Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions 1960s Lexan / my grouchy old Otis

Looking for general information on my building's elevators. I believe they are original to the building, circa 1966 - 1968, and I'm told they are Lexans. The cabs are stamped with "Otis" on the floor and "Parkline Cab" on the certificate frame.

The cabs are the smallest I've ever seen, about one-third as deep as your typical elevator cab. Put more than two people in there and you'd better be good friends with your riders! Thing is, I have never seen cabs this small, even in similar buildings from the same era. Was there a time when these two-person cabs were common or "preferred"? It's worth pointing out that this was a new construction at the time, so this wasn't some weird retrofit.

I have reason to believe the building owners have been skimping on maintenance, or employing some "handyman special" skills. The elevators have had consistent problems for years:

- During rainy or extremely humid weather, the elevators will stop on multiple floors even when no call is pressed. They will occasionally land at the wrong floor or change direction while traveling.

- The doors will continuously open and close, even when buttons are pressed. The only way around this is to push stop and take a different elevator (or wait; after several minutes, they'll eventually close). About ten years ago (yes, this has been a problem for ten years now) they fixed this for about three months, then it started again.

- One of the three will sometimes run with the stop button pushed in. I don't mean that it will take off several minutes after you push stop. You can push stop, then a few seconds later the door will close and it will go on its way.

- During a fire alarm, the elevators will all go to the ground floor, but after several minutes, one (the same one) will always return to normal service. No, nobody is inserting a fire key; this just happens on its own.

- While traveling through the shaft, it's not uncommon to hear what sounds like something hitting into and then scraping along the side of the car. Weird thing is, this isn't consistent. It usually happens near the highest floors, but there's no one spot where it always happens - sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

- About once a year, usually during extremely cold weather, one or more of the hydraulics will be found sitting a few inches below the bottom floor.

- For the last six months, leveling has been extremely jerky. The cabs seem to go from full speed to full stop, and they bounce up and down upon arrival. This doesn't happen all the time - maybe one in ten trips for me.

- About once every 2-3 months, all four elevators will get "lost". By that I mean that they don't respond to any hall calls, the lobby floor indicators all go blank, and you can't hear them moving in the shaft. About 20 minutes will go by and everything will be back to normal. Building staff will sometimes do a floor-by-floor search to see if someone has all four stopped somewhere, but to no avail. It's like they just decide it's naptime!

I'd like to think that these are all minor quirks, and that if there were any real problems, an inspector would catch them. However, the inspection certificate on display expired over 20 years ago, and there's no "certificate on file in the office" placard either. The state government informed me that inquiring about inspections carries a $175 processing fee - too much just to satisfy my curiosity.

I've spent a lot of time lurking here and reading through some fascinating topics, so I figured I'd throw this out there and see if anyone had any thoughts on the matter. I realize that since none of you are actually here, nobody can give me a thorough explanation. I'm just interested in the opinions of people who actually handle things like this for a living.

Finally, I know many elevators are safely kept in operation long past their intended obsolescence. I assume these have been kept in place due to the presumably-smaller shafts. Is these a general industry consensus on when a circa-1960s Lexan should be replaced? Is it common to get a modern cab custom built to fit an existing, smaller-than-normal shaft?

Thanks for any input, and thanks for sharing all the great stories over the years!

Never heard of a "lexan" Otis. How many floors is the building? Are the elevators "cable driven" or hydraulic? Something tells me they are MRVF's..... there should be a data tag on your elevator's controller that would tell me more.

I could be entirely mistaken on the Lexan thing. That's only what I've seen on my own casual research online, and all the photos I've seen of the cabs / signals match up (number of floors notwithstanding). It may be that "Lexan" simply refers to the style of buttons and indicators. From what I can gather, they were officially discontinued in 1990 and it was suggested that customers replace them with a Series 2. These are backlit (golden ring around a black "button" with white lettering), touch-activated, non-moving controls in the cab.

The building has 14 floors. The four traction elevators run top to bottom, and the three hydros only service the lowest four floors.

