no warning code at all for a whole six degrees off? That's insane. I woulda lost my mind out on my own jobsite if the screen was lying to me for three months and never threw a flag. I had a depth sensor on my excavator start drifting once and I just assumed I was getting bad at reading the grade stakes.