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!