I've seen that exact failure mode. I worked on the aviation field and a Merlin came in that had taken a lightning strike to one prop. The current went through the bearings in the engine, out the tailcone, back into the structure and out the static discharge wick in the tail. You could see where the arcing occurred on the bearing races. It magnetized every bit of ferrous metal in that engine and the engine mount and I had to figure out ways to demagnetize everything. I took the small parts to the other side of the field and passed them through their demagnetizing coil on the magnaflux machine, To demagnetize the engine mount I had a guy come in who did in place industrial magnafluxing and wrap his coil around the engfine mount. It all worked well.
Hi, I'm an electrical engineer who works with high voltages and currents. Lightning can produce 50,000 A or more. If it it arcs to the shaft and the current goes through the bearing it's like spot welding. So it does not surprise. I also spent a summer in the oil patch in west Texas 50 years ago so this takes me back.
The large voltage surge cased by the lighting uses the field coils to build up a large magnetic field that when it collapses causes a spark\arc to ground through the bearing. It works the same way as the collapsing magnetic field in an ignition coil generates the high voltage spark in your car engine.
@@Failure_Is_An_Option You may test your statement (and your South African invented ELCB if you have one) by standing barefoot in a pool of salty water and grasping any bare live or neutral conductor in your house😬😀
@@andrewallen9993 Agreed, lightning testing is performed on electronics using a dampened sinusoidal waveform. I’ve seen dramatic physical effects hard for engineering to foresee. The skin effects can take very odd paths.
You can do yourself a favor and drive those bearings on using a length of pipe so that you’re using the inner race and not the outer one. When you bang on the outer race you’re asking for premature bearing failure. Trust me on this. 🤷🏻♂️😩
That blown off panel cover is a fantastic look into what happened to your bearings in said devices. For just a brief moment- everything held a charge and and then had to find a way to get rid of that charge.
Lightning can do some crazy stuff. I was an insurance adjuster for many years and the the most memorable lightning claim I had was to a two story garage/shed. Garage below with living quarters upstairs. Lightning hit a tree about 10 feet away from the garage jumped to the aluminum sliding glass door upstairs traveled down to the rebar in the concrete floor of the garage, blew out some chunks of concrete from the floor on it's way to the opposite wall where it blew a hole in the wall taking some exterior siding with it. Absolutely nuts.
Bearings are selected by the manufacturer to run a certain number of hours before failure. For HVAC machinery in a healthcare setting we specify "L-10, 100,000" bearings. That means that only 10% of the bearings would be expected to fail at 100,000-hours of run time (90% are still going at 100,000-hours). A typical small electric motor usually comes with an "L-10, 50,000" bearing or less. Of course bearing life depends heavily upon load and rpm, plus environmental conditions. We have battled mostly VFD-induced harmonic voltage spike problems in our motor bearings, which causes them to pit and fail prematurely. We now use ceramic bearings in large motors as they are immune to that problem (non-conductive). Great videos; really enjoy your channel.
My favorite rags are the ones that they gotta cut up, old shirts and towels and junk. Man I've found some amazing treasures in rag bags/boxes... found a dress in one, I wore that the rest of the day, when the relief came on I was making a connection by myself in my summer dress, did relief and walked out the doghouse and the day consultant was standing outside watching me walk down the stairs, he just shook his head and never mentioned it.. plenty of random things to put on my head too, those animal kids towels with the animal heads on them are always a treat. I swear the people that chop them up see whatever is printed on them and do their best to keep the logo intact... new rag box day has always been my favorite day on the rig. As far as how you work on YOUR wells, man that's up to you, I'm sure alot of "pumpers" have worked for bigger companies that wouldn't blink an eye to replace an electric motor on a well thats pumping 200bbls a day... but when you're working with what you've got, as far as I remember none of them ole girls are ragers, you just gotta work on stuff to make it work. You fix stuff till the cast iron breaks. 4 years on an electric pump running 4 years for some minor repair work is a huge win in my books man. I'm not sure people understand that you make a living but you're probably not making millions off your hard work. I've worked in the oilfield since 2010 mostly on pulling units and I know the struggle, and I know what works and what doesn't. I've seen companies spend 10x more and get the same longevity out of their as the well next to em that I pulled that's rodded up correctly, treated correctly, and pumped at the right speed. That's the good and bad thing about youtube comments, you either get experts... or you get "experts" that talk a lot and have never spent a day in the field. Keep doing what you've always been doing man id bet my next check you got more experience working on this iron than 99.9% of the people leaving comments telling you you're doing it wrong.
Many years ago I rented 2 bdrm upstairs apartment. We lost half power to one side of apartment. I had my speed bag and weights set up there. I ran up and checked roof for any holes due to lightening strikes, I found none. A friend told me to check back Yard for burn marks in Grass. And I'll be darn if there wasn't a 50' burn apox 3" wide path that lightening hit ground between 2 trees and continued to electric meter then it must have dumped its energy into breaker, well it was actually fuse box holding 30 amp fuses. It fried fridge, my TV and stereo. This was back in early 80's and house was way older than that. So old it had newspaper clippings from late 1800's in walls for insulation
You are a good business man to not waste precious timer polishing a turd. Your attitude is the difference between making money on a small or marginal well and going broke. Men like you bu8ilt America and I congratulate you! As to the lightning and bearings, you are right. When they arc across, the arcs leave burned spots where it needs to be polished. You can do the same damage if you put a welding ground on one side of a bearing and strike your arc on the other.
Motors on VFD’s are even harder on bearings. There’s a grounding kit to ground the rotor and shaft that saves them from arcing. Electricity does strange things and lightning is even worse.
@@michael931it would have to lessen the chances of lightning bearing damage when you compare it to other types of lightning grounds. Grounding is just giving a path for electricity to flow somewhere besides through the bearing. In the overall scheme of things, I’d be as interested to hear if the poles are grounded and the overhead service is strung with an overhead ground along with surge capacitors to condition line in.
If ceramic bearings were same price, I’d say it would be worth it to switch. If they cost more, I’d say not since it only takes a few minutes to change them.
This is without Any Doubt a "Texas Pit Stop Repair"!!! I wonder if they did things that way when SpindleTop Came in and made them Big,Big,Big Dollars!!!
La Nina is finally over. For me to. I had have 3 inches of standing water on the well site. Soon I will get a cast iron bridge plug installed and perforate about 10 feet and acid that and I don't know if I'll need a pump or not. I will see. It's my first well and I'm recompleting it to 1700 from 3800. Thanks for all the great videos Zac. You are an inspiration.
