What ya working on?

[New Englander]

On 3/1/2025 at 10:12 AM, ole 815 said:

Yokes are 90° off from each other.

Something I learned early on. I was maybe 15 and I changed the UJoints on a two piece drive shaft and not knowing about the acceleration/deceleration of the joint I indexed them wrong. It set up a heck of a vibration.

[midnightman]

Cleaning the shop a little bit, and some skid shoes for v plow.

[yellowrosefarm]

Tie rod end fell off in the field. Must have been loose for a while as threads were wiped off. Fortunately I saw it before the nut disappeared and was able to use a nail to hold it together enough to get it on the trailer and home. 

[midnightman]

Customer caught the bottom step on his Magnum and shattered the bottom step into a few pieces. Ready to reinstall now.

[SONNY]

right front tire on this puppy has a 4" gash down the side of it and tube peaking out. Got a 17" x 17" boot patch to put in it when weather warms up a bit. BIG job but I gotta attempt it myself! 

[oleman]

On 3/4/2025 at 7:03 AM, yellowrosefarm said:

Tie rod end fell off in the field. Must have been loose for a while as threads were wiped off. Fortunately I saw it before the nut disappeared and was able to use a nail to hold it together enough to get it on the trailer and home. 

Years ago I was in San Francisco bay in our 25 hp 16 foot run-about. I hit debris in the water with the prop and the motor revved up and I discovered the prop shear-pin was broken. I was 5 miles from the ramp but the shore was about a hundred yards.  I made it to shore, found a rusty nail in an old timber  washed up and used it to get to  rig back to the trailer.

 

managed to use it as a   into the ramp.

[JaredT]

7 hours ago, midnightman said:

Customer caught the bottom step on his Magnum and shattered the bottom step into a few pieces. Ready to reinstall now.

Wow, nice work

[Rawleigh99]

On 3/3/2025 at 7:59 PM, midnightman said:

No drawings supplied for this one. Just a picture that “we want it to look something like this”. Took a few hours of head scratching to make all the stair dimensions work with the stair opening dimensions and look proper. Had a short time to get it done, so I didn’t have any time to double check anything like I usually do before sandblasting and powder coating. I was fairly confident, but still had a sigh of relief when everything was bolted in place.

That is just amazing work and design!

[Sledgehammer]

Cleaning up 3 tiers of drawers to use for tool storage.  These have ball bearing slides. They will be mounted under a bench in time. A fair amount of surface rust to deal with but nothing rotted out. Clean, rust inhibitor, sit for 24hrs, paint, clear, reassemble. Each drawer has to be pulled apart and done by itself. Ive got one tier completely finished. 

[yellowrosefarm]

Beautiful work, I'm sure that is time consuming.

[TN Hillbilly]

58 minutes ago, Sledgehammer said:

Cleaning up 3 tiers of drawers to use for tool storage.  These have ball bearing slides. They will be mounted under a bench in time. A fair amount of surface rust to deal with but nothing rotted out. Clean, rust inhibitor, sit for 24hrs, paint, clear, reassemble. Each drawer has to be pulled apart and done by itself. Ive got one tier completely finished. 

THAT is some commitment, brother!

 

But still cheaper and better quality than anything you could buy new, I'm sure.

[Sledgehammer]

7 minutes ago, TN Hillbilly said:

But still cheaper and better quality than anything you could buy new, I'm sure.

Exactly!  A Harbor Freight box that size was over $800. I've got $2-300 in paint, liners, and supplies.  Even with that I am still way under the money. Plus, these will be more unique. This brand was over $1K for one tier if bought new. 

[clay neubauer]

Been cleaning up a ditch.   Cutting hedge posts sure is easier with a thumb.   And I hate thorn trees, but taking some honey locust home to split and put in shed to feed my pizza oven later.

 

 

[DT Fan]

Distributors! For the pumpkins currently but am going to check the ones for the Red girls in time. It's been interesting, have another one in the vise ready to hone the bushing to size.

[MT Matt]

Got the rest of the mouse out of the house. Scraped and vacuumed until nothing more came out from behind the flywheel on the 650.  Then wire wheeled the rust from the face.

Cleaned all of the parts.  Took some chipping to get everything out of the pressure plate assembly.

And dumped it back in.

Need to finish tightening everything up. If anyone does a hand clutch, the only way to get the spacer coupler in at the back is to have the clutch snapped forward (engaged). The manual doesn’t really give much direction.

