General Tech What did you work on Today?

[Vonski]

Recent work done between farm chores. 🤠
Reworked spare tire mount to utilize a spare hub/rotor. Spare CV shaft mount. Rebuilt rear CVs using new connecting shafts. Painted a stripe so I don’t have to guess how much they’ve twisted. 😂 Had a cool spare belt box sent to me, which fits in the last available spot I had left on this thing.

 

[Magerdgr]

Scored a set of headers and old school Purple Hornies for the ‘68 Mustang off of a buddies Shelby. Should give it a great vintage sound and be an improvement over the stock manifolds on there at the minute.

 

[Hickey]

I worked on this 12% Stout while sealing this POS gas tank.

 

[NYCEGUY01]

Recent work done between farm chores. 🤠
Reworked spare tire mount to utilize a spare hub/rotor. Spare CV shaft mount. Rebuilt rear CVs using new connecting shafts. Painted a stripe so I don’t have to guess how much they’ve twisted. 😂 Had a cool spare belt box sent to me, which fits in the last available spot I had left on this thing.

Can you still haul your spare without that spare Hub ? We were at a race a couple years ago and a racer had something similar. He had broken a hub and sheered all the lugs off it at the same time so he pulled off his spare and installed it. We then realized that his destroyed one couldnt be re-installed to hold his spare. I had to toss it in the Blazer and he had to finish the race with no spare. In the end it worked out and I just delivered his spare back to the pit. He didnt have any flats so all was well. If I hadnt been close by Im not sure what he would have done except just leave it on the side of the course or spend a ton of time rigging something with straps...

 

[Vonski]

Can you still haul your spare without that spare Hub ?….

Good point. I had been running this ratchet strap setup before making this latest version simply out of redundancy. You’ve reminded me that it would probably be best to continue with that practice, in the event I totally destroy a hub. 😎

 

[Vonski]

I worked on this 12% Stout while sealing this POS gas tank.View attachment 142882

You’re a big boy, fill it more than that 12%. 😉

 

[Corban_White]

Tore down a wall.



Cleaned up the wall



Worked on installing a new septic system.



Started trying to organize the garage.



No pictures, but spent more at Home Depot in the last week than I ever thought possible. In addition to all the other suppliers... At least most things are ordered now. If all goes well we should be out of the camp trailer and into the house before valentine's day! 😳😁

 

[zmotorsports]

Tore down a wall.

View attachment 142900

Cleaned up the wall

View attachment 142901

Worked on installing a new septic system.

View attachment 142902

Started trying to organize the garage.

View attachment 142903

No pictures, but spent more at Home Depot in the last week than I ever thought possible. In addition to all the other suppliers... At least most things are ordered now. If all goes well we should be out of the camp trailer and into the house before valentine's day! 😳😁

WOW. That's a lot of projects going on at once. My hat is off to you. I generally can't tackle more than one major job at a time or I feel paralyzed.

 

[Corban_White]

WOW. That's a lot of projects going on at once. My hat is off to you. I generally can't tackle more than one major job at a time or I feel paralyzed.

Well, I got a new job and moved to AZ in July. We have been living in our camp trailer since then, for the first month in a friend's yard with only electric, then in an RV park for 3 months and then we bought a house and we moved the trailer onto the property a few weeks ago. The house "needed" some work and we decided it would be much better to do it before we moved in. So all the projects are happening concurrently because I am tired of living in a 30' bumper pull with my wife and 2 kids. . Had to get the garage unpacked (the rest of our stuff is still in storage) so I could use my tools to work on the house. Now that the septic is finished (the old system was "failed") we are back to full hookups so that is nice. Some days there are so many projects I don't even know where to start. Hopefully we can be in the house sometime in January but I'm not holding my breath. And yes, I do feel paralyzed a lot.

 

[mbryson]

Not many pics but the jams are “done”

(I think that's the starting picture. I'll have to get a different one )




Now, what to do with the backside of the decklid?