You caught my eye on that first video changing bearings on the tailgate. Thats when I subscribed. I appreciate your old school fixes. My Paw Paw worked in the Texaco oil field in the 60s& 70s in Manvel TX. Times have changed. And it still can be done today if you understand how things work. And you do. I started working on electric motors while in high school in 1978. I haven't forgot the old guys showing me how things work. Now I'm in the thick of things in the IPS world.
That's the first Zach video I ever saw and I loved it. Saw it a year ago when it was already 3 years old but it got me addicted to his channel and I've since learned a few things from him.
Wouldn't make you any more money to haul it home and do it "the right way" there's a time and place for perfect, but most of the time good enough is good enough.
Metallurgy is something I learned about in school.. “Electrical fluting” occurs when a current is passed through the motor bearing instead of a grounded source. PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) drive switching frequencies result in undesirable motor shaft currents, a side effect that causes bearing damage within the motor through pitting and fluting. The audible noise generated by the damaged bearings is unacceptable and motor failure soon follows.
Based on the condition of the bearing after tear down, I don’t think the motor was turning when the lightning struck. I could totally be wrong. But it sure looks like the roller balls in the bearing were stationary upon the strike/ high voltage event. Interesting to say the least
I worked on a 43' sailboat that the mast was struck. It fried all the electronics, blew the led lights out of the control panel but the stern light still worked. The bow light showed 12V to the light and the bulb was still good, but wouldn't burn. The wires to it were fried but would carry enough amperage to read on a meter but not light a bulb.
Yeah indeed Zach, the lightning induce an massive electromagnetic field in the rotor and the only way it can find a path to earth is thru the bearings. Lightning have funny way to find its way to ground, in one case a surge fried one of my file server and managed to get to ground through the ethernet cable and the port of the ethernet switch. The switch survived, but the port is dead. Since then I've invested in surge protection, but your old motor probably doesn't deserve that much money. Note that shaft grounding devices exists, especially for motors driven by variable frequency drives, these things induce lots of transients and harmonics in the rotors. Also a regular 3 phase motor have induced parasitic fields when starting or on heavy load, when the rotor is out of synch regarding to the 3 phases, and yeah this goes to ground through bearings and technically do some minuscule electric arcs and thus micro-pitting in bearings.
as an apprentice electronics engineer i did get to see how indirect lightening caused damage ,and did see a few properties where they had taken a direct hit and all the appliances were smoked , but a good friend who lived 1/4 of a mile from my parents house took a direct hit on there tv aerial and it strangely zig zaged across the roof ( concrete tiles ) and then got to the wall now the first floor outside was weather boarded over blocks and blocks were lightweight blocks but had slag in them from the iron foundry the lightening loved this and passed down through the blocks to the ground but on rout as it went every nail in them blocks in its path got blown out red hot , it blew the plaster off on route too but it was the nails coming out the skirting board and burning the carpet that shocked me , also i remember a guy i worked with laying under his old tractor working on it on the damp grass when a small lightening storm hit he burnt the hair off the back of his head when the lightening hit the ground a few hundred yards away and gave him terrible headaches for weeks mother nature is full of surprises
A was the foreman at a factory. They were digging a footer for an expansion. The backhoe lost a tooth after meeting the 480volt three phase main line into the factory. Doors were blown off the main distribution panel, and some of them mangled quite bad, fuses blown, wires melted. Damaged electronics in numerous machines throughout the factory. It does not take lightening to cause catastrophic damage. I always thought those movie scenes of electrical panels exploding were BS and not based on reality. I was wrong. What made it funny was my boss saying "have the guys sweep, they should have the power back on in an hour or so" I was like "You going to go get some flashlights so we can do that? Also, we should just send them home power won't be back on for days." It took 4 days to get power back on and another week, mostly waiting on parts, to fix all the damaged equipment.
On the topic of comments of people nawsaying your field repairs, I've had one such comment that sticks in my head. I was rebuilding an "not user serviceable" hydrostatic lawn tractor transmission. They literally included nearly a dozen timestamps in the comment of what I was doing wrong when. Some were that the geriatric dog that we had roaming the property at that time was coming into the shop, and would "drink oil", others were that it I'd followed the "service procedures"(of a non user serviceable part, so no repair manual available), I wouldn't have had trouble with the reassembly. And of course, how dirty my shop was and that I had "rusty" tools(a pair of slip joint pliers specifically, they were so before I got them used, and had been well cleaned and oiled to prevent further rust.) I also recall comments on my hammering the bearing into place as one of the issues. That lawn tractor is still in use regularly, although it's now smoking badly once warmed up, so I suspect a head gasket leak between the cylinder and valve cover sections of the head. That lawn tractor is nearing 20yrs old, if not older. I remember when it was bought, and that my grandfathers truck brought it home, and it wasn't much after 2004 that he got rid of the truck, I honestly think that guy(n my comments) thinks that every mechanical assembly needs to take place in a clean room. I'd hate to see his comments on video's of field repairs by heavy equipment mechanics and those in the mining industry. The dirt will settle to the bottom of the oil resevoior, and sit there until it's carried out with an oil change or else sit there until the machine's scrapped. The problems arise then that dirt/debris layer gets so big, that the oil currents carry it back into the oil supply for the moving parts.
This guy has the best shirts I’ve ever seen. I’ve never in my life bought anything from a person on you tube but if he was selling shirts like he wears everyday I would probably own all of them. 😂😂
As an old electrician I have seen many crazy things from lighting. Including bearing failure. You are right god enough is good enough in the real world where time and money are real perfect is not needed!!!
The lightning might have come down the line and grounded through the motor case and bearings,thus ruining them. It can be a common problem with things that are grounded through bearings,or welding things that are grounded through bearings..just like welding with the ground clamp on the 'other' side of bearings is a sure way to destroy them. Lightning is very unpredictable,it can cook things from a distance,just from the induced voltages.
Think about how a transformer works. You have an energized coil that magnetizes an iron core,and another coil in that magnetic field,that you tap power off of. It's the same thing with lightning. But,because the voltage and current (power) of the lightning strike is SO HIGH (Bazillions of watts,for a split second.),the lightning bolt itself will act as the 'primary' winding in a transformer, and induce a high voltage/current on anything metal nearby,as if the metal objects were the 'secondary' coil of a transformer. It can do that over a distance of miles. I'd bet everything metal on your lease was floating at very high voltages for a split second,during the strike.
