Gantry Damage From Long Trucks

[Red Baron]

Sometimes my IR eyes fail to see a receiver hitch in a 4-door longbed and the gantry will hit the hitch. This causes a pretty bad gouge in the D&S 5000 gantry. Has anyone toyed with putting a skid-plate of sorts in this area of the gantry to prevent damage?

I'm getting 2 new i5000s and I'd like to prevent this from happening in the future.

 

[borumrm]

I don't know for certain but you might not have this problem with the I5000. I don't have one but another operator I know does and when I was looking at the system it looks like the gantry is much smaller - I know the side panels are and I think the gantry migh be smaller too. It won't take but a couple of inches difference to make a difference. I know they have changed the eyes on those as well. One of the things I like about that setup is the gantry only weighs about 300 pounds total so the rails ought to last forever...another is there are no side belts to hassle with and oh year they don't have the springs in the top that are a hassel to change out when they break.

 

[Red Baron]

The i5000 still has 7' clearance so my guess is the gantry would still hit the same hitch. I wonder if the new eyes will be more sensitive - enough to see those hitches that are positioned just wrong.

I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas to get here - 2 new gantrys should be here in a week or so. Prolly be a lot of new stuff to learn.

I promised myself that if I ever got a new gantry, this time I'm going to wipe off the areas around the grease zirks after greasing in order to keep the greasing process from becoming such a dirty job.

 

[borumrm]

are you just replacing the gantrys or are you putting the the entire systems? Friend of mine only replaced the gantrys using the same D&S super 5000 pump, trifoam setup etc in the equip room. They had to rig a few things to make it work like blow down the pre soak line because spot free came out of those same lines and if they were not blown out it left presoak on the car when the spot free turned on. Another thing he told me was they don't use hydraulic fluid in the power paks anymore...they use auto transmission fluid...apparantly it works better and does not have to warm up as much as the hydraulic fluid does in the winter.

 

[Red Baron]

Total new systems on both bays, right down to new rails, arches, stoplights, everyything but dryers on the existing bay.

 

[borumrm]

I am soooooo jealous........

 

[DiamondWash]

You need to take some before and after pics and put them here in the photo album, maybe even send them into D&S they can post them on their website too.