[Gearclash]

Two of the 4 turbo mounting studs broke off in this aftermarket Cat 15L exhaust manifold. The studs were presumably of a stainless material and were very difficult to drill. My nephew tried to drill out the studs in his shop with hand tools.  He had a HSS drill break off in one of the studs.  At that point he called me.  Seems crazy, but a carbide end mill will cut through HSS.  Carbide drills cut the stainless studs better than HSS also.  The studs were an ARP part # and I can’t say I’m impressed.  SS is miserable stuff to work with.  The remaining stud in the picture is an ARP stud and it was very reluctant to come out.  It took an air chisel with a socket drive adapter to coax it out.  It was not reusable as there was damage to the threads where the stud was threaded into the turbo flange.   

[CIHTECH]

Have a Case SR250 in the shop that someone tried drilling out a glow plug. They was off center an ended up drilling into water jacket of cylinder head. 

We ended up pulling cylinder head an installing a good used head.

[New Englander]

8 hours ago, Gearclash said:

Two of the 4 turbo mounting studs broke off in this aftermarket Cat 15L exhaust manifold. The studs were presumably of a stainless material and were very difficult to drill. My nephew tried to drill out the studs in his shop with hand tools.  He had a HSS drill break off in one of the studs.  At that point he called me.  Seems crazy, but a carbide end mill will cut through HSS.  Carbide drills cut the stainless studs better than HSS also.  The studs were an ARP part # and I can’t say I’m impressed.  SS is miserable stuff to work with.  The remaining stud in the picture is an ARP stud and it was very reluctant to come out.  It took an air chisel with a socket drive adapter to coax it out.  It was not reusable as there was damage to the threads where the stud was threaded into the turbo flange.   

I would normally weld a nut on a broken stud rather than drill it out but I've never come across a broken stainless one. Can you weld onto SS with a mig?

[Gearclash]

3 hours ago, New Englander said:

I would normally weld a nut on a broken stud rather than drill it out but I've never come across a broken stainless one. Can you weld onto SS with a mig?

I did a little research on ARP studs and they claim to use something known as A286.  It is described as a “super alloy”.  Usually such a material gets sketchy to weld, and is never easy to machine.  In this case welding wasn’t an option as the stud was broke at the bottom of a 7/16 D by 1/2 deep counter bore, and to make matters even more dismal for extracting the broken section, the threads in the manifold were not properly tapped with a bottoming tap, so the manifold threads had a taper to them and the monkeys that installed the studs cranked the studs into that taper pretty hard.  Just all around a dumb deal.

Edit to add.  Yes you can weld stainless with MIG, either with ER70S-6 or the correct SS wire.  There is no guarantee how that will turn out though as there are many different stainless alloys with different characteristics.  

[New Englander]

40 minutes ago, Gearclash said:

Edit to add.  Yes you can weld stainless with MIG, either with ER70S-6 or the correct SS wire.  There is no guarantee how that will turn out though as there are many different stainless alloys with different characteristics.

Sounds like a real $hit show. The installers may have put a fault in the studs when they bottomed them.

I'd just be trying to get the nut to hold on to the broken piece while heating it too. I've sometimes had to try it several times, especially for one broken well below the surface. As long as it's cast iron there seems to be little chance the weld adheres to the casting, just the steel stud. Rapping the casting around the stud seems to help or just be part of the ritual.

[IHandJDman]

Fencerow clearout.

[MT Matt]

Going back together. Finish up some linkage and a dust shield tomorrow and then start with some temporary wiring. Just want to get it running (hopefully) and then worry about a full wire job.

I shook the starter gas tank and it rattled. Shined a light down to the bottom and found three mouse husks. One was stuck to the bottom yet. Got that all scraped out and it’s soaking in the parts washer tonight. I’ll rattle around some nuts in it tomorrow to knock loose anything else. 

[pms1961]

Breakaway coupler rebuild.

[IHKeith]

Did head gaskets in a 2009 Silverado 4.8L, it hydro locked on number 5 while cranking.  I pulled the plugs and drained the coolant before starting the repair, put the plugs back in and the engine was fine luckily.

[Sledgehammer]

Had 9hrs of training today but got 4 more drawers painted when I got home.  That means the second tier is getting close to finished.  Just 5 more drawers to work over now.