A Google search for MRVFs tells me that people really don't like those things. Someone called them "the Otis battery-operated elevator ... elevator not included".

ill try to answer some of the issues but without seeing the equipment its hard to say for sure. not knowing where these elevators are at makes it difficult also. I'm sure the original install was otis due to the car sill stamp. the park line cab and lexan might be a company that put a new cab interior panels in at some point. if these were installed in the 60's that was before the ADA. small cabs were very normal back then and just depended on the owner/architect . people were smaller and not in as much of a rush so wait times didn't matter as much. elevators of that age will have lots of problems and keeping up with them take more time and more parts just like a car from the 60's. how many of them do you see on the road without major modernization? a lot of those problems sound like normal functions of elevators of the era, again like a car, everything was mechanical and no computers were involved so the more functions the more complicated the controls become and codes were different also for the function of fire service and stop buttons(which shouldn't be used by the public except in a emergency). humidity and heat effect mechanical equipment and in turn the function of that era of elevator, and every other elevator for that matter, even new ones. some of the problems like noises and floor levels do sound like it needs some TLC but anything of that age does. as a building tenant you probably don't know the business climate of the elevator industry but ill share a little info. most building owners pick low bid maintenance contracts for everything in the building including elevator maintenance. as mechanics we do our best to maintain safe elevators but sometimes light bulbs and intermittent problems get put on the back burner to keep the elevator safe and in service. elevators are the safest mode of public transportation there is. movies and gossip cause unwarranted fear and some people do stupid stuff and get hurt we can't fix that. the industry standard for the life of an elevator is about 25 years then it should be modernized. modernization is extremely expensive so owners push it further than that. hope that helps.

forgot to mention the type of buttons you have are called touch tube buttons. they are extremely sensitive to heat and humidity at this age. the false calls and such are a pretty normal due to the break down of electrical components(vacuum tubes and such) that they don't make anymore. basically the building is due for a mod, but your looking in the millions for a good mod thats why it hasn't been done. if your curious one day if you see your elevator service guy, don't bug him but just ask to see the machine room to see how complicated this stuff is might enlighten you more that this site.

Of course. I was just looking for the thoughts and speculations of people who actually work with this stuff on a daily basis. I'd prefer not to get into specific names or locations, but my building is in Pennsylvania.



Fascinating - I never knew. I guess there's probably an argument to be made there too for energy efficiency in smaller cabs (less mass), too.

Funny thing is, when the elevators are behaving, our service level is actually what I consider to be pretty good. I rarely have to wait more than 20-30 seconds for a cab, and it's often less. Travel time from top to bottom floors is about 45 seconds. I don't know if that's reasonable by modern standards, but I can't complain.



The building saw a major renovation in 1989, and I know the cabs saw a cosmetic refresh at that time. I've often wondered if the controller was modded or replaced at that time as well, or if we're still running on 100% original 1966 equipment. I've also wondered if these problems could be eliminated with a good tweaking & major dose of TLC, or if they just come with using 45-year-old systems.



This doesn't surprise me at all. Judging by the rest of the building, I have a hunch there's been a lot of "handyman" or "sideline" work done. That is, someone who is maybe an excellent licensed electrician, but isn't necessarily trained on elevator maintenance. Or maybe an in-house maintenance employee who is a great all-around fixer goes up and sprays a few cans of WD-40 in the machine room to "help keep things rolling". You get the idea - I'm sure you've come across worse.



Definitely - thanks for your insight! I don't buy into the movie scare tactics, though it's awfully unsettling hearing that "THUNK! scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaape" as you approach the top floors. Having the car switch directions mid-ride isn't much fun either. I've definitely noticed the elevators getting progressively crankier as the years go by.

Now if you can do something about the tenants on the floors beneath me who insist that pushing both buttons will get them to their destination faster...

the thump and squealing sound is a terminal/hoistway switch roller that is hitting and rolling on a cam that slows the car down at the top or bottom floors. knowing that you have touch buttons still the elevator controls are original for sure. cab interiors might sign tenants because they look nice but they have nothing to do with the function of the elevator. in most states it is illegal to work on elevator equipment unless your qualified or licensed. I'm sure the service mech just doesn't spend the time to fix every little thing. its a good way to convince owners to spend some money and modernize. I'm sure the service company has sent them many mod proposals and the owner says i can't afford that.