I work in the east Texas oil field, close to the Sabine River. Our stuff is completely flooded right now. Also, I’ve seen lightning do some crazy damage to equipment. I had to replace 9 transformers on my hot taps.
here's a story that might help explain what's happening zach. Learned this at fancy car college. VW rabbit. There's a small ground strap that would often get forgotten about when folks were doing work. After a while, the transmission would fail. As it turns out, electricity was finding it's ground through the bearings and microwelding them. In a dielectric test, we are passing a high voltage through the wire and looking to see if it "jumps" anywhere it's not supposed to. Think when a car is missing because the plug wires are bad and it rained... same concept. So here I think we have the breakdown and electricity is just trying to take all paths to ground, some of which through the bearings of your motor. Hope that helps :)
In one facility I had electricians install MCG's AC power line surge protectors at every system and at main panel. Never had another failure due to lightning.
I am fixing to blow your mind. I lot of damage can happen when the lightening hits the ground and comes up the ground to the power lines. A lightening strike is so powerful that current in the ground goes ever where. The emf field can induce electricity to flow and blow out fuses and electronics. The strike could have hit the cricket pump. Hit the motor through the metal and into bearings and travels to your power panel. The effect can be felt miles away. This discharge can be miles away and not at all local.
Great video, Zach! Small water pumps go bad all the time by proximity lightening strikes! What lightening does is what it does. Not always explainable, but you can replace blown parts and keep going! Thanks for getting it done, and up and running!
The bearing is partially insulated by 1. plastic wipes to retain grease, 2. the grease itself. This results in a bearing acting almost like a capacitor. It will arc over, and its that arc that basically spot welds the bearing. You can see it in Radar Antenna bearings if something isn't grounded properly.
I get the idea of not using a press. But I'm not keen on hammering the new bearing on like that. Take a galvanized pipe nipple that fits closely over the motor shaft and put an end cap on it. Then slip that over the shaft to hammer the bearing into place. Cheap, simple and easy to use in the field but a lot safer for the bearing. Love your channel, just offering some friendly advice.
I worked in the oil field on the drilling rigs all my life I got at least 30 years old drilling rigs. One thing I learned if you weld on the draw works, you have to make sure it gets grounded out because if you don’t wind up, going through the bearings destroy that electricity will for sure. It’s because you get little arcs between the bearings and the race and the same thing goes for like welding on a pick up truck. You have to be careful. Make sure if you’re welding on the frame you disconnect them ground wires, destroy the engine vehicle because it are between them bearings and I’m not talking about all those new school stuff that you got a disconnect batteries for I’m talking the old school stuff learn all that stuff from welders
@@wdcjunk I get 50 miles from the rig and I'm cursing like a sailor and talking about something some other person rigged up that isn't named Jerry.. I suppose it's probably easier since he's by himself and not mad at other people, it's easy to curse at yourself in your head.
Pretty good way to shorten the lifespan of the bearings by hammering on the outer bearing race. When putting bearings onto shafts, bang on the inner race; put a pipe over the shaft and hammer on the pipe. If you're putting bearings into engines/transmissions/gearboxes; hit the outer race.
The thing about lightning is that it isn't just a bolt coming down from the clouds. There is also a ground reflux which reaches up from the earth to meet the downward bolt. You never really see the ground reflux, because it is several orders of magnitude weaker than the main strike, but if you happen to be in the way, it's still lethal, and it still can cause a lot of physical damage to equipment. I do wonder if the reflux is responsible for the bearing damage. It would be interesting to find out.
When installing a new bearing use at least a pipe to hammer through the inner race only, hammering on the outer race like you did significantly shortens the lifespan of the bearing since they are not designed to withstand such side shock loads at all.
Something similar kills gyros or reaction wheels in satellites actually. In that case the solar flares make electricity that can melt spots on the bearings or races.
This is some of the best content on the web. Stuff I would have never imagined but so cool to learn about. This knowledge goes far beyond the oil field. Lightening rods on my new rurual home are a priority.
Our place is on a knoll with exposure all around. We have had seven expensive lightning claims over the years, all electrical/electronic damage. When we built here the was a row of maples along the road but the building was taller. Of the eight trees seven are about 70' tall. The other is about thirty feet tall and flat topped like a hedge. We haven't had any electrical damage for 15 years because that tree is our lightning rod and isn't showing any signs of dying.
Coming from the logging woods, I can definitely relate to the style in which repairs are made... Back in the haydays men would simply leave older machines in the woods & start new jobs with brand new machines. They were so deep in the loot, it was more productive to run a brand new steam donkey instead of repairing a well used one. Fastforward 100 years & things are still similar. In a sense that as long as production is met every day, what works, works. Its just morphed into buying new as soon as the first excuse to arises, to makingthings work no matter what. I ran a 380TJ with a mechanical 5.9 that would eat a gallon of oil before lunchtime (10am) & another by quitting time (2pm). Pulled hard enough to make good production.. Also that was back when bar oil was cheap & apparently more than adequate for a loose 5.9 cummins haha. I've put absolutely filthy hydraulic fluid into machines & jerry rigged about everything imaginable on a timberjack450c & a cat d6c. Old timers taught me how to mend broken covers on chainsaws with thick rawhide & pop rivets. The complainers would have their heads fall off & roll away if they saw the amount of dirt that goes along with any sort of woods repairs. Ive worked on 855 big cam engines extensively on the side of mountains , with a nice 2 foot deep mud puddel to lay in. It gets fixed where it broke & lordy lordy can that get interesting! The complainers will also scoff at the amount of cheap tools around. If you let it leave your hand, chances are its now buried under some duff. Ive tossed tools a mere 20', seen where they landed exactly,, only to never see them again. The forest floor eats tools. So why use tool truck tools when harbor freight stuff works AND you can lose them without as much guilt.. as long as the cold chisels stay sharp, then no brokem fastner will ruin the entire day!! Man I got a little carried away while reminiscing
You're not wrong. There are systems to ground the motor shaft of electric motors or to impress current across the shaft and other parts. If you have a floating ground contact or two that are grounding the shaft, then you will have less issues with the bearings being eaten by the micro-welds from a lightning strike. Likewise, ground everything together with copper wire (you could use stainless steel wire as well but it isn't to NEC) and use brass contacts or brushes where rotating parts are involved. Gas discharge tubes help as well but in this environment, they will sound like a shotgun going off.
