A friend called, and said that he'd scored a used 6kW UPS from work, and that he'd trade me the 3kW he'd already gotten from there in exchange for my help with the crane to bring home the new units. (Think small file cabinets, one filled with car batteries.) No problem, says I, if I can get it going! Hard to start in the winter, and the hydraulics have been freezing up. Obviously there's water in the system.
Anyway, I get it all going and go off to meet him at his work. The Mog was making weird intermittent crunching noises, for which I couldn't see any cause, and it even started pulling to the side a bit. I'm trepidatious, but made a commitment and decide to finish the job, though slowly. We got the units loaded (easily, the crane didn't even seem to notice the weight of the battery cabinet). On the way to the guy's house he noticed that my noisy wheel had a camber problem. (Much easier to see when you're watching the thing drive than when just looking at it statically.) Great, that explains a lot. The oil leak at the axle must be because the wheel bearing is shot and has allowed the axle to chew up the seal. The noise is explained as well. I wonder how long it's been like this, and what it'll cost to repair? I kept the speeds very low on this trip, and it made it home in apparently no worse condition than when it left. But it's grounded now, for sure. Oh, and the booty? A FerrUPS FE3.1KVA, and a Powerware CAB-N battery cabinet, supposedly filled with 8 8-month-old 75AH sealed batteries. (I haven't looked.) The new price for this gear is something like $5000, though the big capacitor may be going out on the UPS as its power quality is suspect. Its former owner has saltwater aquaria, and needs reliable backup power. The 6kW unit (with a 12-battery cabinet) should run his entire house through the night, during the days he can replenish with his 20kW Ford/Onan genset. -- Jim
