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!