I've had lightning take out the breaker panel in my camper trailer. The strike was on a power pole that dropped overhead 7200 volts from overhead to underground, the arrester on that pole failed to clamp the transient down and the excess power went through the pad transformer and down the underground feed past 5 other trailers and into mine where it found a good ground to go into but not before it blew the breaker panel apart and smokes several electronic devices. My camper has extra grounding from the bumper to a grounding rod at each end of the trailer as well as grounding at the antenna mast so I must have had the only good ground in the path which said alot about the electrical hookups between me and that pole that got hit and their grounding status.. I did get the job to completely replace the entire RV sections electrical feeds and hookups which were circa 1980's and therefore brought it all up to code as of 2023
Love your videos! I love your passion for sharing your expertise, experiences and knowledge of oil wells! Keep up the good work!! (P.S. You've won me over on a hammer vs a press!!)
I’ve seen that in motor bearings where the motor is connected to a AC inverter. We go to ceramic bearings. They say it’s because they didn’t use inverter rated cable. But I don’t really know why it happens.
@@Hhllbb2476 expensive. Never tried hammering them on. Another fix for shaft grounding I’ve seen is using Aegis Rings. They mount on the outside of the end bell. One on each side.
Sir if I may say so. When you replace those bearings again before doing so if you replace the grease that is in the new bearings with nonconducting grease your bearings won’t burn up next time.
Perhaps the case parts need a bonding wire between them and ground and packing the bearings with a conductive grease to dissipate the crazy currents flowing between the shaft and the case. OR - buy more bearings and wait 4 years to worry about it :-)))))
Zach, you are like a one man NASCAR pit crew, on that motor repair. “that repair won’t last through the day”…, hahaha.! Just joking. Looks to me like that original repair was just fine, an electrical motor can only take so much current. Lightning is a force to be reckoned with… Great video, Thank you sir.
This is well known in the motor industry. Motors used on large VFD inverters also have this problem of inducing currents in the bearings. They make insulated bearings to prevent this. Also passing wires thru toroid rings can help prevent this. Replacing bearings is much cheaper than these methods.
Bearing isolators for VFD motors are effective and worth it for induced currents from VFD high frequency switching(a few thousand volts). Probably would not help with lightening. Once the bearings get that burned spot in them, it's downhill from there. I don't think the isolators would work for lightening voltages. But, bearings are cheap, if you can find them.
So down in Florida where they have most lightning in all the USA they use something that they call bottle bushes , on high radio towers . They got stand off bracket like [ this bout 2 foot tall. Running through the stand off / mounting bracket they got a stainless steel circular bush about 2 inches in diameter. Like the kind you run through a barrel of a rifle only a lot bigger than. Rather the normal lightning protection that runs a line down to a ground rod to make a path for the lightning to go. The bottle bush dissipates the static electricity so you never have a strike. Tad bit expensive so how much money are you losing to burn up equipment? You would have to mount it up pretty high . Not sure if you got room with High voltage on the pole . Probably mount to a pole that has secondary or low voltage running on it .
Lightning does some strange stuff. Check the ground rod at the meter. If it's less than the best it can be, lightning will continue following power until it finds an optimal ground. A pump jack with a few thousand feet of sucker rod would make a pretty good one. If the meter has anything less than a good 8ft ground rod I'd get it replaced. That still won't guarantee it can't happen again. Lightning does what it wants and all you can do is confirm you've done the best you can.
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35,000 Hours on those bearings but killed by lightning. Good bearings!
1 of 2
I've seen that exact failure mode. I worked on the aviation field and a Merlin came in that had taken a lightning strike to one prop. The current went through the bearings in the engine, out the tailcone, back into the structure and out the static discharge wick in the tail. You could see where the arcing occurred on the bearing races. It magnetized every bit of ferrous metal in that engine and the engine mount and I had to figure out ways to demagnetize everything. I took the small parts to the other side of the field and passed them through their demagnetizing coil on the magnaflux machine, To demagnetize the engine mount I had a guy come in who did in place industrial magnafluxing and wrap his coil around the engfine mount. It all worked well.
Reminds me of the saying "Its only Temporary unless it works, then its good enough!"
ahaha i use to work in a factory where that statement was the law
Hi, I'm an electrical engineer who works with high voltages and currents. Lightning can produce 50,000 A or more. If it it arcs to the shaft and the current goes through the bearing it's like spot welding. So it does not surprise. I also spent a summer in the oil patch in west Texas 50 years ago so this takes me back.
As a retired mechanic I appreciate your "it's good enough" attitude.
Many times heard “can’t see or hear it from my house” 😂
The large voltage surge cased by the lighting uses the field coils to build up a large magnetic field that when it collapses causes a spark\arc to ground through the bearing. It works the same way as the collapsing magnetic field in an ignition coil generates the high voltage spark in your car engine.
lightning destroys bearing and anything electrical destructive
LOL... Because there is no way a static discharge could possibly run through the ground side...
I was thinking something similar that big buildup of charge has to go somewhere and there's a lot more wires in the rotor just like a ignition coil.
@@Failure_Is_An_Option You may test your statement (and your South African invented ELCB if you have one) by standing barefoot in a pool of salty water and grasping any bare live or neutral conductor in your house😬😀
@@andrewallen9993 Agreed, lightning testing is performed on electronics using a dampened sinusoidal waveform. I’ve seen dramatic physical effects hard for engineering to foresee. The skin effects can take very odd paths.
You can do yourself a favor and drive those bearings on using a length of pipe so that you’re using the inner race and not the outer one. When you bang on the outer race you’re asking for premature bearing failure. Trust me on this. 🤷🏻♂️😩
Absolutely!! 👍
That blown off panel cover is a fantastic look into what happened to your bearings in said devices. For just a brief moment- everything held a charge and and then had to find a way to get rid of that charge.
*potential
I once had a golf ball size plasma '' Ball lightning '' pop out of old mirror light and float across the bathroom and Arc burn the wall !
Lightning can do some crazy stuff. I was an insurance adjuster for many years and the the most memorable lightning claim I had was to a two story garage/shed. Garage below with living quarters upstairs. Lightning hit a tree about 10 feet away from the garage jumped to the aluminum sliding glass door upstairs traveled down to the rebar in the concrete floor of the garage, blew out some chunks of concrete from the floor on it's way to the opposite wall where it blew a hole in the wall taking some exterior siding with it. Absolutely nuts.
