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Finally figured out a trick for leveling those wonky elevator sills
I was working on a 30-year-old Otis in a downtown Phoenix office building last month. The sill was so uneven that the doors kept binding halfway through closing. After two hours of shimming and cursing, I noticed the mounting bolts were slightly different lengths, so I swapped them around to redistribute the pressure. Leveled right out. Has anyone else run into this with older door frames?
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the_hugo5mo ago
Came across the same thing on a 20-year-old Schindler last year. Swapping bolts works sometimes but @elliotadams is right that it's just a bandaid. The real issue is that those frames get twisted from years of settling and temperature changes. That's why I've started looking at the bigger picture first. Check the frame alignment before messing with bolts. It's like when your front door sticks in summer. You can sand the edge or you can fix the hinges. One fix lasts a week. The other fix lasts years. Same principle applies here.
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