By the time I made it over there, Roger and Ermilien had already taken off the end of the generator (not the engine, but the actual generator which is full of magnets and a huge spindle of copper wire). I normally refer to the entire unit as the generator, but there are two main parts: the engine and the generator that the engine turns. Tonight, the problem was inside the generator. Roger had found a wire which broke. Normally wires burn up, but in this case, with years of use, a wire had snapped. We believe it came apart because of centrifugal force as there weren't any burn marks. The room was also filled with a few others. Scott, Lenny, Stephen were already there as well. After finding the problem, the only thing to do is to start fixing it. It seems like such a simple breakdown and yes, one wire is simple to fix. The problem is getting to it. To do the, we had to remove the 500+ pound generator from the engine. It's cylinder shaped and lies horizontally. We needed to take it off, hoist it vertically and then set it back down. Once it was set down, we needed to hoist the copper spindle out of it. To do this takes several hours. Normally, when we need to do this sort of work, Roger or John will get the tractor and pull the generator out of the generator room and into the school's front yard. We would then remove the generator from the engine and hoist it up out there. Tonight, we didn't have that option. It was already dark. Our only option was to hoist it up inside. The problem is that there isn't anything to hoist it up from. The room had a concrete ceiling but does not have anything to connect a chain hoist to. There is also a concrete loft above where the mufflers sit, so our only option was to get a concrete chisel, a large hammer and chisel a hole through the loft so we could wrap a chain around it. We chiseled the hole about a foot from the edge of the loft so we could wrap the chain through the hole and around the edge. The edge also happens to be a concrete beam that runs from one wall to the other so it seemed very strong. About an hour later and we started to lift the generator. It's almost unreal how much that thing weighs. As we started lifting it, we heard the beam overhead start to crack and little pieces of concrete fell. You could expect this as the chain was going through a hole that was freshly chiseled. It's likely to have loose pieces fall to the floor. A moment later and the entire generator had been lifted off the platform and was suspended. At this very moment more concrete fell as the beam overhead had dropped down about three inches. That's when we realized that the beam doesn't actually go across from one wall to the other. It did at one time, however the exhaust pipe comes up from the engine and the beam is in its way. So, years ago, the beam must have been chiseled across. The only thing that connected it to the wall was a single piece of rebar as you can see in the picture below.
Of course all of us were concerned except for Roger. When we hoisted the generator more, Lenny and I would keep an eye on the cracks and give him updates on it's thickness. At one point, we noticed a crack had opened up to about an eighth of an inch. We told Roger and he said, "That's probably good enough." I always crack up when I am in there. He reassured us that the rebar (though it was only one bar) is very strong. I was just hoping that that piece had been tied in to the wall and wasn't just a straight piece that could be pulled away! Fortunately, it held.
The spindle was eventually raised up and Roger took three heavy gauge wire and soldered them to both ends where the wire had snapped. At this point it was much past midnight. We were getting tired, but fortunately for us, we were about half way done. About an hour later, we were lowering the generator back down so we could reattach it to the engine. As I mentioned, it's very heavy and when it pivoted, it hit two of the eight bolts that it connects to. These specific bolts aren't the bolts that hold it on, but the bolts that spin the generator. We were able to bend one back, however the other bolt sheared off when we tried to bend it back. We had to go without, so it now only has seven of the eight. Without going into detail, as connecting it has many difficulties, we finally had it back together a few hours later. I don't know what happened at what time, but around 4:30 AM, Roger turned it on but we weren't getting any electricity. I cannot tell you the frustration of spending over eight hours on that thing and to not have any power once it's back together. Fortunately, the problem was in a circuit board that took some damage while we were moving the generator around. So, at about 5:45 AM we had not only finished but everything was working. Here are a few more pictures of the generator. If you look, you should see a few blue arrows which point out the cracks in the concrete beam. You'll most likely have to click on the image so you can see the full sized picture in order to see the cracks. I also colored the beam in one picture green so you can see where the chains were. The poor quality pictures were taken from my phone's camera the night that we were working. The others I took a couple days later. The last picture is the final product. It's a bit crazy to think that this old generator is powering the entire ministry.
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