Hahaha geez.
that’s crazy LOL
Bearings are selected by the manufacturer to run a certain number of hours before failure. For HVAC machinery in a healthcare setting we specify "L-10, 100,000" bearings. That means that only 10% of the bearings would be expected to fail at 100,000-hours of run time (90% are still going at 100,000-hours). A typical small electric motor usually comes with an "L-10, 50,000" bearing or less. Of course bearing life depends heavily upon load and rpm, plus environmental conditions. We have battled mostly VFD-induced harmonic voltage spike problems in our motor bearings, which causes them to pit and fail prematurely. We now use ceramic bearings in large motors as they are immune to that problem (non-conductive). Great videos; really enjoy your channel.
Aren’t you using vfd compatible motors?
Vfd compatible basically just means grounding ring…I’m not a fan of grounding rings anymore.ceramic bearings seem to hold up better.
My favorite rags are the ones that they gotta cut up, old shirts and towels and junk. Man I've found some amazing treasures in rag bags/boxes... found a dress in one, I wore that the rest of the day, when the relief came on I was making a connection by myself in my summer dress, did relief and walked out the doghouse and the day consultant was standing outside watching me walk down the stairs, he just shook his head and never mentioned it.. plenty of random things to put on my head too, those animal kids towels with the animal heads on them are always a treat. I swear the people that chop them up see whatever is printed on them and do their best to keep the logo intact... new rag box day has always been my favorite day on the rig.
As far as how you work on YOUR wells, man that's up to you, I'm sure alot of "pumpers" have worked for bigger companies that wouldn't blink an eye to replace an electric motor on a well thats pumping 200bbls a day... but when you're working with what you've got, as far as I remember none of them ole girls are ragers, you just gotta work on stuff to make it work. You fix stuff till the cast iron breaks. 4 years on an electric pump running 4 years for some minor repair work is a huge win in my books man. I'm not sure people understand that you make a living but you're probably not making millions off your hard work. I've worked in the oilfield since 2010 mostly on pulling units and I know the struggle, and I know what works and what doesn't. I've seen companies spend 10x more and get the same longevity out of their as the well next to em that I pulled that's rodded up correctly, treated correctly, and pumped at the right speed.
That's the good and bad thing about youtube comments, you either get experts... or you get "experts" that talk a lot and have never spent a day in the field. Keep doing what you've always been doing man id bet my next check you got more experience working on this iron than 99.9% of the people leaving comments telling you you're doing it wrong.
Exactly. Thanks.
Lightening can do strange things. It pretty much does what it wants and goes where it feels like.
Q: what insulation stops a spark capable of ionising more than 2 kilometers of air?
A: absolutely nothing!
Many years ago I rented 2 bdrm upstairs apartment. We lost half power to one side of apartment. I had my speed bag and weights set up there. I ran up and checked roof for any holes due to lightening strikes, I found none. A friend told me to check back Yard for burn marks in Grass. And I'll be darn if there wasn't a 50' burn apox 3" wide path that lightening hit ground between 2 trees and continued to electric meter then it must have dumped its energy into breaker, well it was actually fuse box holding 30 amp fuses. It fried fridge, my TV and stereo. This was back in early 80's and house was way older than that. So old it had newspaper clippings from late 1800's in walls for insulation
The freaking part is NO BODY control mother nature. Yet its truly wild the path lightening takes
Lightening...teeth?
Oil Field version of a racing pitstop! Well done Zach
That would have been one hell of a fuse firework when it went off!
Heard a good'n the other day.
"We aint gonna get it right, we gonna get it running."
Another fine example of our jobs is "make it go"
Perfect is the enemy of good
I usually say perfect is the enemy of done
@@imtired8004 I definitely like that
Yup perfect is the enemy of done. @@imtired8004
Ah yes, the old "beat the hell out of the bearing" installation method
He are keep him self occupied. Work will never end. 😅
I grew up on a farm, and I totally understand the field repair philosophy. Great Video!
Reminds me of the old 20/80% rule. You can have 8 wells pumping for 20% of the efforts to have 1 perfect one.
You are a good business man to not waste precious timer polishing a turd. Your attitude is the difference between making money on a small or marginal well and going broke. Men like you bu8ilt America and I congratulate you! As to the lightning and bearings, you are right. When they arc across, the arcs leave burned spots where it needs to be polished. You can do the same damage if you put a welding ground on one side of a bearing and strike your arc on the other.
Motors on VFD’s are even harder on bearings. There’s a grounding kit to ground the rotor and shaft that saves them from arcing. Electricity does strange things and lightning is even worse.
I wonder if that would have prevented this damage. Someone else mentioned ceramic bearings which might help also.
@@michael931it would have to lessen the chances of lightning bearing damage when you compare it to other types of lightning grounds. Grounding is just giving a path for electricity to flow somewhere besides through the bearing.
In the overall scheme of things, I’d be as interested to hear if the poles are grounded and the overhead service is strung with an overhead ground along with surge capacitors to condition line in.
@@waggtech4883 I'm fairly certain there is no overhead ground. He strings his own 12K AFAIK. He does his own medium voltage work.
If ceramic bearings were same price, I’d say it would be worth it to switch. If they cost more, I’d say not since it only takes a few minutes to change them.
@@halfwayfarmsandoutdoors3550
Ceramic bearings for the security of healthcare HVAC systems......
Iv been a heavy equipment mechanic for 25 years. I’ve also learned the value of “good enough”
You’re the opposite of someone who works well under constant supervision. Thanks for bringing us along.
This is without Any Doubt a "Texas Pit
Stop Repair"!!! I wonder if they did things that way when SpindleTop
Came in and made them Big,Big,Big
Dollars!!!
I worked for 40 years in the oilfield (mostly offshore) and you are right, good enough is good enough😑.
Your shirts are always awesome. You need one that says “Kill’em with kindness or baffle em with bullsh*t” 😂. Got that saying from the dad…
"Well Engineered" and "Good Enough" are synonymous! I love seeing you work man. It is amazing what the Utubes has brought to us!
La Nina is finally over. For me to. I had have 3 inches of standing water on the well site. Soon I will get a cast iron bridge plug installed and perforate about 10 feet and acid that and I don't know if I'll need a pump or not. I will see. It's my first well and I'm recompleting it to 1700 from 3800. Thanks for all the great videos Zac. You are an inspiration.
Go get ‘em kid!
It's been a swamp.
It’s Saturday night at the movies! WOW that cover sure took a beating.
