[TowerTalk] Sluggish crank-up tower and tips for others

[Rick Stealey]

There have been several great responses to my call for advice yesterday.  
Thanks to each of you.  
Seems like the consensus is to clean the bearings on the 5 pulleys with something better than WD40, and to lube the bearings with a grease applied with a needle applicator.  
Others have had short term success with oil, but I will try the grease process as I want the pulleys to hold up for several years if possible.  It will require drilling small holes to allow the grease to be pumped in, so we'll see how it goes.

So in the spirit of helping each other, I will now offer a little advice to others who have a US Tower that is still moving up and down.  These are things I learned in my maintenance efforts this year.
1. Find a way to cover your motor, even if it is just a garbage bag to keep the rain off of it.  That motor was not designed to be mounted upside down with the starter capacitor on the bottom.  The capacitor cover WILL rust out.  Who was the genius who did THAT?
2. Spray all your bolts with Rustoleum.  They WILL rust.  
3. You know that eye bolt thing on the bottom of your smallest section, where the winch cable ends up?  To adjust that when replacing winch cables you need small tools and you can't move them easily.  GREASE those threads now, before they rust, and simply put a piece of 1 inch pvc pipe over it to keep rain off.  You'll be glad you did because if it is rusted it will take you one hour, lying in the mud on your side to get it loosened  up.  
4. A set of winch cables for the TX472 costs $300 from UST.  There is a grand total of $28 worth of material in a set (3/16 wire rope, thimbles, and swages).  You can buy enough to do two sets yourself, including buying a swaging tool for 1/2 that amount.  
5. Getting the pulleys out can be a pain, because Murphy will have the section cross-arms blocking the head of the bolt where you want to use the Allen wrench.  You will have to move the tower sections a bit with a crowbar.  The only solution to that is to say as many bad words as you want, as loud as you want, to the engineer who designed them.  

Rick  K2XT