 

[DaveB]

I got back an old project that I built for my father who is now 91 and not able/willing to fix stuff anymore. It's a K20 Suburban that I created for my parents quite a few years ago. My Dad bought an old 78 Suburban that looked good but after one winter the cheap paint job started to fall off. Found massive rust holes that had been filled with spray in insulation foam and bondo. The body was not worth repairing so we found an 85 Suburban with a very clean body but a completely messed up drivetrain. The 78 was a 3/4 ton and the 85 was a 1/2 ton so I swapped the 85 body onto the 78 frame. While we had the body taken off we put in a new crate 350 motor, a rebuilt auto, and 205 transfer case. After getting it all bolted together they had a very nice paint job put on it. After my Mom passed and my Dad remarried he decided he wanted one of the soft riding new trucks so he gave the truck to my step sister and her husband. They have had it for about 11 years and didn't really use it that much. My Dad told them if they were ever going to get rid of it they had to give it back to me to part out. It was still in decent shape so I am not going to part it out. I just did the first pass at getting it back into a maintained state. It seems they hadn't been very good at maintaining it. It needed an oil and filter change, since it had been three years since the last one, had to also top off all of the fluids, tighten loose valve covers, and grease the steering and u-joints. When I went to twist the front driveline it wouldn't turn. I thought maybe they messed up the transfer case because when I forced the front driveline it made awful grinding noises. Found out that the transfer case rubber mounts to the crossmember were rotted out and the case dropped far enough to hit the CV joint on the crossmember. Luckily a fairly easy fix. Can't imagine it ran well in four wheel drive. The paint job has held up very well.

 

[jeeper]

For the last 15 years I have worked 1 or 2 full time jobs, with 1 or 2 part time jobs on the side. 100hr weeks are common. Last month we hit some financial goals, and I promised myself I would not work another Sunday ever. That felt really good... So just yesterday I decided to give up one of the part time jobs that added more stress than its portion of income warranted. This has allowed me to tackle some of the many projects around the house that need to be done.
First item on the list was to repair my sons scooter. He got it on trade from a neighborhood kid who's dad couldn't fix it right.
The issue is that the handle bars come loose and twist. One of the two bolts is missing. I went to 3 different stores, but couldn't find the right size. The issue is that the Head has to fit in a recessed slot, and all the bolts I found had larger heads.



You can see the size difference of the original and new bolts. I needed to verify exactly how much bigger the new one was.



I grabbed my trusty calipers and determined that the new bolt head is exactly 2mm larger than the original.





I needed to move a few items to get into my machining tools.



Once the junk was out of the way, I was able to get to my lathe.



I engaged my safety squints, and turned the bolt head down. I received extra points, as my son couldn't believe that I could handle all the hot sparks shooting onto my arms. He thought I was super tough.



Verified with my caliper that the new bolt is turned to the correct size.



We added some loctite to ensure that the bolts no longer back out.



New bolt installed along with the original bolt. Tight and snug.



Follow me for more repair advice.

-Brian

 

[rholbrook]

Red loctite too. You really know how to fix things right. Mike had better watch out, he has some competition. Nice work Brian

 

[Hickey]

Red loctite too. You really know how to fix things right. Mike had better watch out, he has some competition. Nice work Brian

Did you see his freakin sweet lathe? OMG.

 

[1969honda]

I was more keen to know where he got the sweet caliper set, he did a really good job of showing us the sizing but hid the branding. Makes me wonder if he's really part of the 14 bolt poor crowd like most of us...

In all fairness though, I got a good chuckle and enjoyed the update. Nice work, it's always fun to make one of your kids happy and check off a project.

 

[Tonkaman]

I’m just blown away that you actually own loctite!

 

[jeeper]

I’m just blown away that you actually own loctite!

100% learned from being in your garage.

 

[jeeper]

For tonight's project, we did some SXS repairs. My daughter's tailgate has cables that are too long. The tailgate drops much lower than it should, resting on the bumper with slack cables.




I tried finding correct replacement cables, but all I could find were the same length.. Probably why the wrong ones are on in the first place.

With some very careful measurements, and my trusty calibrated fingers, I tied 3 perfect knots in the cables, and now it hangs to the perfect level.



BOOM! And just like that, a second child now thinks I am the best dad ever. One more to go.

 

[Bart]

Jeff, you are McGyver.

 

[ID Bronco]

I like seeing common sense. It makes me have more faith in the world.