You caught my eye on that first video changing bearings on the tailgate. Thats when I subscribed. I appreciate your old school fixes. My Paw Paw worked in the Texaco oil field in the 60s& 70s in Manvel TX. Times have changed. And it still can be done today if you understand how things work. And you do. I started working on electric motors while in high school in 1978. I haven't forgot the old guys showing me how things work. Now I'm in the thick of things in the IPS world.
That's the first Zach video I ever saw and I loved it. Saw it a year ago when it was already 3 years old but it got me addicted to his channel and I've since learned a few things from him.
Haha Thanks.
Wouldn't make you any more money to haul it home and do it "the right way" there's a time and place for perfect, but most of the time good enough is good enough.
Metallurgy is something I learned about in school.. “Electrical fluting” occurs when a current is passed through the motor bearing instead of a grounded source. PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) drive switching frequencies result in undesirable motor shaft currents, a side effect that causes bearing damage within the motor through pitting and fluting. The audible noise generated by the damaged bearings is unacceptable and motor failure soon follows.
Based on the condition of the bearing after tear down, I don’t think the motor was turning when the lightning struck. I could totally be wrong. But it sure looks like the roller balls in the bearing were stationary upon the strike/ high voltage event. Interesting to say the least
As a kid I watched my Dad work on equipment in the field, sometimes it was a 2 pound or maybe a 5 pound hammer problem. Way to go!
I worked on a 43' sailboat that the mast was struck. It fried all the electronics, blew the led lights out of the control panel but the stern light still worked. The bow light showed 12V to the light and the bulb was still good, but wouldn't burn. The wires to it were fried but would carry enough amperage to read on a meter but not light a bulb.
Yeah indeed Zach, the lightning induce an massive electromagnetic field in the rotor and the only way it can find a path to earth is thru the bearings.
Lightning have funny way to find its way to ground, in one case a surge fried one of my file server and managed to get to ground through the ethernet cable and the port of the ethernet switch. The switch survived, but the port is dead.
Since then I've invested in surge protection, but your old motor probably doesn't deserve that much money. Note that shaft grounding devices exists, especially for motors driven by variable frequency drives, these things induce lots of transients and harmonics in the rotors. Also a regular 3 phase motor have induced parasitic fields when starting or on heavy load, when the rotor is out of synch regarding to the 3 phases, and yeah this goes to ground through bearings and technically do some minuscule electric arcs and thus micro-pitting in bearings.
as an apprentice electronics engineer i did get to see how indirect lightening caused damage ,and did see a few properties where they had taken a direct hit and all the appliances were smoked , but a good friend who lived 1/4 of a mile from my parents house took a direct hit on there tv aerial and it strangely zig zaged across the roof ( concrete tiles ) and then got to the wall now the first floor outside was weather boarded over blocks and blocks were lightweight blocks but had slag in them from the iron foundry the lightening loved this and passed down through the blocks to the ground but on rout as it went every nail in them blocks in its path got blown out red hot , it blew the plaster off on route too but it was the nails coming out the skirting board and burning the carpet that shocked me , also i remember a guy i worked with laying under his old tractor working on it on the damp grass when a small lightening storm hit he burnt the hair off the back of his head when the lightening hit the ground a few hundred yards away and gave him terrible headaches for weeks mother nature is full of surprises
A was the foreman at a factory. They were digging a footer for an expansion. The backhoe lost a tooth after meeting the 480volt three phase main line into the factory. Doors were blown off the main distribution panel, and some of them mangled quite bad, fuses blown, wires melted. Damaged electronics in numerous machines throughout the factory. It does not take lightening to cause catastrophic damage. I always thought those movie scenes of electrical panels exploding were BS and not based on reality. I was wrong. What made it funny was my boss saying "have the guys sweep, they should have the power back on in an hour or so" I was like "You going to go get some flashlights so we can do that? Also, we should just send them home power won't be back on for days." It took 4 days to get power back on and another week, mostly waiting on parts, to fix all the damaged equipment.
On the topic of comments of people nawsaying your field repairs, I've had one such comment that sticks in my head. I was rebuilding an "not user serviceable" hydrostatic lawn tractor transmission. They literally included nearly a dozen timestamps in the comment of what I was doing wrong when. Some were that the geriatric dog that we had roaming the property at that time was coming into the shop, and would "drink oil", others were that it I'd followed the "service procedures"(of a non user serviceable part, so no repair manual available), I wouldn't have had trouble with the reassembly. And of course, how dirty my shop was and that I had "rusty" tools(a pair of slip joint pliers specifically, they were so before I got them used, and had been well cleaned and oiled to prevent further rust.) I also recall comments on my hammering the bearing into place as one of the issues. That lawn tractor is still in use regularly, although it's now smoking badly once warmed up, so I suspect a head gasket leak between the cylinder and valve cover sections of the head. That lawn tractor is nearing 20yrs old, if not older. I remember when it was bought, and that my grandfathers truck brought it home, and it wasn't much after 2004 that he got rid of the truck,
I honestly think that guy(n my comments) thinks that every mechanical assembly needs to take place in a clean room. I'd hate to see his comments on video's of field repairs by heavy equipment mechanics and those in the mining industry. The dirt will settle to the bottom of the oil resevoior, and sit there until it's carried out with an oil change or else sit there until the machine's scrapped. The problems arise then that dirt/debris layer gets so big, that the oil currents carry it back into the oil supply for the moving parts.
Mostly working in the dirt in coal country. All the good valuable stuff is in the shop and truckers can’t afford to even unhook for wheel bearings.
This guy has the best shirts I’ve ever seen. I’ve never in my life bought anything from a person on you tube but if he was selling shirts like he wears everyday I would probably own all of them. 😂😂
Hahaha. thanks.
As an old electrician I have seen many crazy things from lighting. Including bearing failure. You are right god enough is good enough in the real world where time and money are real perfect is not needed!!!
The spicy finger of mother Earth does what it wants you can't stop it it's just like water it's going to win somehow
The lightning might have come down the line and grounded through the motor case and bearings,thus ruining them. It can be a common problem with things that are grounded through bearings,or welding things that are grounded through bearings..just like welding with the ground clamp on the 'other' side of bearings is a sure way to destroy them. Lightning is very unpredictable,it can cook things from a distance,just from the induced voltages.
