- Shadowing Journal -

Time: 11:00

Date: 10/30/20

Place: Titan Machinery, Watertown SD, Clark, SD

Total Hours Spent Shadowing: 5

Mentor’s Signature _____________________________________

Observations
Today Ryman called me and asked if I wanted to go on a service call by Clark. Of course, I said
yes so, I left school as soon as possible and headed to Watertown. He was up getting parts, so I
just went and talked to Darin for a bit. His son wanted to shoot a deer this year and my dad had
borrowed him one of our rifles, so we just talked about that for a bit and waited for Ryman. Once
Ryman was on his way back, he had a legit shopping cart filled with parts and said we had to go
replace a DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) system. I figured this would be a big job. Once we had
everything packed away in the service truck. We headed off to Clark, but we had to stop and fill
up the truck with diesel and grabbed some lunch. We got just passed Clark and found the field
the combine was in and Ryman was going to look at one place first to make sure it wasn’t
leaking the new went into the cab to run some tests. We hooked his computer up to the combine
and ran a DEF pressure test to see if we could get it to build pressure which it was not before.
The test went smoothly, and it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The problem was this
combine has a hot weather DEF pump and not a cold weather one. Ryman made some calls, and
we got the OK to go ahead and change it. I really could not help with this part because where it
was located was a very small space. I just chilled and looked around at the combine. After he
installed the pump we went and ran that very same test again and it was the same result. Pressure
built up nice and went down nice. Then he went over to talk to the owner, and we were off back
to Watertown. After we got back to Watertown we just went and sat in the office and talked with
some of the other mechanics and put all the other parts back that we didn’t use on the job.

Reflection
Well just like that I already have 20 hours done of shadowing. This was a great experience for
me. I feel like I learned so much by just watching. I definitely was expecting some stuff to
happen but other things that we did I never would had any idea that those things go on in the
workplace. All in all, I thank Ryman for letting me come and help/watch, I had a great time.