In 1986, I had a really good day! To begin with, it was a Saturday, and I didn’t have to work. Next, I was at the Western Museum of Mining and Industry, which was and still is one of my favorite places in the world. I was at the front desk to get the key to the blacksmith shop, because we at that time had a blacksmithing club going, and I was the first to arrive that day. While I was there, Larry Frank, who was the curator of the Museum at the time, came in and began to complain to the person at the desk about the director wanting him to clean up the yard at the shop, but not being willing to hire a crane or decent forklift for him to do the job with. Being a crane nut myself, and knowing the museum owned an old Lorain truck crane, which had been sitting outside the exhibit building since the building had been completed, I couldn’t help but pipe right up and ask why we didn’t just use the crane we had. Larry looked at me like I was nuts (he told his wife Christy that some nut had suggested it to him that day) but told me that they all thought the crane was in too bad a condition to do the job. He said he’d been told that when the crew used it to set the pieces of the Corliss steam engine, it had tried to tip over and nobody liked it because of that. I implored him to come with me to take a look at it, and he reluctantly did so. It turned out that the crane was in very good mechanical condition for a machine which was 40 years old at that time and had obviously been used hard and put away wet quite often during it’s lifetime. It had what appeared to be brand new boom hoist and main hoist cables on it, there was very little rust on the boom itself, and the oil and antifreeze in the house engine looked like new, too. The swing gimbles appeared to be in excellent condition, too. I told Larry that I wouldn’t be scared to use it, and that the crane probably tried to tip because the people who had set the Corliss parts had probably tried to reach too far for the weight of the parts they were lifting. It had 50 feet of boom and a jib about 30 feet long on it. The crane even still had it’s original capacity versus reach chart and it was still very readable. In the end, Larry, who likes tinkering with mechanical contraptions as much as I do, agreed to give it a try, and I agreed to help with the clean-up project, and I wound up with one of my fondest wishes fulfilled and one of my very best friends, so it was a very good day. I don’t recall if I ever got to the blacksmith club that day or not, though!
I don’t recall if it was that very day or a week later, but Larry and I put a battery in the crane house and drained the old gas out of the tank and put fresh gas in it, and then I climbed into the operator’s seat and hit the starter button while Larry kept an eye on the carburetor, and in not much more time than it takes to tell the story, we got the house engine started. At that time, we didn’t know that the museum had the crane’s operator’s and service manuals, but I had taken a gander at the control levers and there linkages and had a pretty good idea what was what. The boom had been left hanging horizontally off the rear of the truck, and the first order of business was to raise it up to a good working angle (it’s usually around 77 degrees above horizontal, which gives a good safety margin away from vertical and a fair reach). I found that the boom hoist was set up with power up and down, which I liked. Then I tried the hoist ropes, which both worked fine. Swinging was faster than I would have liked and took a good amount of power and some getting used to, but worked as advertised!
Having nothing to lift where we were setting, it then became time to consider getting the truck engine running and trying to move the whole unit to a more convenient location. This proved to be quite a job! Later, once we found the books, I found out that both the truck and crane engines had been replaced at some time in the machine’s distant past, and that the job on the truck engine and transmission etc. wasn’t quite as well done as the one in the house had been done. We got it started, but couldn’t keep it running unless Larry dribbled gas down the throat of the carburetor. Also, it had air brakes and while the compressor worked fine, there were several major air leaks. The worst thing about that turned out to be that the clutch had been set up with an air actuator and that was one of the more serious leaks. It also had Armstrong power steering (which, for those of you who haven’t heard the term before, means that it had manual steering). Eventually, we also discovered that it wouldn’t stay in reverse unless Larry used a crow bar to force it to stay put.
We moved it away from the Exhibit building with Larry looking very uncomfortable sort of laying across the top of the engine dribbling the gas into the carburetor and parked it beside the barn where we keep the museum’s tractor and mower, etc. I wanted to remove all but the head and foot sections of the boom to reduce it’s weight, but after removing the jib, Larry refused to do any more. We put the jib in the bed of the museum’s 1960 Ford F600 truck and called it quits for that day. The next day, we robbed the fuel pump off of a boom truck that the museum had up at the shop site. It turned out that the boom truck and the crane truck both had International “diamond” series engines in them and the pumps were the same. The museum also had a couple brand new 11:00-20 tires at the shop and Larry got a local tire company to replace the right front tire, which wouldn’t hold air. I crawled under the crane (not an easy fit!), to locate the air leaks and see if I could fix any of them. The worst of them turned out to be a completely missing drain valve in one of the accumulator tanks for the brakes, which I replaced from the parts bins at the shop. The clutch actuator cylinder was also leaking, but didn’t sound too bad. Having used up another Saturday doing these repairs and putting in about 20 gallons of fresh gas and test-run the engine for long enough to get the air pumped up, we planned to move the crane to the shop the next morning.
Sunday morning, we backed the crane into the main driveway, swung the boom around beside the truck cab and headed for the shop. The driveway passes through a white picket fence gate about half way from the barn to the road. The engine died and the air leaked out of the “not too bad” leaky cylinder right in the gate! No way would it start again, and no way would the transmission come out of gear, either! Nor could we get the hood open to pour gas in the carburetor because the boom was in the way, and couldn’t be raised and swung out of the way because there are some huge old cottonwoods along the driveway. The Museum was due to open at noon, and it was now around ten am.
Somehow, with both of us on the lever, we got the transmission into neutral, but even though it is a slight climb through the gate, the crane wouldn’t roll back down the hill by itself. Larry finally ended up towing it with the F600, which was really more than the truck wanted to do! We managed to get it out of the trees and swing the boom around
And get the engine to start by pouring gas down the carburetor again, and put it back beside the barn just in time for the museum to open. It turned out that the sump on the fuel tank was plugged up with crud. It had a large opening, and Larry got it cleaned out during the following week and we tried again the next Sunday morning. This time we left the boom hanging out the back of the crane (as today’s largest truck cranes do). While Larry had been getting the tank cleaned out, I took the leaky air cylinder to work and took it apart and got the leakage fixed by replacing the piston seals and packing and fixing several worn parts. This time before leaving, we made sure that the engine would run for a much longer period of time and that the air pressure would stay up, etc. It was going to be uphill most of the way to the shop, and we didn’t need any more excitement!
The truck transmission was a 5 and 4- meaning that it had a five speed and a 4 speed all in one gearbox, giving a total of 20 gears forward. I stabbed it in low low and headed for the road, talking to it all the time! Getting on the road was touchy with 50 feet of boom hanging out the back, but I made it, and on the 2 mile trek to the shop, I got all the way up into 4th gear and maybe up to 8 or 10mph. But we made it in one piece, and the engine seemed to run better and better the farther along we got. Needless to say, we were both relieved to have it at the shop at last!
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