Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

[tutusue]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

Why was the bill so high, tutu? Aside from the towing charge and tip for the tow driver , what repairs did they charge you for? I was thinking that you might've had something like a blown radiator hose, but that bill seems to reflect something more serious such as a blown head gasket or a broken timing belt instead.

The radiator and the hoses needed replacing. Evidently the radiator cracked. Plus...it's a German car.

Oh, and no towing fee outside of my annual AAA dues!

New radiator: $611.
Tow truck operator tip: $20.
An extra half day with the kid: Priceless

[Peshkwe]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

The radiator and the hoses needed replacing. Evidently the radiator cracked. Plus...it's a German car.

Oh, and no towing fee outside of my annual AAA dues!

New radiator: $611.
Tow truck operator tip: $20.
An extra half day with the kid: Priceless

'95 German make? No wonder the radiator went ~boom~ even after you had it serviced. The radiator was probably semi-velocity air cooled, no good motion based air flow (like from running in a giant parking lot) the fan has to work too hard. Ya might want to keep an eye on the oil. Get it checked every so often to see if there's water in it.....hopefully it was just the radiator that cracked and not the block.

[na alii]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

Speaking of H-1 overpasses, the other day I noticed that the bottom edge of the Gulick Avenue overpass, in Kalihi, looks pretty damaged too. There are big chunks of concrete missing, and the rebar is exposed in several places. When did that happen, and is it dangerous?

That happened many years ago when a garbage truck hit the Gulick Ave. overpass. If I recall the garbage truck had it's forks in the up position and hit the bridge. Previous to that I think it was the same bridge another over height truck hit it.

[tutusue]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

'95 German make? No wonder the radiator went ~boom~ even after you had it serviced. The radiator was probably semi-velocity air cooled, no good motion based air flow (like from running in a giant parking lot) the fan has to work too hard. Ya might want to keep an eye on the oil. Get it checked every so often to see if there's water in it.....hopefully it was just the radiator that cracked and not the block.

Yep...idling for so long with no motion air flow is what did it according to the mechanic. Lack of maintenance wasn't even a factor. I also don't know if that was the original radiator or not. Apparently the 'sensor' detected a serious problem in the early stages and bypassed the warning light and temp gauge and shut off the engine before further damage was done. That's what it's designed to do. The mechanic had it for 1.5 days and seems certain that there was no other damage. I knew the radiator blew but my initial fear was the block.

My previous 2 German cars were also prone to overheating during extended idles and during one 3.5 hour trip from Kakaako to Makaha years ago I had to pull off the road and turn off the engine 3 times. That was an oil cooled engine which tended to run hotter than a water cooled one.

[Peshkwe]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

Yep...idling for so long with no motion air flow is what did it according to the mechanic. Lack of maintenance wasn't even a factor. I also don't know if that was the original radiator or not. Apparently the 'sensor' detected a serious problem in the early stages and bypassed the warning light and temp gauge and shut off the engine before further damage was done. That's what it's designed to do. The mechanic had it for 1.5 days and seems certain that there was no other damage. I knew the radiator blew but my initial fear was the block.

My previous 2 German cars were also prone to overheating during extended idles and during one 3.5 hour trip from Kakaako to Makaha years ago I had to pull off the road and turn off the engine 3 times. That was an oil cooled engine which tended to run hotter than a water cooled one.

They're designed to go flying on the autobahn hitting about 90 to 100mph...shoot....55mph is the absolute minimum in some areas. You go slower you'll get busted for being a danger on the road.

So yeah....sitting in the middle of a snail race would definatly do ya in.

Tho it wouldn't hurt to pull out the oil dipstick once in awhile and check for water drops in the oil. Just randomly for a month or two yanno?

[tutusue]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

[...]Tho it wouldn't hurt to pull out the oil dipstick once in awhile and check for water drops in the oil. Just randomly for a month or two yanno?

Thanks for the heads up on this! I'll do it. Where's the dipstick?

[Peshkwe]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

Thanks for the heads up on this! I'll do it. Where's the dipstick?

LOL!!!!

Check the manual....but whatever you do, if it's in German...DON'T run it through a google translator. You'll end up giving the car a high colonic or something instead of checking the oil.

[tutusue]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

LOL!!!!

Check the manual....but whatever you do, if it's in German...DON'T run it through a google translator. You'll end up giving the car a high colonic or something instead of checking the oil.

My mechanic is close enough to my office that I pass his shop regularly. I'll let him do it. He's always been great about me dropping in with those types of requests. I'm severely car challenged and while I could easily check the dipstick, I wouldn't know what to look for. Sad but true!

[lurkah]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

Thanks for the heads up on this! I'll do it. Where's the dipstick?

I haven't noticed him posting lately. Oh, wrong dipstick.

[damontucker]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

well sheesh...bettah kick off this thread again...

I dunno why you "lurking" on me...lurkah...never said nothing against you!

I've only posted personal observation to this post....

and mahalo for the dipstick comment... I'd rather be called a dipstick than an exhaust pipe.