Think about how a transformer works. You have an energized coil that magnetizes an iron core,and another coil in that magnetic field,that you tap power off of. It's the same thing with lightning. But,because the voltage and current (power) of the lightning strike is SO HIGH (Bazillions of watts,for a split second.),the lightning bolt itself will act as the 'primary' winding in a transformer, and induce a high voltage/current on anything metal nearby,as if the metal objects were the 'secondary' coil of a transformer. It can do that over a distance of miles. I'd bet everything metal on your lease was floating at very high voltages for a split second,during the strike.
My son gives me grap when things I "temporary" fixed 40 years ago need repair and don't meet his standards. OK, no problem, you fix it your way!
I work in the east Texas oil field, close to the Sabine River. Our stuff is completely flooded right now. Also, I’ve seen lightning do some crazy damage to equipment. I had to replace 9 transformers on my hot taps.
Instant steam????
@@JohnSmith-pl2bk dude…I wish I could’ve seen it happen. Instant steam, and instant metal vapor.
here's a story that might help explain what's happening zach. Learned this at fancy car college.
VW rabbit. There's a small ground strap that would often get forgotten about when folks were doing work. After a while, the transmission would fail. As it turns out, electricity was finding it's ground through the bearings and microwelding them.
In a dielectric test, we are passing a high voltage through the wire and looking to see if it "jumps" anywhere it's not supposed to. Think when a car is missing because the plug wires are bad and it rained... same concept.
So here I think we have the breakdown and electricity is just trying to take all paths to ground, some of which through the bearings of your motor.
Hope that helps :)
In one facility I had electricians install MCG's AC power line surge protectors at every system and at main panel. Never had another failure due to lightning.
I am fixing to blow your mind. I lot of damage can happen when the lightening hits the ground and comes up the ground to the power lines. A lightening strike is so powerful that current in the ground goes ever where. The emf field can induce electricity to flow and blow out fuses and electronics. The strike could have hit the cricket pump. Hit the motor through the metal and into bearings and travels to your power panel. The effect can be felt miles away. This discharge can be miles away and not at all local.
Great video, Zach! Small water pumps go bad all the time by proximity lightening strikes! What lightening does is what it does. Not always explainable, but you can replace blown parts and keep going!
Thanks for getting it done, and up and running!
The bearing is partially insulated by 1. plastic wipes to retain grease, 2. the grease itself. This results in a bearing acting almost like a capacitor. It will arc over, and its that arc that basically spot welds the bearing. You can see it in Radar Antenna bearings if something isn't grounded properly.
I get the idea of not using a press. But I'm not keen on hammering the new bearing on like that. Take a galvanized pipe nipple that fits closely over the motor shaft and put an end cap on it. Then slip that over the shaft to hammer the bearing into place. Cheap, simple and easy to use in the field but a lot safer for the bearing. Love your channel, just offering some friendly advice.
I worked in the oil field on the drilling rigs all my life I got at least 30 years old drilling rigs. One thing I learned if you weld on the draw works, you have to make sure it gets grounded out because if you don’t wind up, going through the bearings destroy that electricity will for sure. It’s because you get little arcs between the bearings and the race and the same thing goes for like welding on a pick up truck. You have to be careful. Make sure if you’re welding on the frame you disconnect them ground wires, destroy the engine vehicle because it are between them bearings and I’m not talking about all those new school stuff that you got a disconnect batteries for I’m talking the old school stuff learn all that stuff from welders
Hi one thing I just noticed about your videos I’ve watched a bunch of them is that you never use any profanity really appreciate that.
I have no idea how he manages it with some of the stuff he has to deal with.
@@wdcjunk I get 50 miles from the rig and I'm cursing like a sailor and talking about something some other person rigged up that isn't named Jerry.. I suppose it's probably easier since he's by himself and not mad at other people, it's easy to curse at yourself in your head.
I try not to lol.
oilfield guy not cursing thats unheard of
Pretty good way to shorten the lifespan of the bearings by hammering on the outer bearing race. When putting bearings onto shafts, bang on the inner race; put a pipe over the shaft and hammer on the pipe. If you're putting bearings into engines/transmissions/gearboxes; hit the outer race.
"DeBearing".....Exellent !
Use an automotive stethoscope to listen to the motor bearings!
Well, I must say the cover of your disconnect box blasting off its hinges is nothing short of impressive, LOL.
The thing about lightning is that it isn't just a bolt coming down from the clouds. There is also a ground reflux which reaches up from the earth to meet the downward bolt. You never really see the ground reflux, because it is several orders of magnitude weaker than the main strike, but if you happen to be in the way, it's still lethal, and it still can cause a lot of physical damage to equipment. I do wonder if the reflux is responsible for the bearing damage. It would be interesting to find out.
I understand what u mean, my perfectionism actually hurts getting anything done because I get discouraged because it’s not perfect. So I stop trying
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it lol
Your 'in my mind' Production Duty Cycle is in the high 99% range.
Thats as good as it gets with machinery. Cheers mate🇦🇺
When installing a new bearing use at least a pipe to hammer through the inner race only, hammering on the outer race like you did significantly shortens the lifespan of the bearing since they are not designed to withstand such side shock loads at all.
Or a bronze drift
Something similar kills gyros or reaction wheels in satellites actually. In that case the solar flares make electricity that can melt spots on the bearings or races.
Thanks for bringing us along. Can't argue with the results.
Good enough IS good enough. If it works, that IT! Blessings
This is some of the best content on the web. Stuff I would have never imagined but so cool to learn about. This knowledge goes far beyond the oil field. Lightening rods on my new rurual home are a priority.
Our place is on a knoll with exposure all around. We have had seven expensive lightning claims over the years, all electrical/electronic damage. When we built here the was a row of maples along the road but the building was taller. Of the eight trees seven are about 70' tall. The other is about thirty feet tall and flat topped like a hedge. We haven't had any electrical damage for 15 years because that tree is our lightning rod and isn't showing any signs of dying.
Glad to see a mechanic that doesn’t wear rubber gloves lol
Dang that fotboy is fast!!😂
Hahaha
Your motor your call ,and it is a good one .excellent video thanks for sharing.
LOVE THE WAY YOU WORK AND HOW YOU CAN OPERATE ALL THOSE WELLS 😅
Coming from the logging woods, I can definitely relate to the style in which repairs are made... Back in the haydays men would simply leave older machines in the woods & start new jobs with brand new machines. They were so deep in the loot, it was more productive to run a brand new steam donkey instead of repairing a well used one. Fastforward 100 years & things are still similar. In a sense that as long as production is met every day, what works, works. Its just morphed into buying new as soon as the first excuse to arises, to makingthings work no matter what. I ran a 380TJ with a mechanical 5.9 that would eat a gallon of oil before lunchtime (10am) & another by quitting time (2pm). Pulled hard enough to make good production.. Also that was back when bar oil was cheap & apparently more than adequate for a loose 5.9 cummins haha.
