Full Circle- Back to where I started (almost)

[Crummy]

The bumper is welded up. Pull it out tomorrow (easy now that it starts!) clean it up & get it ready for paint. Lots of cussing went on welding the seam, no way to get all the rust & paint out from under. Bzzzz-spit-spit-bzzzzz-spit. Oh well, nothing a grinder won't fix.

Once it's painted, on to the box. Not looking forward to that too much.

 

[ETER]

I can definitely feel your pain about welding rust, not fun at all. I like the line..."a grinder and paint make me the welder I ain't"
I still have to get a new canvas cover made for the rear door... hopefully will be able to get as good a deal as you found (need to keep the road salt/spray out of the rear compartment).
Regards, Bob

 

[Crummy]

Bumper is done & painted up. One oversight- I'm so used to working on big trucks with separate stop/turn I didn't think of that when I did the lighting for this one. Oh well, just more wiring.

Working on the box doors now getting them straightened up. I'm going to price stainless paddle latches which I prefer instead of messing with trying to get the t-handle units cleaned up & working right. I'll have to post a picture of the ones that are on it now, kind of overkill if you ask me with padlock hasp, barrel lock, AND the bar lock.

 

[Crummy]

No big updates or pictures, just cleaning up the box- welding up bolt holes, cracks, rust-trough's, fixing the doors. Not too exciting.

UPS delivered the tires yesterday (Saturday!)- driver said he had my 4 tires & another little package for someone else for the day and that was it. This selling things online stupid cheap and "free shipping" thing can't last.

Have to go this evening and lean hard on someone that owes me a LARGE sum of money. I could have easily done with out having to do that.

 

[John Shipp]

How did the "leaning" go?

Yes, I agree about the amazing situation on cheap products shipped quickly and for such low courier rates, now a lot of people expect everything to be done this way, order today and delivery tomorrow. Zoom!

 

[Crummy]

How did the "leaning" go?

It went OK. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt.

 

[Crummy]

[I'll try to get this posted in the right place this time]

Decent weather today & supposed to start raining so outside and prep the roof for paint this week. Did I mention how much I dislike paint prep? It is sooooo nice to have it start right up now.

 

[Crummy]

Working today on patching up the roof. Mounting things that can get water trapped between never works in the long run. Glad I've got the little SP130 to hoist up there, I will wear that handy little welder out way before I do the other ones.


On a side note- DON"T buy the Lithonia LED High-Bay 1'x2' lights that Home Depot has. I got 6 a few years ago and 2 more failed today (perfect), 1 failed last year and the rest are slowly giving out. 50,000hr unit life my azz! 5 year warranty is a joke. Now I'm waiting for replacements (NOT Lithonia) to arrive. I try to support local/USA, but seriously if you want me to buy at 3x the price of the "import" you'd better make a damn good product and have decent customer service!
Rant over

 

[crane operator]

On a side note- DON"T buy the Lithonia LED High-Bay 1'x2' lights that Home Depot has. I got 6 a few years ago and 2 more failed today (perfect), 1 failed last year and the rest are slowly giving out. 50,000hr unit life my azz! 5 year warranty is a joke. Now I'm waiting for replacements (NOT Lithonia) to arrive. I try to support local/USA, but seriously if you want me to buy at 3x the price of the "import" you'd better make a damn good product and have decent customer service!

I had a buddy a couple years ago invite me to his shop. He had just bought new led high bay, had them shipped from manufacturer in china. Supposed to last his lifetime, and they were really bright. Now 2 years later, they are all much dimmer, and he's had one of his guys install new circuit boards in most of them.

I've still got all flourescent 8' in my shop, and I'd like to change, but I don't think the high bay led lights are where I'd like them to be quality wise before I buy them.

 

[Crummy]

Painted the doghouse lid this morning. On to prepping inside the boxes & doghouse.
Getting there. Slow, but making progress.


After considering the options I decided to take the hack job exhaust stack off and try weed burner out the right side. Might get started on that this afternoon. I like fab/welding WAY better than paint prep.

 

[ETER]

Is the lid fixed, or does it hinge up? Could not tell from the earlier pics of the rig. Regards, Bob

 

[Crummy]

I got the exhaust moved around yesterday. It looks better at least and Ill bet I cut out 8' of trombone pipe (which can't hurt) so I had plenty to work with for my "new" system. A Pete or KW with nice big twin stacks looks good, a medium duty with a 3 1/2" pipe bolted to the side not so much, a little too Beverly Hillbillies there. May be an issue running the compressor in dusty conditions though, we'll see- or not in a cloud of dust!

 

[Crummy]

Is the lid fixed, or does it hinge up? Could not tell from the earlier pics of the rig. Regards, Bob

It's fixed. There's 6'-3" clearance inside. Built like a tank, too.

There's a rig I saw a few times when I was loading out of Ritchie Bros. here that has basically the same setup, it's kind of hard to describe, but without the shelves on the passenger side so a bigger crane can park over the side boxes and a solid door. That would be what I'd prefer- still have the storage & covered area to get out of the elements with a bigger crane.

 

[Crummy]

More cutting out rust. This is where they had the big hose reels mounted on the back of the box. That's the last of the bad stuff. My goal is to have the inside of the doghouse and inside of the side boxes painted by this time next week. I can see the end of this phase but it's a speck on the horizon right now.


Sold the crane scale & two Alcoa Budd's I'd picked up so I've got some more mad-cash for the project. I must have had them priced right or just lucky- less than 24hrs after I posted they were gone. Ordered a hydraulic cable lug crimper to replace my ancient hammer-style crimper & a couple of DC reversing solenoids for the crane. Autocrane's wiring there is pretty weak IMO (70a through 12ga?) so I'm going to redo it. I've also got a 12v hydraulic pump laying under a bench and that got me thinking of seeing if I can come up with hydraulic instead of the manual pin on the boom.

 

[Crummy]

A little more progress yesterday. Boy did they drill a lot of holes in that box that need to be filled! The doors are taking more work than I really wanted to do and I keep thinking of things I need to do before paint like the brackets for the new door gas struts. The new shop lights showed up yesterday so I spent time re-arranging the old ones & hanging the two new ones- makes it a lot easier to work when it's not so dark.


Speaking of seeing things- I know I'm getting older and the 'ol peepers aren't as good as they used to be but I was really having problems welding & seeing the sheet metal seams on the repairs. Replaced the inner & outer clear shields and wiped down the lens on the Speedglas.....yeah, better do that more often. "night and day" difference.

 

[Crummy]

Bent up a radius patch panel this morning, getting ready to weld it in aaaaaannnd....found more rust through.
Drill a hole in the nice service body and bolt something on without doing anything to prevent water intrusion. What's the worst that could happen?
AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

 

[Crummy]

Patched up as good as it's going to get. A little more fine tuning with the flap wheel but it's not a show rig . Probably more that could be done but I'm not looking too hard.

 

[Crummy]

I counted the non-Knapheide holes I plugged in the box: 77
Jed Clampett must have owned it at one time.

 

[Crummy]

Doing a little research this morning looking at replacement latches for the box doors and get them ordered up. Knapheide uses some proprietary BS and no standard paddle (or T) will work without a bunch of fab work. OF COURSE! Can't make it easy on the pocketbook to replace. Looks like I'll have to see what I can do rebuilding/improving the ones that came off. $7,000 rig with $80,000 labor in it, that's me!

 

[DMiller]

Try ALTEC, they were worse than Knapheide!! Worked on those lovely boxes a LONG time. Reading used generic latches in My day, do not know if still do.