Lectrotruck repair and partial restoration.

JakesArcade

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Hello everyone,

After having a close call moving a cabinet down a flight of stairs, for the past few months I have been searching for a stair climbing dolly. Hunting up and down facebook marketplace I was searching for a Escalera, Lectrotruck, or a PowerMate. My budget was about $1000 and it turns out its next to impossible to find anything in that range. Anything that was listed for that price almost imediately sells. and I had a few times where a seller would initially respond to me and would then ghost as I assume someone offered more than asking. I had no idea this would be harder than picking up a $250 Defender!

But atlast, This guy came through my feed, $200 for a complete lectrotruck in "Good working condition". I Imediately saw through that but the price was good enough even though it was a two hour drive. Thankfully a bit of luck was on my side and I was on the road a few hours later. When I see it in person it was as bad as I thought it was but the battery was completely flat so I couldnt even verify that it moved. Non the less I took a gamble on it and brought it home. Once home I looked over the entire thing, The lead screw was greased with heavy grease, something the manual specifically says NOT to do, and the battery appears to be from the 80s, and cracked open, so there wasnt a chance this ever worked when in the sellers posession.

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The unit is straight and does not appear to be abused, so I went straight to tearing everything down. My goal is to go through every moving part, relubricate it and repaint the really crusty sections to both make it look a bit better as well as remove all the rust scale on the toe plate, having a rough metal surface on a set of hardwoods would be an excelent way to destroy them. Initially I did not think this was a Lectrotruck as it was only labeled with "Woodward 60HD", looking it up online provided 0 results however I emailed Lectrotruck and he plesently responded saying that a majority of the parts are still avalible! He even sent me the original manual (see attached), I suspect this unit to be one of the first ones built between 1970 and 1973 before Woodward rebranded to Lectrotruck.
 

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  • Lectrotruck Old Manual.pdf
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Tearing it down is pretty straight forward. I had to start by removing the wheels and motor box cover to access the motor box bolts. From there remove the brake assembly and unscrew the 1 main power wire and the 3 control wires from the solenoids. Remove the 6 bolts holding the box in place and pull it out.

the lead screw comes out as described in the manual. DO NOT REMOVE THE BALL NUT FROM THE LEAD SCREW. I will get into this later but if you remove it you will loose all the balls and its a complete bear to put back together.

splitting the two sections apart was quite difficult, the bottom rollers were completely seized and I could not get the inner pin out no matter what. I resorted to using a pry bar and CAREFULLY inserted it between the inner and outer sections and pried the lower section apart until it opened enough to pop it out. I did this with the tow plate as far up as possible to reduce the risk of bending the inner frame. It should be noted that I attempted every other method possible to pull the inner post from the rollers before getting to this point. The post is completely seized to the roller and was a lost cause at this point. Once the lower rollers are removed you can then lift the inner frame up and twist it sideways to pull it out, similar to how you move the strap bar.

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The entire inner frame was washed down with WD-40 de greaser to remove all the caked up dirt and grease. The toe plate was the worst part of the entire dolly, it was very pitted on both sides, I suspect it was in a dirt basement for a while that occasionally saw some standing water. Thankfully using a flap disk I was able to remove a good amount of the rough surface and loose paint, this was followed up with 2 coats of Rustoleum professional primer and black paint. I'm still torn if I want to repaint the entire thing or not so I just did not bother taping off the frame itself and just let it naturally fade, its still way better than it was before, If I end up really liking this dolly then I will bother will a full repaint.
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The motor box was also very crusty with lots of loose paint, again since this is a functional restoration I just took a wire wheel to them and gave them the same paint job of 2x primer, 2x black paint. As I did not want to remove all the wiring for the motor box I found a perfectly sized cardboard box and sat the controls inside of it, this prevented paint from getting on them quite nicely. For the motor box cover it was very bent up, most of the bents were straightened out with a hammer before painting.

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  • 1742178066669.png
    1742178066669.png
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THE LEAD SCREW:

The lead screw was completely caked in black grease and dirt. The original manual calls for WD-40 periodically and the modern manual calls for a PTFE dry lubricant spray NOT WD40 as it quickly evaporates. both manuals say NOT to grease the screw as it collects dirt and clogs the ball nut..

With this info in mind I decided to torture myself by de greasing the screw and nut. I very carefully removed the ball nut from the lead screw. WARNING: This should only be done in cases like this where you must clean out the ball bearings, if you do not have a good reason to spend the next 2-3 hours fighting with 1/8" ball bearings do not remove it! Removing the ball nut and working with it should always be done over some way to catch the balls. if your screw is like mine where its caked in grease the balls *MAY* stick to the nut, otherwise the second you pull it off all the balls will fall out.

After removing the ball nut and pulling the return race off I soaked them in WD-40 branded de greaser. I used the same de greaser and carefully spun the screw with paper towels in the thread until I removed all the old grease. Once done I started working on all the ball bearings and the ball nut itself, using a toothbrush to clean out all the small crevices.

I counted 67 balls total in my nut, 65 were originally located and two more were found digging through the grease remnants. DO NOT LOOSE THESE you must re install the same amount of balls that were removed. The best way I found to get the balls back in was by putting as many balls as you can into the return race, then putting the ball nut back onto the lead screw and carefully placing one ball at a time into it, gently tapping the ball down with an Allen wrench. Once I could not fit any more balls I slowly turned the screw to push them further down the nut. I repeated this process until I got the remainder of the balls into it. Notice how there is stoppers in the ball race to prevent them from escaping the nut! ensure that no balls pass this point or they will fall out once fully assembled.

To re install the return race, CAREFULLY turn the nut so that the race can be held sideways without spilling the balls, tilt the screw so that the race can sit level when you install it. then insert the race full of balls into the nut. Screw down the retainer bracket and hold a bowl under the nut. Spin the nut back and fourth. if no balls fall out your done! if they do, you gotta start from scratch until you get this process down. BE PATIENT! eventually you will get it right.

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Note the orientation of the race!
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