Communicate Equipment Repairs Now for Spring Startup Success
BY John Ball
No one will know what the equipment needs to prep it for spring startup if we don’t communicate this winter
When we’re talking about maintenance—with the paver or the roller especially—we’re also talking about mat quality. When I look at a paver, I focus on two categories—the screed and the tractor. These two main components affect the quality of the mat you’re placing; both have to be in optimal working order if you want a top quality mat. Both are on the mechanic’s mind when he gets started on winter maintenance.
Here’s a Quick Tip: Spray Pledge furniture polish in the paver’s extender cylinders so they slide out smoothly and properly.
When the mechanic enters the garage in January or February, he’s not going to know what might have been going wrong with the paver last season. Why? Because no one communicated it to him.
Even with telematics and fancy apps that automatically ping him about how many hours the paver has worked and when it’s time to grease a joint, no one stopped to tell him about a driver smashing the screed on the lowbed or the depth crank getting loose in its sleeve or the time the extension folded in and pinched the feed sensor’s wire. Those important things get lost in the day to day and add up to poor production for the paving crew, and they surprise the mechanic during the winter maintenance season if we don’t tell him about them.
The lowbed drivers have beat up the screed platforms of this paver. The crew has learned they can’t have the left platform in place when the screed is lowered for paving or this element will drag and leave a gouge in the mat. The middle piece that you see in this picture is a tripping hazard. The mechanic has to order new parts to repair this problem for the crew.
We need a system in place to forewarn the mechanic, telling him to order a new screed platform to replace a bent one so the broken one isn’t digging into and marring a mat we’re trying to build. And we need to use that system, communicating with the right people to get action when action is needed.
For example, when I noticed the lower scraper bar was missing on the back drum of one contractor’s breakdown roller, I asked the operator about it. His response was that he had informed a foreman about the missing scraper bar a few times already. But the foreman didn’t recognize the importance of the problem. He wasn’t the right person in the chain of command to do anything about the problem, the roller consistently used more water from the back tank than the front, and the machine went without a repair for months.
This is unacceptable, but the operator couldn’t get help with the problem until we went to a supervisor who had direct communication with a mechanic who could order the replacement part.
Inside the red circle, you can see the bracket for the scraper is still in place, but the scraper bar itself has been knocked off by incorrectly loading onto the lowbed. While the roller can still operate and still get compaction, it’s not efficient like this. There are two scraper bars on the drum for a reason: each bar collects and spreads the water across the width of the drum to lubricate the drum and assist in keeping it from picking up material as you compact the mat. When you remove one of these, you remove that device from either the forward or back motion of the rolling pattern.
You have to deliver a note—and usually it’s done at the end of the year—from the equipment operator to the mechanic, sharing what they think is broken or needs repair. Besides the mechanic using the manufacturer’s list of what needs to be done at 500 or 1,500 hours, for regular wear-n-tear, to check pump pressure, to replace seals, to check conveyor chains, and so on, he’ll also use a list from the operator of the piece of equipment. I have a maintenance sheet that I had at Pike Industries that I used for years and years and AsphaltPro has a paver maintenance checklist, a roller maintenance checklist, a crusher maintenance checklist and even a plant maintenance checklist at the magazine’s Digital Downloads page.
When we hand these lists of what we see going wrong to the mechanic, they include more than what you see flagged in an app or a telematics report. If I have a frayed wire, that may not come up. The telematics might pick up there’s a hydraulic leak, but not that there’s a failing O-ring. You must have the operator’s input to understand what’s going wrong and where with the piece of equipment he’s operating day in and day out. He’s using a special set of tools to notice when something needs to be scheduled for the mechanic’s attention.
In the end, the mechanic starting his winter season maintenance on the paver, roller, sweeper, material transfer vehicle or other equipment will have his best chance at setting the crew up for springtime success if the crew has made notes for him. If the paving crew and maintenance crew work hand in hand and with the operators’ notes—with telematics, apps, tablets, paper-and-pencil and phone calls to discuss the fine details—then the whole team can return in the spring with optimized, safe, efficient equipment to get a top quality mat right off the bat.
John Ball is the proprietor of Top Quality Paving & Training, Manchester, New Hampshire. For more information, contact him at (603) 493-1458 or tqpaving@yahoo.com.