Reminds me of when I was a hospital maintenance engineer. High impedance air gap was the number one cause of electric beds not working in patient rooms. Wish I had thought of that terminology when filling out the "Action Taken" section of the work order.

The other euphemism for "hitting it with a big hammer" was "shock loading".

Or 'Percussive maintenance' !

A euphemism for 'a big hammer' is 'the number one persuader'.

Hammer = manually deployed impact press

HaHa This made my day. It doesn't much these days.

Steve.

Aviation has a few as well.

Fault report: Port engine missing. Engineer's report: Port engine located on port wing.

Pilot: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
Engineer: Cannot reproduce the problem on the ground.

There are many others…

When I was an instrument mechanic, we used to get the red/green fault reports from the RAF with the kit they couldn't fix themselves. I remember an exhaust gas tester, (rather like an AVO meter) sent to us with the glass broken and full of wet mud with green mould growths in the works. on the fault report was "doesn't ackle",it made us all laugh as we scrapped the meter.

Edited By old mart on 30/11/2022 18:40:54

PEBKAC……..Problem exists between keyboard and chair.

Cars have a similar problem when the nut behind the wheel is too tight.

I remember an American getting upset once when he found out that US chalked onto a piece of equipment meant unserviceable.

John

I can't help thinking BBC Radio Four's All In The Mind could devote an entire series to analysing and explaining this sort of thing!

Especially that trait by which experience and skill is directly proportional to the complexity of the suggested cause ans cure of the breakdown, and inversely proportional to that of the fault itself….

Like:

"Oh no, our prototype test-piece has failed! "

Actual problem: A band-pass filter in the electronic test-equipment chain, set to stop everything above 10kHz (say), and everything below 10kHz.

The give-away? Merely the pattern of the two pointer-knobs on the filter's front panel.

.

"We've measured everything and still can't see what's wrong! "

A 7.25"g loco chassis, a club project, barely struggled to rotate on its air-tests. Result: months of the bench accumulating bits of paper covered with sums and scribbled Reuleaux Diagrams, by first-rate but now despairing craftsmen…

Actual problem: not spotted on erection – no hole in the middle of the exhaust-outlet gasket.

.

One that caught me out:

"We need make a diverter-board to keep the water-depth on the sill, constant.."

Water-mill affected by surges in the stream, shock-loading the machinery and breaking the hardwood "cogs" (millwright-ese for gear teeth) at about £11 each. We identified correctly, needing limit the very thin sheet of water, a fraction of an inch deep, flowing over the sill onto the 22ft diameter X 9ft wheel. The excess would go harmlessly over the weir. Discussions: lots of bits of paper with sketches of gears, screws, hand-wheels…. Luckily it didn't go that far.

Actual solution: A plank supported by simple brackets, on two wooden spacer blocks.

…..

Are you there, Dr. Hammond?

Our old lab plumber (we now have a new lab) had a phrase that always made me chuckle. When describing the reason for a blocked toilet he used to say “trouble is it’s a case of a 3 inch pipe and a 4 inch A..e ole “ I would never have described him as one of life’s literary genius’ but on that particular subject he reached the heights.

regards Martin

We had a sign in the maintenance department which read;

"On this bench the most highly skilled engineers in the factory strip down the most complicated equipment. In future we hope to recruit another highly skilled engineer who knows how to put the blooming stuff back together."