Ride along! I poke at this 1961 Electric Forklift, using voltage drop to check the condition of live circuits. Making movies on the road is challenging; I cleaned up the 60Hz hum as best I could.
I own a Carpet Cleaning Company. One of my machines is having an electrical problem. I've been a long-time viewer of your channel. I started watching your videos with absolutely no mechanical skills. But I can comfortably say because of your videos, I now have the confidence to take apart my machine and try to fix it myself. Got it all taken apart, couldn't fix it and now I can't figure out how to put it back together. It's fucked now. But that's not important, what's important here, is you gave a fucking dummy like me the confidence to do it. And for that I salute you my friend! AVE you are a damn LEGEND!
AVE gave me the false confidence to take apart my leaf blower to replace the bearing. I broke it taking it apart, glued it back together, the right royally fuckered it on final assembly. then it let the smoke out. The nut was truly behind the steering wheel on that project.
Charles McBride OK , so now you're at the part where you call wife's life insurance policy / new boyfriend fund. Then put your mother on speedial, and engage the safety squints.
John Phillip well I think I like your father in laws thinking. I'd almost say you married up , but then again you're hang in out in ave's alley of the internet 😄
1961? This lift was ten years old when I started fixing forklifts. Notice how the seat is up in the air? The seat brake actuates whenever the driver falls off the truck. If you sit on it or tie it down, the seat brake will release and you can continue the troubleshooting. (either that or you will have fixed the problem... red face) If you ARE holding the seat down and are still bound up, maybe the push rod connected to the seat isn't going down far enough, or the linkage at the bottom is twisted, worn, or damaged; or maybe a spring is broken.. The brake assembly should be on the end of the drive motor. You can feel the linkage by reaching under the truck, but be warned, it can get crusty down there. Also, for trucks that have sat unused for a long time, it's possible that the shoes have stuck to the drum. (if you get good fwd travel though this won't be the case) Also, it's nice (imperative) to do all this troubleshooting with the drive wheels off the ground. A good way to do that is: tilt all the way back, put wood or steel blocks under the upright rails, then tilt forward. The drive wheels should rise up as the front edge of the rail goes down. There are almost certainly not brakes on the steer wheels. Also, 100 amps should be plenty enough to move the truck so I wouldn't worry about voltage drop just yet. My advice: lift the drive wheels, travel in forward for twenty seconds then feel under the truck for a smoking hot seat brake drum. (or disk) (probably drum) Keep your gloves on. It looks like this may be a resistor truck. Drive speed in them is regulated bu huge ass resistors under the floorboard. Trace the cables from those two contractors on the right. Post the model and serial number next video and I may be able to send you a schematic.
That should be "contactors" not contractors, stupid spell check. Also after reading comments.... people guessing as to how this thing is wired... Most likely: Negative goes to A1, through the armature, and emerges at A2. A2 goes to the common NC connection at the directional contactors. The directional contactors change direction of travel by flipping the direction of the current from F1 to F2 or F2 to F1. After the fields the path to positive goes through the speed control, which on this truck looks like resistors. Someone noticed how that battery was about to drop out the bottom of the truck. Good eye. If it's resting on the steer wheels that could be your problem right there.
I am DIGGIN' the sound of that warehouse. It's AvE in church: "Reading now from Paul's Letters to the Philippinos, chapter 7, verses 23-25: Speaketh thou not of failure to chooch, lest ye be branded a sissy-man. Rejoice, one and all! Skookum art those that bring tools to bear upon machines in tribulation!"
Jesus von Nazaret Then quick, pick up a new pet bird at the local pet shop so that it can beep again! Clearly it’s just in a state of depression and mourning.
J DeWitt No kidding, back then they had the more primitive “ka-thud...ka-thud!”. It’s not as impressive as back then, but at least the modern “beep beep” doesn’t set off the seismic sensors, though it’s much rougher on the hearing!
