I bought a truck 17 years ago.

Damnit.  Damnit damnit damnit damnit.

I think it is somehow the crank seal.  Everything else right there is RTV'd within an inch of its life. 

F'in leaks

Part 1 of the Chronicles of Divorce: towing of the trailer.

Took the day off to get new tires mounted and do one of my least favorite tasks.

Renew expired registrations.

I'm mildly concerned about the trailer load.  Past few months I've just been tossing crap in there with no concern about ensuring everything is stable.  Gonna tow it to a level spot and examine what can be moved around.

North bound and down,, loaded up and truckin.

Load looks well distributed, crept up to 75 while on 75, no swaying, no weirdness.   Trailer tires are about as warm as the truck tires, so I'm not worried there.  Gauges on the truck are all happy.  Time to do this, I think.

Maybe I'll stop at Ralph's for a late lunch.

Looks good.  I know you and I don't always get along and divorce is a really awful thing to go through.  That said, I want to tell you it's all going to be fine!  You are going to come out of this.  Learn from whatever happened and you will be better for it.  I went through this about 17 years ago and am way happier now.  You might not believe it but my sense of humor came back and I enjoy life a lot more these days.  It's going to slowly get better everyday!  
 

And I'm interested in this Ralph's place.  Post photos!  I like out of the way unique places to eat.  I loathe chains.  

That metal glue is the business!

Nice looking ride ya got there.  All the hard work and good looks paid off.  Keep on keeping on!   I got divorced 40 years ago, got stuck in between jobs, bills incurred do to the divorce, etc.  Had to move out with a loaded up 1972 Bug, with all my worldly belongings.  Fast forward 40 years, and life is good.  Married a wonderful woman, 2 successful kids, and retired to boot.  Time heals most wounds. The past is the past, you're going to be fine.

As an afterthought, it's apropos that the mention of divorce, a rebuild of your truck, and the rebuilding of yourself, is in this thread.  Keep on trucking.

Part 2 of the Chronicles of Divorce: towing of the other trailer.

Let's get gettin

Aerodynamics, yo.

Damn those wheels look great on your truck. 

In reply to maschinenbau :

Should have done it a decade ago 

Folks.  A towing reminder

Check your trailer after the first 15-20 miles. Make sure everything is tight and hasn't gotten loose.

And if you have cheap ass HF magnetic lights on the trailer, make sure they haven't fallen off because you hit a bump. 

Part 3: Evan wins the Challenge with a boat.

Edit: where the hell are the picture buttons?

Edit edit:  found the buttons

Week 4, the depressing week

No l, not that.  My baby's gonna go stay in a forest for god knows how long till I can find shop space.  And she's gonna rust and rot.

Invest in a good car cover now. It will help a ton. Sealskin offers a lifetime cover at a decent price. Would be totally worth the investment.

In reply to hobiercr :

Will do.

Today is also the anniversary of Chuck passing.  Damn day always berkeleying sneaks up on me.  I do not berkeleying like today 

Week Whatever. Finals week.

Grandpop's shelves and random bulky boat stuff.  This is it.

When last we left our hero, his life was getting flipped-turned upside down.

Thankfully, with much help from the some of the best of the GRM enablers, our champion has safely stored much of his crap, and has a place to wrench.

So, back to what we were doing.  If you don't remember, this should help.

Mr_Asa said:

And here's roughly what I came up with.  Unless someone has a better idea, I'll start cutting later this week.
Here the outlet will be between the 4&5 cylinders, roughly one turbo length behind the motor mount.

So, after setting up, time to measure once, cut... well, more than once.

So we know roughly where to cut, lets make sure we extend well past those sections

Protip: Paint pens.  Many of them

And that seems to work well.  Gonna need to play with opening everything up maybe?

And we're getting somewhere

Now.  To go with this

Or.  Y'know.

Whatever I choose, got a lot of filler material available

Sweet! I am looking forward to how this all works out!

So, I have not forgotten this.  I've just been... distracted.
Two updates here.  

Anyways. I started to weld the new bolt retainers in.

I kinda screwed up at this point.  Anyone see how?

I also started to add the thermostat holder

Fast forward a bit, I came back and started to clear up some of my mistakes.  I've decided I'm not that happy with this setup.  Version 2 will be much easier to setup and knock out.  I've also realized that I'm drifting back towards attempting perfection with this and I need to just knock this out and get it so it can be machined and on an engine.

That being said, V2 the very first thing I'm doing is shoving the damned thing in a craigslist oven at 300 for two days so it bakes all the oil out.  I've never had such ugly welds.

Still.  Forward.  

So, last time I had a mistake, did you catch it?  I bolted down the retainers and then welded the head to it and this meant I had captured the bolts.  There was no way to remove them.

So, first step was to mess with those so I could unbolt it.  Did that, then took it from John's shop to John's shop so I could use the mill for some clearancing and other stuff that is necessary to just get this moving forward.

So, I need to clearance this so I can get a torch in there.

The other thing I need to do is to fill the other bolt holes so that I can drill new ones in the proper spot.

Drill out to 1/2", cut stock down to proper length, throw in freezer to shrink 'em so I can shove 'em in place after heating the head. (that's later today)  Once the stock is in, I'm gonna weld them in place and then I can drill the holes out to the proper size.

Was gonna use the truck for truck things today.  Unfortunately last night I just got the clicks.

Jump pack didn't do it.  Jumper cables didn't do it.  So today I had to buy a semi-permanent charger.  I am sad at this.

On the plus side, I fixed a broken taillight, so that made me happy? Hopefully it makes the truck happy?

400,000

At work we buy a lot of lasercut and formed pieces that we then assemble into our products.
Every shipment of smaller pieces comes on a small pallet, and between the pallet and the parts are little sheets of steel to prevent damage, whatever the producer of the parts has laying around that's scrap goes in.  They are usually 12x24ish or 24x24ish.

So, back in March I asked the bossman "hey, could I rummage through the scrap bin?  I need some sheet metal for some projects"  "Sure!" he said, "Go nuts!"

And then I asked our welders to set aside anything for me that looked useful.

Today I picked up what we've been collecting for the past couple months.

For Challenge purposes, scrap price in the area for the day looks to be $0.08/lb.  I haven't measured anything yet, anyone wanna guess how much I picked up?

I'm guessing 578lbs from the angle the truck is sitting.

Project at the pump picture.

Do I see a bridge on that trailer if I squint just right?