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Rant: When do you draw the line on fixing old relays vs swapping the whole controller?
I was talking to a senior mechanic from Local 3 last month after a service call in an old building downtown. He said he still prefers to clean and rebuild old Otis relays because 'the new boards don't last like these do.' But I see it the other way now after chasing a intermittent fault for 6 hours on a 1960s relay panel. When does sticking with old gear become a waste of the customer's money on labor? Anybody else go back and forth on this?
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kevin_wells461mo ago
Tbh I gotta ask you this - did that senior mechanic show you any actual data on how long those rebuilt relays hold up compared to swapping in a modern controller? Because I called BS on that argument myself until I watched @the_kevin's fire alarm panel thing go down just like you described, and now I'm second-guessing everything. Seems like the real question is whether the customer's paying for your nostalgia or actual reliability.
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the_kevin1mo ago
Oh man, you're talking about that exact pain point I've been stuck in myself. I spent a whole day last fall swapping out individual resistors on a 1970s fire alarm panel because the owner swore up and down it was "built to last" compared to modern stuff. You know what happened after that? Three weeks later a different relay froze up and we had to rip the whole thing out anyway, costing them double. I get the nostalgia for old gear (and honestly, that cast iron construction is pretty), but there's a point where you're just burning hours that could buy a whole new reliable system. That 6 hour chase you did? I've been there and it's the worst feeling when you finally find the problem is just a cracked solder joint you can't reach without a microscope.
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