I spent 4 years at the Balto Sun keeping their 48 4 high deck Goss Colorliners going . Same thing , you miss a printing , you lose the advertising dollars . The papers had to be out at the door at 4 am every morning . Busted my arse making it happen . The difference maybe was we had a full size shop with any and all equipment available to me . No-one before myself even looked at the machinery .
I've posted this many times on here . Bottom line , gotta get it running . ( They still have the 17" and 20" Clausing Colchesters down in the shop with no-one left to run them . My son's former baseball coach runs the whole kitencabootal of the Tribune plants that are left . Balto and Allentown . I keep in touch just in case the equipment would ever be leaving .
I always worked sheet fed but know the machines you're talking about.
Luckily, in sheetfed the deadlines can be a little more forgiving than a newspaper. The place I worked at two jobs ago had a production manager that was good at fixing things. Coincidentally, I just found out he died yesterday at 58.
Anyhow, he and I worked separately but together. He was an "everything needs a hammer" kind of guy where I was more of a "there's a reason there's a half million different tools" kind of person.
He didn't know much about me, although he was the one that hired me. He gained his respect by a couple small things I did during my first couple years. One of them was diagnosing a frozen main bearing on one of the two main presses. It had been down for a couple days and the tech wasn't available for a month.
They had all the covers off the machine and I started looking at a likely culprit for why the drive motor kept overloading. I saw a big giant brass sleeve bearing that was the main one. I put my hands all over the brass bearings that were there and that one was almost 30 degrees hotter.
As the PM was walking by I casually said "Your' problem is there" and pointed at the bearing. I didn't say anything more.
They kept working on the machine trying everything for a couple hours. Finally he pulled out a laser thermometer and saw the difference in temps.
It was end of day when he did that.
The next day they fired up the press and it did the same thing. He had already read the temps on the bearings so he had his baseline. After 20 minutes of running, the motor popped. He scanned that bearing and, sure enough, it was 60 degrees hotter.
He ended up pulling the bearing and cleaning up all the scoring. The main shaft was OK.
Right before he put it back in I walked by and casually said "Clean out the oil port or You'll be doing this again tomorrow."
Sure enough, the oil port was clogged.
Again, there was never a "thank you" but after that we had an understanding. If I saw something, I'd casually say something and he'd look at it.
Another part of the understanding as if I was working on something it was because someone wanted it done "my way" and not his way.
And the other part of the understanding was if he screwed something up, and I fixed it, I wouldn't say a thing. It happened more times than I can remember.
He wasn't a bad guy. He just had a different personality. He'd, literally, give you the shirt off his back an hour after making you feel like he hated your guts. RIP!