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A stuck car in the old Sears building taught me to always check the sill first
I was working on a 1980s hydraulic unit in that old Sears building downtown. The car kept getting stuck between floors, maybe an inch off level. My boss had me convinced it was a valve issue, so I spent a whole morning tearing into the power unit. Then the building's maintenance guy, Frank, who's been there 30 years, wanders over. He points at the pit and says, 'You know, the sill on the first floor gets packed with dirt and leaves every fall.' I looked, and sure enough, the sill was so packed it was catching the car every time it tried to land. I cleared it out in five minutes with a shop vac. Now, no matter what the call says, I check the sill and pit for debris first. Anyone else have a simple fix they missed because they overthought the problem?
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laura_wilson1mo ago
Ever have a machine just stop because a penny fell in the wrong spot? Our office printer was down for a week while IT ordered parts, but it was just a dime that rolled under a sensor. Felt pretty silly after that.
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johnson.betty1mo ago
Found a dead mouse blocking a cooling fan once.
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norag871mo ago
Honestly, we get so focused on the complex parts we forget the machine sits in a real, dirty world. My worst one was a conveyor belt alarm that turned out to be a spider web tripping a photo eye. What's the dumbest environmental fix you've found?
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