I've put absolutely filthy hydraulic fluid into machines & jerry rigged about everything imaginable on a timberjack450c & a cat d6c. Old timers taught me how to mend broken covers on chainsaws with thick rawhide & pop rivets.
The complainers would have their heads fall off & roll away if they saw the amount of dirt that goes along with any sort of woods repairs. Ive worked on 855 big cam engines extensively on the side of mountains , with a nice 2 foot deep mud puddel to lay in. It gets fixed where it broke & lordy lordy can that get interesting!
The complainers will also scoff at the amount of cheap tools around. If you let it leave your hand, chances are its now buried under some duff. Ive tossed tools a mere 20', seen where they landed exactly,, only to never see them again. The forest floor eats tools. So why use tool truck tools when harbor freight stuff works AND you can lose them without as much guilt.. as long as the cold chisels stay sharp, then no brokem fastner will ruin the entire day!!
Man I got a little carried away while reminiscing
This is a prim example of a so-called “hammer mechanic”. Just “get er done!
You're not wrong. There are systems to ground the motor shaft of electric motors or to impress current across the shaft and other parts. If you have a floating ground contact or two that are grounding the shaft, then you will have less issues with the bearings being eaten by the micro-welds from a lightning strike. Likewise, ground everything together with copper wire (you could use stainless steel wire as well but it isn't to NEC) and use brass contacts or brushes where rotating parts are involved. Gas discharge tubes help as well but in this environment, they will sound like a shotgun going off.
I usuallg say to myself "its good enough for who its for"
Wow Zach, I thought it was windy up here in MT but your area blows me away (pun intended).
Lightning will Arc through any ground path.
I appreciate how you get the job done. Carry on sir.
Weve had bearings in 600 hp motors do the same thing we suspect its caused by eddy currents in the rotor arcing through the bearings
I've had lightning take out the breaker panel in my camper trailer. The strike was on a power pole that dropped overhead 7200 volts from overhead to underground, the arrester on that pole failed to clamp the transient down and the excess power went through the pad transformer and down the underground feed past 5 other trailers and into mine where it found a good ground to go into but not before it blew the breaker panel apart and smokes several electronic devices. My camper has extra grounding from the bumper to a grounding rod at each end of the trailer as well as grounding at the antenna mast so I must have had the only good ground in the path which said alot about the electrical hookups between me and that pole that got hit and their grounding status.. I did get the job to completely replace the entire RV sections electrical feeds and hookups which were circa 1980's and therefore brought it all up to code as of 2023
wow. never seen a fuse pop like that haha
Love your videos! I love your passion for sharing your expertise, experiences and knowledge of oil wells! Keep up the good work!! (P.S. You've won me over on a hammer vs a press!!)
I did same with car hub bearings, drove it 7 more years till it went to the junk yard
I’ve seen that in motor bearings where the motor is connected to a AC inverter. We go to ceramic bearings. They say it’s because they didn’t use inverter rated cable. But I don’t really know why it happens.
Can you hammer on a ceramic bearing at all? Is there a big price difference?
@@Hhllbb2476 expensive. Never tried hammering them on. Another fix for shaft grounding I’ve seen is using Aegis Rings. They mount on the outside of the end bell. One on each side.
Spot welded the balls to the race. Really interesting. That was cool.
I see the Roundhouse jeans label. Made in America. I wear their bibs
Yes. I keep meaning to say something. USA.
Sir if I may say so. When you replace those bearings again before doing so if you replace the grease that is in the new bearings with nonconducting grease your bearings won’t burn up next time.
Another great video just keep it all turning.
High current load can absolutely jump across a bearing be it roller or even babbit it can also happen under certain circumstances during welding
Great bearing fix
Perhaps the case parts need a bonding wire between them and ground and packing the bearings with a conductive grease to dissipate the crazy currents flowing between the shaft and the case. OR - buy more bearings and wait 4 years to worry about it :-)))))
Zach, you are like a one man NASCAR pit crew, on that motor repair. “that repair won’t last through the day”…, hahaha.! Just joking. Looks to me like that original repair was just fine, an electrical motor can only take so much current. Lightning is a force to be reckoned with…
Great video,
Thank you sir.
100 dollars per bearing
This is well known in the motor industry. Motors used on large VFD inverters also have this problem of inducing currents in the bearings. They make insulated bearings to prevent this. Also passing wires thru toroid rings can help prevent this. Replacing bearings is much cheaper than these methods.
Keeping expenses down is the only way to make money on old wells that don't produce much oil, great job Zach.
Fluting, I see it a lot on VFD controlled motors.you can get a grounding ring on the shaft .
I can’t wait for the videos on the dragster. 😀 (But any video you make will be great, and I will watch it.)
Bearing isolators for VFD motors are effective and worth it for induced currents from VFD high frequency switching(a few thousand volts). Probably would not help with lightening. Once the bearings get that burned spot in them, it's downhill from there. I don't think the isolators would work for lightening voltages. But, bearings are cheap, if you can find them.
Lightning will absolutely destroy bearings.
So down in Florida where they have most lightning in all the USA they use something that they call bottle bushes , on high radio towers . They got stand off bracket like [ this bout 2 foot tall. Running through the stand off / mounting bracket they got a stainless steel circular bush about 2 inches in diameter. Like the kind you run through a barrel of a rifle only a lot bigger than. Rather the normal lightning protection that runs a line down to a ground rod to make a path for the lightning to go. The bottle bush dissipates the static electricity so you never have a strike. Tad bit expensive so how much money are you losing to burn up equipment? You would have to mount it up pretty high . Not sure if you got room with High voltage on the pole . Probably mount to a pole that has secondary or low voltage running on it .
I see Tessco sells all kinds of grounding gear. Call what you’re talking about a Gila-Stat.
Lightning does some strange stuff.
Check the ground rod at the meter. If it's less than the best it can be, lightning will continue following power until it finds an optimal ground. A pump jack with a few thousand feet of sucker rod would make a pretty good one. If the meter has anything less than a good 8ft ground rod I'd get it replaced. That still won't guarantee it can't happen again. Lightning does what it wants and all you can do is confirm you've done the best you can.