[TuNnL]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

I'm not a big believer of the Military and/or it's actions... However, I do support our troops and I feel that they should always listen to their orders... Even if it means doing something that they no is illegal.

Wow, Mānoa. I had no idea how divergent our views really were. To knowingly do something illegal because your boss told you to. I don’t think I could ever do that. But that's just my morality, pride and principles talking. I guess you give that up in the military. How far we’ve fallen since the Revolutionary War. Will we hit rock bottom?

[TuNnL]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

An interesting and unfortunate side note from that same article:

Ambulance workers responded to one incident related to Tuesday's traffic delay: a motorist who died behind the wheel of his van. The van was on the side of the freeway near the Army vehicle that damaged the pedestrian bridge. A television camera man noticed the man was not moving and notified police.

Yes, I read somewhere that state crews assumed the van was with the army convoy, and just ignored it. Thank goodness the news photographer was there to alert EMS.

[lurkah]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

well sheesh...bettah kick off this thread again...

I dunno why you "lurking" on me...lurkah...never said nothing against you!

I've only posted personal observation to this post....

and mahalo for the dipstick comment... I'd rather be called a dipstick than an exhaust pipe.

All smiley faces and j/k's aside, please take what I am about to tell you as the gospel truth. Any thoughts of you were totally absent when I made that post.

Can you not see how you're manipulating posts that others are making to constantly point back to yourself? It's rude, irritating, annoying, and if you think that it might somehow be even remotely amusing, it's not. Really, it's not.

And before you start thinking about how you're going to pick this post apart point by point, please don't bother. It would be an exercise in futility. Your time might be better spent soul-searching the reasons for your paranoic behavior, and to seriously reconsider what Aunty Lynn has previously suggested for you in regards to inquiring about the signs of mental illness. Seriously. Please do this one thing for yourself.

[Peshkwe]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

My mechanic is close enough to my office that I pass his shop regularly. I'll let him do it. He's always been great about me dropping in with those types of requests. I'm severely car challenged and while I could easily check the dipstick, I wouldn't know what to look for. Sad but true!

Stop by your mechanic and have him show you where all your fluid fill places are and what they're for. Make a little diagram or take a picture of the engine, print it out big and make labeling notes and arrows on it, then stick it in your glove compartment or someplace easy to get to.

You may never need it, but if something odd happens while you're out on the road and you get someone stopping to help...you don't want to compound whatever went wrong by having an 'X' fluid being accidently poured into a fill spout for 'Z' type fluids.

I'm not all that great around an engine either, but knowing a few things like where fluids go, how to properly set up jumper cables (knowing to have em in the car in the first place) and keeping the battery posts and cables clean of errosion... has saved me a few hassels I didn't need.

Managed to help out folks a few times too just by having the jumper cables with me.

[Miulang]

Re: Crane crunches Aiea pedestrian overpass

I was watching the "post mortem" of the accident the other day. The Gov was out of town, so other people in her Administration were responsible for coordinating the disaster response. Mufi "thought about" notifying civil defense, but assumed that the State was notifying the proper people. Duh. Reminds me of baseball, when a pop fly is hit and 2 outfielders run to catch the ball and neither signals the other to get out of the way so they collide, and the ball falls in between them.

I think the State should sue the Army for the cost of repairing that overpass and also cite them for not having the proper permits (the Army should not be exempt from obtaining those permits because they are using State-owned facilities). As the Governor said, one of the main lessons learned is that the State has to have better planning for catastrophes like this one. One of the main things that would have eased the congestion would have been to open the contra lanes, which were totally devoid of traffic. But as one newscaster pointed out, there still would have been havoc because all those flow meter lights are only pointing in one direction.

KITV also interviewed some veteran big rig drivers who said that the destruction caused to that bridge could only have occurred if the driver of the rig was speeding; otherwise, the crane would have been wedged under the overpass.

A 9-hour "commute" on an island does seem a little extreme, but consider the plight of drivers on Maui this past week, where there was a 4,000 acre brush fire between Maalaea and Oluwalu that started last Friday and wasn't completely extinguished until Tuesday. There were thousands of people who couldn't get to Lahaina from Central Maui FOR MORE THAN 24 hours because Honoapiilani Hwy was shut down (the road reopened on Saturday but there were periodic shutdowns throughout the weekend as the fire flared up in spots). People who wanted to get from Lahaina to Central Maui were allowed to use the road around Kahakuloa, but that's a treacherous undertaking. The closure of the road also led to huge backups for people trying to get to Kihei and Wailea, too.

But at least on Maui, there is more coordinated communication between the police, the fire dept., and the local hotels. The County opened up temporary shelters in Lahaina and Wailuku to assist stranded tourists and others and the local hotels made special arrangements for their guests who might have been stranded overnight. Maui (especially the Lahaina side) has more experience with travel disruption than probably anywhere else in the state, because Honoapiilani Hwy gets closed down frequently due usually to traffic accidents that end up closing the road for hours. Maybe the Governor's office should talk to the Maui County Administration and get some pointers on how to handle transportation disruptions.

Miulang