Changed my mind about using lube on the hook block after a job in St. Louis last fall

I always thought it was a waste of time. Grease the hook block bearings, sure. But putting lubricant on the sheaves themselves? Sounded like extra work for no reason. Then I was on a site downtown St. Louis, running a 150 ton crawler, and the load line started chattering real bad on the boom tip sheave. The foreman came over, an old guy named Walt, and just said 'when was the last time you hit those sheaves with some spray lube, kid?' I told him I never did. He just shook his head, walked to his truck, and handed me a can of white lithium. Told me to give the hook block and the boom tip a quick shot. After I did, the chattering stopped in less than a minute and the line ran smooth the rest of the day. Has anyone else had that fix a weird vibration on a load line?

2 comments

2 Comments

lily_schmidt532d ago

Oh man, I gotta disagree with you a little here. I've been running cranes for about 12 years now and I learned the hard way that over-lubing sheaves can actually make things worse in dusty conditions. We had a job out west where the lithium grease just turned into this sticky mess that grabbed all the dirt and made the chattering come back twice as bad a few days later. A dry lubricant or just making sure the bearings are good usually does the trick for me, and I don't have to worry about gunk building up on everything.

noran212d ago

You know what, that dusty job reminds me of something I saw at a port in Louisiana back in 2005. They had a crane that kept overheating its main hoist drum and everyone was chasing lubrication issues. Turns out the problem wasn't the grease at all, it was the operator running the thing at 110% line pull for hours on end trying to make up time. The spec sheets clearly say 80% rated capacity max for continuous duty cycles but nobody reads them. I think sometimes we blame the hardware when the real issue is the person pushing the buttons, you know?