LONGEST STRAIGHT IN EUROPE • A £200,000 investment by commercial
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vehicle crash repairs specialist Chassis-Cab has given the Bury St Edmunds company what it believes is the longest PowerCage chassis straightening rig in Europe.
Its Black Hawk Power-Cage is now 16m (54ft) long, which means that it can accommodate damaged semi-trailers up to 12.2m (40ft) in one go. Before lengthening the rig (and extending the building housing it) maximum length semitrailers were straightened by sections at a time.
The extended Power-Cage has seven full floating U towers along its length and two swivel towers at each end. Each tower carries a 20tonne hydraulic ram with a push/pull movement controlled remotely via a high-capacity electric/hydraulic pump. One of the main advantages of the extended rig is that it reduces chassis straightening time substantially.
Also installed at Chassis-Cab to complement the PowerCage are a cab jib and a Josam chassis straightener. Whereas the Power-Cage is most suited to straightening bowed chassis, the Josam is used on twisted ones including aluminium alloy ones which are notoriously difficult to correct. It has been specially modified by Chassis-Cab with the addition of two additional rails, making four altogether, to increase its flexibility.
The new cab jig considerably increases Chassis-Cab's capacity. The company had been repairing 50-60 cabs a year; now it is able to handle four a week.
Improvements to existing equipment and the additional new plant mean that "now there is practically no job we can't undertake", says Chassis-Cab's general manager Vince Moore.