(Scott predicts about 30 emails about why what we did today won't work... time wil tell!!)
We worked pretty hard on it today, the goal was to fix things in the simplest possible way which may or may not work out. I think it'll be fine though!
I didnt want to pull the alternator off the tower, it weighs to much. So we put my truck under it. We cut almost all the way through (save 1") the pipe which holds it to the yaw bearing. Then, with a crow bar, we added a few more degrees of 'tilt' back, so the blades would be less inclined to hit the tower! Once it looked good, I welded it there.
Two of the 3 blades hit the tower. One took a minor hit on the leading edge, the other took rather serious damage (pictured above). We epoxied it all back together today. George found the biggest missing piece.. though there were still some gaps to be made up for. One of the cracks went almost to the root, it was nearly 6' long. Amazing how this blade held up and was actually running and producing power when, and before I realixed there was a problem on Saturday morning.
Here's a picture of the lesser damaged blade, a minor hit to the leading edge and a chuck was gone. We glued in a piece of Eastern White Pine.
This was the worst blade. A few major cracks, we glued in 1 piece which was found on the ground, and 2 new pieces of cedar to replace bits that fell off which we never found. Thank God for epoxy and super glue ;-) (and Scott who did a beautiful job of making pieces fit together)
Pictured above is an image of the blade which was damaged the most... almost as good as new. WE sanded them down, put on a fresh coat of linseed oil and stuck it back on the machine.
All in all it took about 6 hours. We got the alternator tipped back a good bit, and the blades look as good as new. It's making power as I write this.. time will tell!! Lots of fun if nothing else.
