Showerthought: I thought the 'crane whisperer' on our site was just making stuff up

We had this old hand, Frank, who swore he could tell a cable was about to go by the sound it made in the sheave. I wrote it off as a tall tale for years. Then, last Tuesday in Chicago, I heard a faint, high-pitched whine I'd never noticed before on a 300-ton lift. I radioed down to stop, we inspected it, and found a single broken wire strand starting to poke out. Frank just nodded and said, 'Told you it sings when it's hurt.' Anyone else have a weird trick like that they didn't believe until it saved their bacon?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_riley1mo ago

Yeah, that's the kind of thing you can't learn from a book. My uncle was the same with old truck engines, swore he could smell when a head gasket was on its way out before any gauge moved. I laughed at him until the day he caught mine just by walking past the hood. Makes you wonder how much of that old school knowledge we've lost because it sounds like magic.

roberts.jordan26d ago

Oh man, that wire story is giving me chills. I had a similar thing with this old diesel mechanic I used to work with, who could tell a fuel injector was going bad just by the way the engine "coughed" at idle. I thought he was full of it until one day my truck started missing and I was about to drop it at a shop. He walked over, listened for maybe ten seconds, pointed at the number three cylinder, and said, "It's that one, swap it first." I did, and sure enough, the injector was dripping instead of spraying. Now I find myself doing that same thing (listening for that little hiccup in the rhythm) with my own trucks and it's saved me a bunch of tow bills. You stop doubting that stuff pretty quick once it proves itself.

blair_allen1mo ago

Ever feel like a total clown for doubting that stuff? I used to roll my eyes at my dad's "feel" for when a bearing was going, until his hunch kept my old bike from locking up at 40. That gut feeling is its own kind of tool.