8/23/2015

Lots of painting today. So, soldier C and I cleaned Helena our 105 for her temporary black paint job in order to go to the Packwood flee market next week. They are going to be the perfect matched set when the top s cleaned off.

Sorry for the short post, but we are really chasing the tiger's tail at this point.

8/22/2015

Short and sweet tonight. Took both the girls out today and the were a huge hit. While setup we noticed Ramona was leaking from just behind the engine so, a rear main seal may be in the very near future.

8/2/2015

Well folks, as it worked out today Soldier A's dream has come to fruition. In ten years of marriage I have never seen him this dipshit giddy.

The morning started with trying to blow out the fuel lines only to find some sort of inline fuel filter that was hidden and totally plugged. So the boys just replaced the whole fuel line set and threw in a visible fuel filter right before the carb. Remember, this is not a multi fuel.

They also drained and flushed the fuel tank, and it had some really nasty stuff in it. So, she is absolutely purring again. The quality of a 60 + year old motor is amazing! Really makes us wish America was back in those days again.

The air assist brakes were a little sqishy so we got a friend to come and flat bed her home for safety's sake. I'm sure soldier A is going to sleep outside with her tonight. LOL!

Now home, the minions are all over trying to make her a show piece.

8/1/2015

We owe all of our followers a huge back load of updates and pictures and we will get 'er done. But today was one of those life fulfilling moments in Soldier A's life.

Since he was 8, soldier A has been in love with the M211. So, it looks like this girl might be coming home with us tomorrow. Never seen a bigger smile on soldier A's face. Needs the fuel lines blown out and the old gas drained but she purrs like a kitten otherwise. 

7/14/2015

Well, getting ready for the King County Fair, to which everyone is invited of course, the day was spent mostly on production rather than the new display trailer.

We did, however, get a basic clean out of the inside done. At least it's a start!

7/13/2015

Today soldier A's OCD was raging. Despite the fact that he was supposed to be making products for the upcoming King County Fair, he just couldn't leave the new trailer alone. So, with minion support he changed the tires to the matching set that goes with Matilda.

Things got really interesting when they tried to pull and flip the lunette so the trailer pulls level. Took the torch and a breaker bar to bust the nut loose. Then the sledge hammer had to come out to break the lunette ring loose so it could be flipped.

Stuart beat on that thing for what seamed like hours, but perseverance won in the end, and the ring is flipped. The tires are much bigger and there is a clearance issue that will have to be dealt with, but all in all it was a solid day. 
 
 

7/12/2015

We're moved! That's right friends, we finally got the motor pool moved. YAY!!!

We now have a shop once again that's big enough to put the big trucks and trailers in to work on them. So, we will be back under way shortly.

We have also been out to some really cool events with the Deuce Paracord Designs business and had a lot of fun as well. We will be putting up back-dated posts on those events shortly so stay tuned.

Today we picked up a tan M105 to go with Matilda as a display trailer and this thing is in awesome shape. Once painted and the matched tires and wheels are mounted it will be the perfect display unit.

Got lots of work ahead but, things are really fun right now. A big thanks to everyone that follows us and has helped our little endeavors grow! 

6/30/2015

We have a lot of catching up to do so please bear with us!!!

5/31/2015

Today was another one of those days you wished could be the status quo. Beautiful weather and getting tons of stuff done.

The AO got mowed, edged and lots of weed burning too. We don't pick weeds at the motor pool; we burn the crap off! Who doesn't like a good flame thrower?

We also moved all the equipment around to make it easier to work on the priority issues. In the end, things are more organized and we certainly have more room to work.

Got pretty hairy a couple of times, but that happens when soldier A is on a roll. He may be the craziest SOB on the planet LOL! 
 

5/26/2015

Holy Cow did we have a blast at Packwood for the big Memorial Day flea market! We met so many cool people there, including Mr. and Mrs. N, to whom we thank so much for your hospitality and the Chief who kept us company and helped guard things. If you have never been there it is worth taking the time to spend a weekend for sure. We will definitely be back for the Labor Day weekend event with even more good stuff and more attractions.

To all of you wonderful folks that are patiently waiting for your products to arrive, we are working diligently to fill all the orders.

To all of you past, current and future service members, thank you for your sacrifice.

2/18/2015

You just can't beat good weather in a region that is known to be very wet. You learn to make every sunny day count, and that's what the motor pool crew did again today.

We have accumulated quite a bit of stuff that we have no need for and today was the day for some spring cleaning. There were two big bed rails that were totally warped, but had brackets that we may need later so they had to be removed before the rest went to the scrap yard. We also needed to get two bed ribs off of a piece of plate steel we need, so that was the start to the day.


As usual when you mention taking anything apart Stewart shows up with his torch, but after a debate soldier A convinced him of a more surgical way to remove the brackets.


Once all the extra weight was ready for the recycle yard, the team focused all its energy on cleaning rust off the trailer chassis.

