7/9/2021

Spent the day wrapping up Matilda's paint job and getting her ready for the outing tomorrow. And she looks great in camo. Pretty much
getting back to normal after the shot effects as well.

9/23/2016

Went down  to see our friends at PFS to move the muffler and get the tire crane out of the way, so we can get on with the cab over build.

R has a bad ass crew and the new exhaust is raging loud!

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.

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.

8/5/2014

Well it had to happen at some point, as they say. They of course being the voices screaming inside soldier A's head. Alas we digress.


Today started the process of cleaning up all the parts that we will be using to bob the new business truck. This meant getting out the old needle scaler, also known as the tool of eternal damnation around the motor pool. This thing is noisy and boring to use, but it does take the rust and CARC coating off of everything.

We got a couple of spring perches cleaned up like new and primed before we had to go back to work on the inventory and special orders that we took over the weekend.

We will be getting the parts cleaned up a few at a time and then the engineering and construction can begin. It just seems to make more sense to start with as much of the truck and parts needed clean and like new to make the assembly easier.