Sean Riley helps swap out a 38-ton engine on one of the largest ships in the Gulf of Mexico. The fix must be done in the middle of the gulf—and with swells, wind and rain, things can get complicated.
Sean Riley joins a team of engineers and mechanics as they attempt to fix a damaged Boeing 767 jet. This is a crucial fix—taking a jet apart and putting it back together is a complex, three-week operation, and the smallest mistake could have huge consequences. As the new guy on the project, Riley is given an unpleasant task to prove his mettle—disconnecting a lavatory tube
Sean Riley puts on his radiation suit and heads into the radiation zone for his next tough fix, replacing a steam turbine in a nuclear power plant to boost its energy-producing capacity.
Go on a cruise. They said: In the Bahamas. Itll be a lot of fun, They promised. Mid ocean in the Caribbean, its a race against time. This may be Paradise, but Rileys not on vacation. Hes on his way to a titanic fix. An enormous, 90,000 ton cruise ship is steaming towards one of the worlds largest dry docks. They need to install a new power plant an enormous diesel generator but first they have to land this ship. Thats when the fun starts Then things get a whole lot tougher Its all hands on deck as a huge crew opens the hull pulls out the piping, makes room for a two story addition and struggles to cram a massive new 320 ton generator inside the ship then puts it all back together And in record time! In just twenty days this liner is taking on its next bunch of customers and if the ship is not ship shape theres likely to be a lot of harsh words spoken on board.
Sean Riley joins an elite corps of engineers who dangle from a helicopter and work with live power lines carrying a shocking 500,000 volts of electricity.
For this tough job, Sean Riley joins a team of engineers to move and clean a 27-foot, 23-ton, $15 million telescope mirror. Here, three telescopes are used together to form the largest combined telescope in the world.
Sean Riley works to fix a faulty TV antenna nearly half a mile in the air. This extreme fix takes strength, teamwork and guts.
Witness a high-stakes repair job as Sean Riley and a crew of 100 highly trained men and women shut down the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline—the only conduit to market for almost 15 percent of the US domestic oil production. This major fix calls for swapping out a 32-ton valve system, but the size of the job is the least of their problems. Crude oil is not just highly toxic—its explosive. Follow the crew as it races to complete the fix in just 36 hours.
Sean Riley heads to New Orleans to help clear out a massive barge that's become stuck onshore, and get it over to a nearby salvage yard. With a fix that revolves around three hundred tons of shifting metal, Riley has to help put this barge back in the water... without getting crushed in the process.
The John Day Dam outside of Portland, Oregon is a huge producer of electricity and a key portal for goods on their way from the Pacific Northwest to Asia and beyond. But if the goods cant get through here, traffic on the entire Columbia River comes to a screeching halt. So with a gate on the dams lock broken, billions of dollars in commerce is on the line and weve got to do something about it. There are nine locks along the Columbia River, and watercraft cant make it through the dams without them. These water elevators can be operated with the touch of a button, providing a simple way for crafts to navigate the differing water levels on either side of a dam. But for eight months, the John Day has been getting by with a temporary fix a caisson that can be moved in and out of place to allow watercraft through. Its a labor-intensive solution, one that takes three times as long as a working lock. Were about to change all that. The gate on the John Days lock is finally ready to go in, and were going to follow the process from start to finish.
Riley heads into the remote jungle to help a team of rocket scientists and engineers launch a new two-ton satellite with a price tag of more than $1 million into orbit.
Riley travels to Portsmouth, R.I., where residents are setting up a 115-ton wind turbine that will provide years of clean energy. The constant blowing wind will fuel the rubine, but how do you raise giant blades in the midst of these unpredictable winds?
Riley joins a team of industrial divers on the Caribbean island of Curacao to salvage and repair the 50-ton rudder of a ship carrying $3 million worth of iron ore.
Riley joins a crew lifting a 50 ton boiler 160 feet up a tower and suspending it above 24,000 mirrors - completing America's first large scale solar power tower.
Sean faces one of his most spectacular fixes to date as he repairs a giant magnet at the Large Hadron Collider with success paving the way for scientific breakthrough, while failure means a potential catastrophe.
Riley is going to new heights. He'll hang over the edge of Las Vegas' tallest building to fix the X-Scream, a thrill ride on the Stratosphere. One of the critical safety measures needs replacing, and Riley joins the ride's head of maintenance on the very edge of the track, 800 feet above the ground, to make the fix. Then he'll dangle 500 feet over the side of the Hoover Dam to retrieve trash. Upriver from Niagara Falls, he'll hang over an unstable, overgrown cliff to eliminate loose rocks.
Riley's headed to the Wild West - just outside Yellowstone Park near Cody, Wyo., to rebuild one of the first ski lifts in the country. Riley joins cowboys of the ski lift industry to rehab 10 towers from piles of used parts. Building just outside of picturesque Yellowstone in the rugged backcountry presents additional challenges. To get several of the towers up the mountain, the guys bring in a special helicopter to crane the materials into place. It's an incredibly delicate operation.
The Bay Bridge joining Oakland and San Francisco made headlines in 2009 when it was shut down for a major renovation. To make the fix, Riley joins the engineering team tasked with cutting a football field-sized section of roadway from the bridge and replacing it - in just 72 hours! With traffic halted and the world watching, the team encounters some unexpected challenges. A crack puts the operation on hold and requires custom-made colossal steel brackets. The clock is ticking.
An 856-foot-long luxury ship is taking on water, and no one knows exactly why. Riley heads to San Francisco Bay, where a team of specialists have just 15 days to pull this mega-ship out of the water, tear it apart, dive into its belly and find the leak. They'll need to work around the clock, because in just two weeks more than 2,000 paid guests arrive for the vacation of a lifetime! Reputations and a boatload of money are on the line.
Riley travels to Las Vegas to help high-flying Cirque du Soleil solve a real showstopper of a problem - one of the world's largest, most technologically advanced stages is broken. To make the repair, Riley and team have to lower the 80-ton stage and take a look inside - a process never before attempted. While in Sin City, Riley helps repair some of most amazing spectacles on the Strip, including the world's largest video screen and high-tech water cannons in the Bellagio fountain.
