Elevator controller hall of fame – part #1

Here are a few of our better controller pictures of the last few years.  These typically make us cringe when we see them, hopefully they are going to be moded, but sometimes we decide it is a good idea to do maintenance on them.  I want to know when the person who was working on some of these controllers decided it was time to stop and throw in the towel.  There is one picture of one of our accounts we inherited and we went on to clean up the wiring. Each picture has a bit of the back story and narrative below it.

This is from an elevator in Oak Park, IL.  While the controller is troubling to look at there was exposed multicable run in the machine room and car top, I’ll share those pictures with you later.  We didn’t end up getting this modernization but we did get the 2^nd car to do a year and a half later.

It is always cool to go to a building where the company you work for originally installed the elevator system 40+ years ago.  In this case Colley installed this elevator in Hickory Hills, IL in the early 1970’s.  What is not cool is to see what someone has done to this controller over the years.  A few minutes after I looked at the controller and took the information down I went in the car and saw there was a bullet indentation in the car door.  I stared at it thinking… why would you shoot a gun at the car door?  The shooter was standing in front of the door, there is no hole in the cab door, just a dent, where do you think the bullet went?

[Before]

[After]

 This is what I call a Friday at 4pm repair.  You are supposed to go back and eventually correct what you did to get the elevator running.  Well… It wasn’t corrected.  We went in an straightened out the wiring in the controller and in some electrical boxes.  This is a pretty cool before and after photo.  

[Car #1]

[Car #2]

 The next two are controllers that for some reason we thought would be a good idea to take on maintenance.  This may come to a shocker, some of the features didn’t work right. This controller installation is a disservice to our trade.  The company who installed these was so proud of their work they wrote their name with sharpie on the machines they installed.

I was at a State of Illinois Fire Marshall Elevator meeting and a building was brought up to explain why they haven’t done X, Y & Z.  There was a spirited debate and the inspector who went to the building stated “this was one of the worst examples of “maintenance” he has ever seen”.  I was curious about what could be so bad and thought perhaps the inspector was exaggerating.  About 4 months later I got a call for a 2 car modernization from someone I worked with while he was working for a different building management company.  He explained the situation and I said “ah ha! I know this building from the State of Illinois meeting!”.  When I got there, I saw what the inspector was talking about, it was all true.  Did you know Montgomery Elevator dabbled in oral hygiene in the mid 1960’s?  

As always feel free to contact us at www.colleyelevator.com, email Craigz@colleyelevator.com or call 630-766-7230.