US 4,055,981 AGranted

Portable guardrail straightener for field use

OwnerBarry W. Olsoninventor

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Abstract

A portable guardrail straightener for field use whereby damaged guardrails along highways may be straightened without the necessity of removing and retrieving the guardrails to a shop site for repair, the portable guardrail straightener for field use comprising a mechanism to be mounted on a vehicle whereby the mechanism is transported from one field location to another, the mechanism further comprising a guardrail straightening jig comprising two matching dies the configuration of which conforms to the cross section of an undamaged guardrail, one die being mounted to a reciprocable carriage driven by a two-way cylinder between open and closed positions and the other die being mounted to a fixed frame such that once the dies are located horizontally juxtaposed a damaged section of guardrail and closed, the damaged guardrail will be cold deformed into substantially its initial longitudinal and cross-sectional configuration.

Claims8

Dependent claims

A portable guardrail straightener for field use in highway maintenance comprising:

vehicle means
a pressure-applying mechanism;
means mounting the pressure-applying mechanism to the vehicle means;
the pressure-applying mechanism comprising:
first frame means;
first die means comprising top and bottom edges and opposed ends, the cross sections configuration of the first die means substantially matching the original configuration of a damaged guardrail to be straightened the first die means being mounted adjacent one edge thereof to the first frame means for being positioned adjacent one side of said damaged guardrail in the field;
second frame means;
second die means comprising top and bottom edges and opposed ends, the cross sectional configuration of the second die means substantially matching the configuration of both the damaged guardrail and the first die means, the second die means being mounted adjacent one edge thereof to the second frame means for being positioned adjacent the other side of damaged guardrail the edges of said first and second die means remote from the edges adjacent the frame means opening for lateral damaged guardrail access;
pressure-applying power means relatively reciprocating the first and second die means between an open condition and a closed condition contiguous with the damaged guardrail thereby cold deforming the damaged guardrail substantially into its original cross sectional and longitudinal configuration.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.