That tricky outrigger leveling issue on an RT90 took me 12 hours longer than it should have

I was on a job in a tight alley downtown, setting up a 50 ton Grove crane. The ground looked fine, but every time I set the outriggers and started leveling, the tilt gauge kept showing off by a few degrees. I spent a whole day redoing pads, checking hydraulic fluid, even calling the rental yard. Turns out one of the outrigger foot pads had a worn down bolt that threw off the sensor calibration. Nobody talks about that stuff in the training manuals. Has anyone else run into a dumb sensor or pad issue that ate up way more time than it should?

3 comments

3 Comments

alice9286d ago

I read somewhere that some rental yards will swap out those foot pads with aftermarket ones that can mess with the sensor alignment. A buddy of mine had a similar problem on a Grove RT530, he spent two days pulling his hair out over a leveling issue. Turned out the previous renter had put on a pad with a slightly different bolt pattern. The sensor has no idea what's going on, it just sees wrong geometry. Real pain when the quick fix is buried in some forum post from 2014.

mark_green6d ago

Seems like a stretch. Pads don't bend sensor brackets that easy.

the_holly6d ago

A buddy of mine spent a whole Saturday on a Terex RT555 in a gravel lot, same stupid tilt gauge issue. He swapped pads, checked pressures, even re-ran the cables before a guy from the yard told him the sensor bracket was bent a few degrees. That bracket had been bent since day one from a curb bump, but nobody ever checked it because the manual says "verify calibration" with zero detail on how.