That concrete pit sounds rough, maybe call ahead and ask about their enrichment plan before visiting places like that.

Yep, that tracks with a job I had on the Red River a few years back. Plain suction through that sticky blue clay was a nightmare, we were pulling it every 10 minutes to clear the intake. Swapped to a cutterhead and got almost double your numbers, it just broke up the clay way better before it ever hit the pump. The difference is night and day on that stuff, plain suction is worthless once you hit anything cohesive.

Man, that's the thing - we're so obsessed with cheap and fast now that nothing's built to last past the warranty. Wonder if any of our modern concrete slabs will even be standing in 50 years, let alone a century.

I've done that water trick before with a weird shaped vase I had... it actually works pretty well. I was so proud of myself when I figured it out, felt like a genius for five minutes. It's one of those things that seems obvious after you do it but nobody tells you about it.

Eight hours and you're calling it a ghost fault? That sounds like a learning opportunity not a wild goose chase. Metal shavings in a backshell pin is exactly the kind of stuff that shows up when you get systematic instead of just swapping parts. I've seen guys waste two days swapping radio modules on a King Air only to find a loose shield ground on a coax connector. Next time try a continuity test on every single wire from the sensor back to the box before you pull any modules. It usually bites you in the ass faster. What did you use to find those shavings, a borescope or just a good light?