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Grease

Not the movie but the lubricant.

Now that I have an electrical winch that doesn’t make any noise, all sounds made by the construction is heard. Believe me: the tower makes a lot of noise when going up and coming down. Going up it wasn’t heard before since the break of the manual winch made such a rattling sound, it masked the noise of the construction. But you could hear it when the tower came down. And now it was audible both ways.

I contacted a representative of the tower manufacturer (bad experience with the manufacturer itself) and he acknowledged the construction is known to make noise in some cases. The nylon wheels guiding the stainless steel cable don’t have bearings. They turn around a big stainless steel bolt and the sides of the wheel touch the supports holding them. The advice was: take the wheel assembly apart and apply grease. That’s what I did this AM. I planned to take pictures but I found myself full of grease and I didn’t bother to wash my hands and get the camera. I wanted to get the job done ASAP.

The first plan was to climb the tower since the wheels are only 8m high. But the problem with a telescopic tower is that when the lements are down, you can’t put your feet comfortably and securely, since the inner elements prevent your foot from entering the tower. That means you can only place the tip of your foot on the cross tubes. You cannot maintain that position for too long. So I tilted the tower over. That takes longer than climbing it, but so be it.

There are three wheels and each bolt has a nut and counter nut. That’s loosening 6 nuts. Sounds like an easy job but it isn’t. You have to be a snake-man to slide your hand in between the tower sections, and the cable will pull away the wheel as soon as the bolt is extracted. I saw this coming so I secured the cable to a cross section before removing the bolt. I don’t think the noise was caused by the wheel turning over the bolt. I think the noise came from the sides of the wheel scraping against the aluminum plates holding the bolt and wheel assembly. So I put grease around the bolt but also applied a good layer of grease on the sides of the wheel and the plates.

Here are some images I took when the job was done and my hands were clean  😉

I did a visual inspection of all parts while the tower was down and did not encounter any possible problems. So I put the tower back into the vertical position and secured it to the anchors. Then I moved the tower up and down and guess what? The greasing job took away ALL noise.

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