I have often thought,"if engineers had to work on what they design, (or if I was smarter) It would be a nicer world."
I purchased an up graded chuck for my Pac Bay wrapper. What a pain to get to the front two bolts. I have to use needle nose pliers to grab the bolt head. Even at that I can only turn it about a 1/64 of a turn. and I can`t get to the hex nut at all.

Oh well, I guess I`ll get over it. Sorry if I offended any engineers on this board. Being rod builders I`m sure you know better than to do that.

Bill

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

I was luckier - I have ratcheting box wrenches from Sears that helped a bunch

Bill, I have a good friend that is an engineer and I give him an earful all the time. What are friends for?

jeremy

Bill
I HAD THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM WITH THE EXACT SAME THING! YOUR ARE NOT ALONE HERE BUD! I GOT MINE LAST WEEK AND WAS A PAIN TO PUT TOGETHER. the power wrapper is great besides that.

lol. computer programmers have the same problem

I'm an Industrial Maintenance Technician and we have a saying about engineers...
College Education to screw it up- high school education to fix it. :-)

Ken I have a set also, the problem being they are not off set and I can not get up underneath to the hex nut.


Tomorrow I will take it into the shop with me, The acetylene torches should do it. aaaaaarrrrrggg!!!!

Bill

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

Another problem is that the thread carriage hits it if you are trying to wrap close to the chuck..

Ron Weber

Guess i'm lucky, my pacbay wrapper came with wing nuts and .5 in. long 10/24's. Used a flat head screwdriver wegded under the wingnut and tighted screw with phillips head on the outside of the wrapping bed. Purchased mine at expo also. What a slight pain in the arse to assemble, wife was being funny asking me 'ABOUT THE INSTRUCTION SHEET" did i read it??? She was funny.

Kern Davis, Lady Lake Fl.

I am an engineer and I don’t get offended, but I suspect I know why you are seeing the problems you are, the key words are “upgrade chuck”. Anytime you have to design a new part to fit into place on an existing assembly your choices can be very limited. It is a lot easier to design all parts from a clean slate, then you have control of everything and can make much better choices about things like bolt access.

Almost all engineering decisions are based on good sound reasons AT THE TIME THEY ARE MADE, whether they end up being good decisions at the end of the process is another story. A great example is the turbos in the new Ford F150 EcoBoost. When we started that program 3 years ago they had ideas of putting that engine in as many as 9 different vehicles, which meant we had to package around the other parts of all of them. That left us with a very confined space for the turbos and we made some very radical design choices with parts like the compressor recirc valve. Turns out there were good reasons why nobody had designed a compressor recirc valve the way we did, and we had to do a huge amount of work to get the NVH levels where we needed them. The upside for us is that now we have much more knowledge of how those parts work and can improve future turbo designs. Now that it is going into production they are only offering that engine in the pickup which has all the room in the world for turbos and everyone wonders why we didn’t just do a simple design that we knew works great. Sadly once you get locked into a design it can be hard to get back out even when the underlying reasons change.

Sorry Mike, I really don`t have anything against engineers, Sometimes my remarks are to cover up for my own clumisness and other reasons. The problem was really in the original equipment, trying to get the original chuck off . The hex for the bolt is up against the upright of the chuck so I could only turn it by using an open end wrench on its tip and place it over the hex head. The only way I could turn the wrench was to take an adjustable wrench to the body of the open end wrench and turn it while trying to hold the nut under neath where I had trouble reaching, (partially due to a little arthritic fingers). The new chuck went on very slick and that was due to engineering changes.

I do understand alot of problems are from design changes and must be dealt with as swifly as possible with out breaking the budget.

I just had to vent.

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

Interesting, I wonder what drove them to make the original chuck so hard to work with?

Mike,
Cost,
The original chuck is a much much much less expensive design than the new improved chuck.

The original chuck is just pieces of stanped sheet metal with virtually no tolerances.
The new chuck is nicely machined with nice tolerances.

Roger

Totally off topic but my day job entails me to deal with engineers of boiler & steam plants. I gringe every time one says, " But in school we learned that......"
I personally think before you get your degree and can get a job in your chosen engineering field, you must first spend at least a year using what you are intending to design. That way, you learn first hand that the book deals with perfect circumstances and not the real world.

Sorry.