With the threat of afternoon rain, we did the cleanup one section at a time and coated things as we went. This time we tried something a little different and shot all the cleaned areas with rust reformer instead of etching primer, the theory being that anything we could not get off with the tools would be handled by the rust reformer.

We also got a visit from V who had some awesome new tactical zombie killer knives that will be offered at the rolling monster truck display this weekend.

2/17/2015

Had to take advantage of the awesome weather today. So, we rallied the minions early and Stewart was like a hamster on crack, thinking we might need to do some torching.

As it ended up we just needed to rebuild the front end of the little Ford 150, no torch necessary. Not a big deal unless you don't have everything to do the project, and soldier A was short seals and the right bearing grease, so the day was a bit slower than expected, but the whole front end is new now.

Stewart broke the first beer as soon as the test drive was over!

Tomorrow is all grinder day!

2/15/2015

A lot of things have happened since our last official post, and we really need to do some back dated posts. The long and short of it is we are strugling to keep up ;-)

Many days back Matilda failed to start even after we tried to charge her batteries. This of course caused a bit of panic here at the motor pool as she is the center of our fledgling business. So today we rallied the minions to get her on the road again.

Turns out she just needed to stretch her legs and was roll started quite easily. That eliminated lots of potential issues and we narrowed the problem down to dead batteries. No big complaints; they were cheap and we got our three years out of them.

So Stewart and soldier A got the new set in and Matilda roars to life faster than ever before. Back post to come!

1/23/2015

So, we've been assholes and elbows here at the motor pool and we managed to get our new team tower built and stone coated. We also got the inventory to fill it up made, so we will be rockin this weekend!

All our friends are invited out to Crawford Family Auctions in Olympia to check it out and load up for the Super Bowl. There is also a lot of cool stuff at the indoor flea market. Hope to see everybody there!

1/18/2015

Picking up from where we left off with our journey back in time yesterday, we had to get everything aligned once we had the parts ready.

With a ton of clamps and some real straight steel we got the frame sections lined up for welding. After hours of adjustment down to 1/8" from perfectly square, soldier B tried to convince soldier A that it was way past good enough, but that OCD just overpowers him most of the time. So, he jacked with it until he realized he couldn't do better than 1/16" from perfect. That was enough to get him to start welding!


After the butt joints were welded, two of the extra cross members were cleaned up and inserted into the frame rails spanning the connection 50/50. Then those were fully welded in place, and soldier B thought this was enough, but no way.

Down to Tacoma Steel, our go-to supplier, and some 5" x 1/4" steel was brought home to fully box the entire frame. 

Tires will go flat, axles, springs, and u bolts will break and the goddamn frame will be perfect. This thing is ridiculous! But it did look good as it was done ;-)

1/17/2015

As promised we are going to start a little walk back in time and explain how our extended m105 trailer came to be.


It was originally intended to be a basic camp trailer, but now it has a much more important mission.

We started with 2 105s, which are legendary for being work horses. They have 5 thousand pound axles and deuce springs with overloads to boot. For two wheel trailers these things are beasts.

The beds were removed from both so we could get at the frames. Once that was done we cut the tongue off the first unit and then spliced the second trailer into the first. We didn't want to get crazy with length so we only used about 40% of the second frame. The final result is a 70/30 wheelbase split, more or less. and the thing pulls like a dream, even behind the bobbed deuce.

We will start covering the details of how the joining was done tomorrow. It took soldier A about a week and he was almost bat shit crazy when it was finished. The OCD thing was driving him crazy as usual.

1/16/2015

Well today brought a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. Several hours of decent and un-forecast weather. So, we got out the old grinder and started in on those weld cleanups and rust removal.


Soldier A tends to over build to the extreme and it took much longer to get things back to the way we had them when the original chassis was done way back when. It's all working out,though, as a smooth grinding hand and the right combinations of wheels put things back to near perfect. 


When the clouds started to roll in, better heads prevailed and we cleaned and primed the areas we got done before the rain returned. It's really awesome to see our chassis getting back to the pristine condition it was once in, and the thoughts of the box to come are very exciting. Much more work to do though, hope the weather breaks again soon.

For our friends that are interested in the technical aspect of how this extended chassis came to be, we are going to dig up some of the build photos and do some recaps of the original build over the next few days. The underside of this area is next and then we'll move on.

1/14/2015

So, the new year is finally starting to move forward here at the motor pool. Some bad news that we are going to have to move soon and illnesses among the troops have set us off on a late start to the year.

We were supposed to be at V's Hacienda today filtering fuel with his system, but that never happened. We are down sizing in preparation to relocate. So, today was spent meeting with people picking up items that we had on Craigslist.

A nice young couple was kind enough to take the wall block we had off our hands so we can move the equipment around the yard and start working on getting the display trailer constructed. Many thanks to A and his wife.

In between visits we managed to get the unneeded cross members back off the trailer frame. Soldier A gets way too carried away with the welder and it took most of the day and two dozen cutoff wheels to get them off. Now all we have to do is clean up the welds and the chassis will be back to perfect for a body. 




Hope the weather helps us out!