I was setting governor rope tension wrong for years until a call in Atlanta

I was on a call for a stuck car in a high rise in Atlanta last spring. The governor rope was jumping off the sheave, and I figured it was just a worn guide. I had my tension gauge set to what I always used, about 150 pounds. An older mechanic from the local union hall showed up to help, and he just shook his head. He said, 'Kid, you're reading the gauge right, but you're checking it with the car at the wrong landing.' I always checked it from the top floor. He showed me you have to check it from the lowest possible point of travel with the car empty, or the weight of the rope itself throws it off. I'd been over-tensioning every single one, which was causing premature wear and those jumps. How do you guys handle governor rope tension on really tall runs? Do you factor in the rope weight differently?

3 comments

3 Comments

mila_craig42mo ago

Had a similar wake-up call on a 50-story job. I started calculating the rope's dead weight for the full drop and subtracting that from my target tension at the top. Basically, if I need 150 lbs at the governor, I'll add the weight of the rope hanging in the hoistway to my reading at the machine room. It sounds simple now, but it fixed a lot of weird brake chatter issues I was having.

hill.hugo24d ago

Actually that's backwards from how the math works. The rope weight adds to your tension at the machine room, not subtracts from it. If you need 150 at the governor, and the rope hanging down weighs 50 pounds, you'd want to read 100 on your machine room gauge to get 150 at the bottom. The rope is hanging from the machine, so the machine feels its weight plus the tension from the car. You end up adding the rope weight to your target if you're setting from the top. What kind of chatter were you getting - was it at certain floors or all over?

nina_hall2mo ago

I always checked from the machine room too. That old timer in Philly told me the same thing about rope weight on a 40 story building. Totally changed how I set mine.