Just wanted to say thanks for the motivation! A few months ago in a vijeo you told us to build stuff whether it been with cardboard or anything. I built a soap dispenser and clap on clap off tv remote with an Arduino and I just got a new really great job with an engineering company! Thanks:D
Well but it's not all heat, you are using a motor so you are going to convert most of it to kinetic energy. So probably only 100w heat if the motor is not that efficient
Valentino Saitz No. We are talking about the voltage drop, which is 7V and voltage over the motor is 36-7 = 29V. The current through the whole circuit is 128A. So the motor takes 29V x 128A is 3712W. And the 'seat heating', takes 7V x 128A = 896W. The total power is 3712W + 896W = 4608W, which is the same as 36V x 128A.
Chop Cuc - 👍 .... and the best place to do that would be at the motor. . Note: The 7 volt difference in battery volts drop from each side is strange.... I Also thought fork lift trucks used multiple 2v high current capacity units in series/parallel as necessary. )
As a fully paid up member of the back of the class, I have to say, I nearly understood this. I am a visual learner so nuts and bolts and everything in between comes easy to me. Electricity is so much harder because I can't see it. Because you showed us slowly and clearly with the meters, the penny is starting to drop. My brain still has to visualise pixies flowing down the cables etc rather than just doing maths, but it works for me.
Reminds me of my workplace. Angry mechanic arrives with his tools and a bad mood to check a mechanical problem on a shitty machine. Swears and mutters while laying under it with oil dripping down on him. Then I hear "Yes! It's electrical!" and see him walking away, smiling. An electrician arrives, checks out everything and says "nope! It has to be mechanical". Guess who's back with an even badder mood. :P Then repeat this 4 times.
I enjoy the tool tear downs but I would really like to see more videos like this. I used to work on golf cars and I have fond memories of trouble shooting stuff just like this.
gknewby my first job in high school was fixing golf carts with my dad. The electric ones were PFM to my dad and he couldn't figure them out. And i couldn't rebuild gas engines. I did the electrics, it worked out perfectly
Hot damn, an AvE video about something I actually sort of know about! Granted, every electric forklift I've driven has been young enough to be this thing's progeny, and the place I drove them for wouldn't even let us maintain the batteries (it was always fun to look at the invoices from the technicians they hired to do that and see just how many extra zeroes were on that guy's paycheck compared to mine), but the familiarity's there regardless During my last few weeks at that job, I was driving an order picker (basically an electric forklift that you stand on the forks for) and fell off the fuckin' thing trying to manhandle something or another off a high rack. Got to hang there off my safety lanyard for twenty minutes while everybody in the building got their pictures while the bossman tried to figure out where the manual release valve was for lift boom hydraulics because, of course, we weren't supposed to service these things, so nobody had any training on them beyond the controls and how to hook them to a charger. Those five point harnesses crush your nuts something fierce.
Doubt it could have killed me, never even really cut off blood to my legs. It crushed my balls because I actually had the thing adjusted right- i.e. it grabbed me and held me by my hips rather than digging into my thighs, so bloodflow wasn't really an issue. Plus, I could (and did, a few times) reach up and just hoist myself up a bit on the lanyard to take some weight off the harness. They should have had emergency procedures, but my experiences working at big corpo locations like that (not gonna say where exactly, might need a job with them again some time in the future, y'never know) is that fuckin' everything slips through the cracks until something bad happens. They never even did basic stuff like explaining fire escape routes or what severe weather protocols we had were.
Gearbox issue? Bearings go out, suddenly it will roll in one direction and binds in the other? Had that happen with a John Deere B. Wouldn't go more than 6" forward, in reverse it would go all day. Dad took over from me, as the failure happened on a very steep hill. When he figured out it would still go in reverse, he turned it around and drove it on home, backwards. 6 miles. In the days of Chicken Box radio, he sure generated a lot of local chatter over that. "Why, on earth, are you driving that thing down the road in reverse?" "The view is better." Just one of the many odd breakdowns that happened, under my hands, during the summer of my 13th year. The year my C B handle went from "Master Mechanic" to "Junkyard Dog."
TGIF I got time to watch both tonight! Shop closed a bit early too, I think tonight will be a good night. Plus I'm finishing that show, One Punch Man. I'm not an anime guy but that show is a good watch.
I have a lot of Canadian made tools from the late 80's and 90's. The previous owner of our house in the Bahamas left them behind, when we sold, I took them. Good quality tools. Great video!
