OK this has NOTHING to do with Vincents but there are a couple of Hy-Vo stories I can recall as standouts.
The first was a large wood chipper in a sawmill with I think a 300 hp electric motor driving it connected by said chain. As you can imagine it was a big one several inches wide and I think 1 1/2 in pitch. After installation which included a 1/4 thick hi tensile steel enclosing case with a 40 gal oil system pumping directly into the chain as it meshed the drive sprocket. On startup I was told by the Mill super that one could not even hear anything run in the whole mill for the scream coming from the chipper drive. Needless to say this alarmed us considerably. We were assured all was done to spec, so being Rocol (Moly disulphide oil additives) distributors we sent 4 gallons to be add to the oil to see what result that would give. Our engineer was on the first ferry to Vancouver Island to inspect and listen. When he arrived at the mill the chipper was running and an ear on the chain case could detect a slightly discernible hum. Astounded by the effectiveness of the Rocol he was ready to get a big sales story initiated. It was then the very sheepish mill wright admitted that when they went to drain 4 gallons of oil to add the Rocol, it turned out that it had been filled with hydraulic fluid.
The second one was on a small ferry that crossed the Fraser river several miles upstream from Vancouver. The local Caterpillar dealer (Finning Tractor, the largest Cat dealer in the world) was taking out 2 240 hp Cat diesels and replacing them with a pair of 360 hp units. They just reused the existing Hy-Vo drives. When the first failure occurred the captain naturally had to rely a little harder on the other engine, and it of course immediately did the same thing, so now we have a small ferry adrift in the river, fortunately a tug boat was nearby and rescued the whole plot from disaster. Now comes the fun bit. Finning orders from me two new complete drives on a big rush which means they wanted them in the something less than 6-8 weeks that a standard order took, plus they wanted lengths of chain on a airplane from the factory in Ithaca NY. They have a tug on standby for the 18 hours a day that the ferry is running, so this is not a cheap problem. Any way over the next 6 weeks they hound me for the chain and sprockets and dutifully it all arrives in the normal time it took for these special order chain and sprockets. If I ever hear the word expedite again I tend to loose my temper!
Anyway a day or so after they are delivered my phone doesn't ring but starts glowing red as I answer it. It is the buyer from Finning informing me that I am amongst the lowest of the low life that exists on this planet and how, knowing what a pressure they were under could I have possibly ordered the sprockets with the wrong bore sizes, and that there was a special place in hell for morons like me. All I could do was tell him I would check all the paper and check the factory build sheets and see what could be done. So out comes the paperwork, There purchase order, My order with Morse the Morse confirmations and shipping papers, and they all agreed on the bore sizes. Just as I am about to pick up the phone and call the man, his boss calls me and apologizes profusely as it seems they had ordered them incorrectly and that they would look after the problem. And the invoice was paid on time.
Morse Hy-Vo drives they work really well but What a pain!
