Search results

Sadly, I never did get back to my welding. I got something in my eye that put me out of action for the day. Grinding grit. I wear eye glasses and a full face shield when grinding. But I was only vacuuming when it happened. No face shield.

Yesterday, I got all my parts cleaned and shaped, and tacked on the frame. Also I remembered to weld the nuts on first! Then I made a last couple crappy tacks and realized I was out of gas. After a trip to the welding shop, it was 114F so I called it a day. Today I stumbled out...

114F was the high today. I went in from 1pm to 7pm to avoid the very worst heat. I have all the new patches made, except one tiny bit. These flanges need to be joined, below the big patch. Pattern from layers of tape. Paint marking: I cut this out with the sawzall and the belt sander...

The really sad part is that I didn’t realize what was going on when I first took this apart and put it back together. I looked at the M10 bolts and said, “Gee, they look kind of screwed up!”, so I put in brand new M10 bolts. Now they are screwed up.

Some people think it’s odd that I do all the cooking in the family. But for 35 years my wife has cleaned up the dog poop and the cat poop and kept the toilets clean. I raise tropical fish, and when they poop it just goes in a filter and I throw it away. Zoey the cat hides under the bench...

OK this patch is shaped and fitted. Now I need to make the bottom patch. My first one will be too small. These welded nuts were 7/16-18 but someone stuffed M10-1.50 bolts in them. You can see the nut is half stripped and the bolt threads are all shaved off and bent wavey.

When you are this scruffy, you just don't care . . .

BTW that old vise was my dad’s. It is a 75 year old Craftsman, and it has been through hell. It was with him on probably 15 duty stations before he retired to California.

I spent some time re-welding the backside of old tunnel patches, then I worked on the new patches. One patch mounts the pedal assembly to the tunnel. Originally this had 0.082” steel with a small doubler inside. I made it from 0.105” and it will also have a (smaller) doubler. This took some...

The engine weighed more than the chassis!

It was only 108 at noon, but I needed to quit. I’ve been up 10 hours and it’s only noon. I don’t start any noisy grinding until 8AM, but I can irrigate, change aquarium water, and do quiet things like layout work and cleanup. I never clean up the shop when it’s this hot. I wait for first light...

Stairs can be a problem! I fixed my first little motorcycle in the USU dormitory room on the fourth floor. I snuck it up in the middle of the night inside the elevator, and I took it down the stairwell in broad daylight. Normally it stayed outside chained to a bicycle rack with all the...

I set up an extra fan today, because it has been very hot, and I needed to get this bicycle stand out of my garage for a while. More work with the muffler chisel today, and the slitter. I decided I had to peel this patch completely off. Look at the huge gaps. This was doomed, because there...

Hottest day ever in Clovis. Still 90 at midnight. I went in when it hit 110, but I’m still cleaning and chiseling. It will be a PITA to fix, but I can’t live with this. I cut another patch from the old tunnel. This metal is nice. Factory paint inside still good. The outside has 3 lumpy...

Make an adjustable rocker link, so you can set it where it works, instead of ordering more struts.

I have to apologize to @Wildcat And tropical islanders everywhere, for making fun of people who weld in flip-flops. I cropped this view from one of the photographs above. Look at those filthy toes. I’d been out there grinding and chiseling for hours. I was wearing a pair of flip-flops, and my...

So the new flat bar on the bottom of this mess was at the bottom of the car. On top of it you can see a sliver of rusted away tunnel bottom. On top of that you can see a healthy sliver of rusted away tunnel top. Plopped on that like a cherry on top is a spot weld and flake of 22 gauge floor...

I had to dig deeper And deeper And deeper until I discovered solid metal, between the rust. This whole length was rust on rust, continuously welded between the 20 ga floor/patch, and 1/8” flatbar. This required two grinders, a drill, air chisel, nippers, and prybar to get this far. I...

The hole, roughed out. The new “horseshoe” can just be seen here. Also the ragged metal and blobby nutwelds. This is where the pedal assembly mounts. This needs some love.

I looked at one of those on a lift, about 1973, and it sure looked like a pain to service that driveshaft. I owned a Cadillac and two Chevrolets in my lifetime but I never worked on many GM products except construction equipment. Today I started cutting the new access hole. I put my access...