I think the voltage drop of 13/22 volts to the contractor is because the motor is wired so that it gets 22V forwards, and 13V in reverse, with a central tap.
Nice to see such a modern forklift. The last one I used was a 3-speed (plus reverse, of course) with a clutch pedal, a gas bottle on the back, and didn't come with a cage over the operator. Great times. :-D PS: And this was in the early '90s, no less. :-P
"Find the root cause and then fix it." God, how simple and self-evident a concept, yet so rarely performed. No one ever wants to wait for/pay for/understand what the real deal is.
Track Craft I have never seen a more relatable youtube comment in my life I'm 24 and work with all guys over 40 so I know "nothing" and when I do tell them how to do something it is oh yeah obviously but I meant blah blah blah
This kind of makes me wish for a channel where we could share engineering/industry/etc stuff with each-other. Tips and tricks, fails, best practice, worst practice....
When I was working on those batterys I had my spanners taped up. Cause a major short and the top of the battery can launch itself through the roof. Normally 48v with 800 amphour.
I remember when you use to do tool reviews. Have you just changed to entertainment? You have done and said some great things. Can't wait for that to happen again!!!!!
You are correct! If something that uses electricity does not work, it has to be a problem with the electrical system. Example: I designed a 4 story office building electrical system. There were two elevators side by side exactly the same. A couple months after the building was completed, we were informed that the electrical system was faulty and one of the elevators would stop working randomly. I went to the building and did some investigation and tests. After finding no issues that would cause the issue, I told the elevator tech to swap the circuit boards of the two controllers. Three weeks later, I thought about it and called the owner to find out what was happening. "Oh, I forgot to call you! The other elevator shut down and the elevator company changed the circuit board! They work fine now." Did he pay for our time doing the investigation? Of course not, it was an electrical problem and under our warranty! Respectfully, Kevin
I'm an industrial maintenance electrician and if I can't fix it by the time I'm done nobody else will be able to fix it either. great video by the way.
Good idea too check for voltage drop across your switch gear (contactors, CB's etc) as well, especially with gear as old as dirt like this old jigger. Arc's and sparks were cool!
AvE, not trying to sound like one of those arm chair quarterback types. Love your vids and learn a lot from you. From the viewpoint of an angry pixie wrangling enginerd, something to consider before tearing stuff apart is to ohm out your motor and also measure the voltage drop across the contactor to ensure your contactor is good. Since your wheels were not spinning your current measurement would be a locked rotor amp measurement so it will not be your true current draw while running. A motor ohm could tell you if some of your motor windings are crapping out on you. Love your demo of using voltage to ensure low resistance. I use to always disconnect the wires and measure resistance until a gray beard showed me that trick. The moral I learned from that is, when a gray beard talks, STFU and listen.
I think you are probably right about the brake sticking deal, I have a big (16,000 lbs with diesel engine ) fork lift that has been giving me intermittent problems with brake sticking, the way the brake shoes work it could very well be binding in rev. and not in forward. mine is stuck in the back yard right now because of it, (actually I should not have procrastinated about fixing the brake and I would not be stuck). keep up the great work!
I tried to keep quiet, but....Electrical Engi-nerd here. Your extension cord example is excellent, but the voltage drop seen by the tool is actually twice what you measured. (You'll have nearly equal drop in the neutral conductor too.) Thanks for everything. Keep up the great work and I'll keep on keeping it in my vise.
Lol this video is exactly the work i had been doing for the past nearly 30 years, working in heavy plant and material handling, to jump up the job title abit lol basically engineer and elechicken on forklifts. I dont envy your working on that new bit of kit there.
Been burned before not checking voltage drops but just available voltage, I assumed circuit was ok because without load I had full voltage at an open circuit right before load. Nice to brush up on diagnostic techniques!
That's a great Fluke I have the same one. Great features not used like min/max and auto hold features that would have helped you in your diagnosis. Thanks for video
Best vid yet, everyone loves faultfinding, especially, as a spark, you can wash your hands of it when it's mechanical. That being said, I still need closure, there better be a part two.
