Sunday, February 17, 2008

Hustler 4 Brakes

It's been no secret of my affinity for the Hustler 4. It's just a fantastic machine. But it's not perfect. Case in point: I've had the same problem pop up with the brakes twice now. As I've said here before, I've never been a fan of the 4's brakes anyway. Last week, I did a commercial and everything was going fine. I had been pitching the 4 to the DP all day (a Fisher guy) and had him convinced that the 4 was the way to go. Then I noticed that the wheels seemed to be dragging when I pushed forward. It's like they were winding up and getting tighter as the dolly moved forward until it would hardly move. I called the Key over and told him to get Chapman on the phone, because this was the second time this had happened to me on this dolly. A rep showed up, and explained to me that the brake shoes had siezed up and needed to be replaced on two wheels. He showed them to me and they looked pretty trashed. He explained that if this happened and I couldn't get service, to just find which wheel was giving the problem, remove the brake assembly from that wheel, and it would work fine until I could get it looked at. If I was on location, he said I could ship them the old one and they would also ship a new one. So the show went on fine. So if this happens to you, now you know what to do. This may be from water getting into the brake assembly. The bolts that he took out of the affected ones looked pretty rusty. Anyway, that's what I found out about the Hustler 4 brakes.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

have you ever had a problem with the track wheels on the hustler 4?
i've had one that was wobbling very badly on perfect track! chapman were great and sent new wheels immediately but they seemed far less forgiving than any other dollys!

D said...

I've never had any other problem other than this one, which I wouldn't have mentioned if it hadn't happened twice. One thing about Chapman is their service has always been top notch if they make a mistake.

Azurgrip said...

Thanks for a great tip. Now, if we could only get the IV back in town. Oddly enough I've been dancing with the idea of taking a Fisher 10 on my next job - if I ever get one.