I agree it's probably a brake issue. Especially with that kind of amperage. Brakes always seem to hold better in reverse than they do in forward. #1 rule of electric forklift repair RAISE DRIVE WHEELS so you don't run yourself over when you fix it. That lift probably weighs as much as 2 Chevy Suburbans and I'd like to see you make more videos. -Sit in the seat and see if it rolls(seat brake). Could be that simple( that whole loose nut thing). Check that seat brake is not seized . -If it still doesn't, check master cylinder rod free play. It may be too tight and not allowing fluid to return to reservoir, causing brake application. -check wheel brake adjustment or they might just be seized. It is a 57 year old forklift after all. Thanks for the videos!
Man I just like the way you do your RU-vid videos just simple and relatable not like everyone putting on they're overly nice behavior.. oh did I talk about the comment section 😂
and once again i find that when i'm wrestling with a weird, obscure project of some kind or another, AvE comes out with a video about it. i found myself driving home with a weird, old, non-running forklift a while back (a 1947 clark trucloader), and now this. you're getting into #relevantxkcd territory here
Mechanicals are always on our case to fix a mechanical problem with an electrical fix. You put the wrong size pump in and now want us to fix it by tweaking the motor????
Good luck. I can't even get people to understand why you don't want to buy 10 gauge jumper cables. lol A co-worker of mine put one of those "you need to do this!" members through an ordeal, today. My co-worker got tired of the excuses and drug that poor guy through everything he thought needed to be done, on the factory roof, in the hot sun in 90 degree+ weather. I don't think he will complain that the maintenance department won't help out, any more.
Had a fun one last month. Rookie drives 360 ton haul truck over electric drills wire "tail". "The hell was that boom, and smoke?" he asks. Drill now down for a "small" short in the system.
You have just explained a basic element of electrical fault finding,,,,,,,,,,, don't let idiots make extension leads. I always enjoy your vids, even the ones where you bleach your wife's switches, nothing like having a clean switch when turning things on! I think you just demonstrated to simple folk the art of fault finding, you sparkiescare clever folk.
I work on all sorts of material handling equipment and the crusty battery could very well be the problem. Those trucks are insulated return so if the battery ends up leaking and shorting to the battery casing you get weird voltage readings from the battery like you saw. Although I'm sure you've already sorted this you should chuck a 24v lamp between the battery terminals and the chassis to see if there's any current flow.
you have me liking videos before i even watch them. either I've been shilled or you're the best damn uncle a bunch of garage rejects could ever hope for. Thanks uncle bumble for all your bumbles or at the very least the knowledge what NOT to do lol
I think you forgot that if you measure voltage drop on load, you actually are measuring the internal resistance of the battery. You could always calculate the voltage drop through the leads if you know the amps you are pulling through it, just unplug the leads measure the resistance and then use ohms law. Of course that way you won't get the resistance of the breakers, but you have to calculate the internal resistance of the battery first if you want the real wire and contact voltage drop during load. Thanks for the video and hope this helps!
Being in the forklift game myself I love seeing some of these old dinosaurs that are still going.. That’s a hell of a set of choppers !! Way bigger than fitted to the new overly complicated infernal electronical machines these days.. Those old bastards were so everenginerded and would generally always lift way more than they were rated to do.. I’d love to have a collection of these old bangers put away for posterity.. I must be warped in the head..
Had to use three stick welders on a roof back in the day. One lead and a couple of double adapters. Kept blowing the fuse so we just kept adding copper wire till we ended up using 8 gauge fencing wire for a fuse. Worked a treat except the lead going across to the roof from the site pole got a huge cow belly in it cos it got so hot. Got the job done though. ;)
If I'm not mistaken, you can measure resistance under load. Keeping in mind that the internal resistance of the meter is in the mega ohm range so it will impact high resistance circuits
Joe Widdup Woosh! You missed the joke. Im taking about the other heatgun, the one that blows hot air xD But yeah thermal cameras are super useful for detecting faults in circuits as most of the faults generate heat.
I love this, forklift mechanic by trade here and diagnostics are my game. That is one old warhorse there! If you give her a go and can't make her yield, give me a shout!
So that's the real reason why you had to get the forklift off the trailer! (And... if you were measuring voltage drop on that extension lead, wouldn't it have been the rh pin with the lh socket?) Cheers, D
