Welding Cart Part 1

We went to my moms house for Christmas and on the drive home we stopped in Springfield MO to eat lunch. There was a HF just off the exit so I stopped and picked up some clamps I had seen people on YouTube using for fab tables.These clamps were on sale for $3.19 ea and you simply drill out the rivet at the end and replace the clamp jaw with a solid rod.

Today I got all the paint cleaned off the metal for the base and finished welding it together along
with installing the axles for the rear wheels.

I'm going to use a floor panel from a CRJ for the bottom of the cart and for the welder to sit on.
They are made from honeycomb fiberglass, have inserts already installed and are edge sealed.

Initially I was going to use the file cabinet to set the welder on but it is too flimsy, so I
will build a frame around it and use another floorboard above the file cabinet.

New Welder

I've been researching welders for a couple years now, I currently have a Lincoln Weldpak 100 that I bought used in the early 90's. I upgraded it to use gas and it works very well within its limitations. I started looking harder when the frame rails on my low hour Gravely ZT42 broke in half. The gussets I used to repair it were at the limits of what the welder could handle and made the whole repair more painful than it needed to be.

I had what I wanted narrowed down to three welders, and decided that I would buy whichever was the best deal over Black Friday. None of them went on sale so I just bought the one I wanted the most  :)

I ended up buying the ESAB Rebel 205ic and I doubt I will ever be able to weld to anywhere near its capabilities.

Most of my experience is with MIG or Oxy Acetylene, I have only stick welded a couple times and have never used a TIG before today. But before I start spending any time pretending to learn that skill, I need to build a welding cart. Having two 255cf bottles strapped to my work bench isn't the most effective way to use my work space, I need them on a cart.

Yesterday I picked up a fab table that was on sale, its nothing fancy but really makes welding square easy. I have some existing material and decided to use as much of it as possible, to this point the only thing I have bought are the wheels and casters.

The frame of the welding cart I'm making from a commercial clothing rack that has 1" x 1" square tubing. The body of the cart is a three drawer file cabinet, which will sit on a fiberglass honeycomb panel screwed to the frame. The bottles will also sit on this panel and be held in place with aircraft seat belt extensions. The top will be another honeycomb panel and will extend past the welder, I will scallop it to fit around the bottles.

At least that's how it all works out in my head, I like reusing old materials but it is always more work than just cutting new materials to the correct size.

Today consisted of some mental design and me playing around with the multitude of settings on the welder. I did get the base cut to size and nearly welded together. The next four days are with the family and Ill try to pick back up on it this weekend.

Corvette Lights

After polishing the headlight lenses on the corvette numerous times, I decided it was finally time to replace them. They were crazing and turning yellow internal to the plastic, so there was no way to to improve their clarity by polishing.

The process for changing the lenses is fairly straight forward. Once removed from the car the headlight assembly is put in an oven to soften the butyl so they can be taken apart. Once the lens is separated from the housing all of the butyl gets removed from the channel on the housing. This was painful and took about 45 minutes to an hour for each assembly.

Once that was complete I added new butyl to the channel, installed the separator to the new lens and squeezed the halves together. Once the old lens was removed it was even more obvious how bad it was. The headlamp on the stool has a new lens installed.

I replaced the lens on the passenger side first and reinstalled it. The pictures below shows how badly the lens on the drivers side was crazed which caused the light to just diffuse inside of the housing versus the passenger side.

While it was all apart I also changed the DRLs to LED switchbacks. Instead of an orange incandescent light they are white when the headlamps are on and orange when they are off.  They flash orange at all times for the turn signals. I also added new D1S HIDs for the low beams and 75 watt H7 high beams.

Vinyl On The Vette

Another project I wanted to do this week was covering the "Halo" on the corvette with black vinyl. I had debated on using Scotch 1080 for a carbon fiber look but went with gloss black to better blend in with the tinted windows.

The "Halo" is the blue band that runs over the top of the car between the roof panel and the rear hatch.

I ended up purchasing a section of Avery brand vinyl. When I unrolled it over the roof of the car I noticed the backing in the center of the roll had been creased. I thought it was ruined but later found out that it really has no effect on the usability of the vinyl.

Applying it to the halo was fairly straight forward, I had done a lot of reading prior to trying this. I have some limited experience with applying vinyl, but I have never done anything this large before. The most difficult part was preventing edge failure, or making sure the finished edge isn't under tension where the vinyl could pull up or pull away.

For my first time doing something this large, I'm very happy with how it came out. It really ties the roof to the hatch and gives the car a completely different look. Most people wont notice it because it looks right, its the things that look wrong that people notice. I don't make changes to my car for other people so it really doesn't matter anyway.

Vice Cleanup

Tania and I took this week off for a staycation and I have a few projects I want to get done.

A while back I broke the retaining bolt in my HF vice trying to tighten it too much. It pulled the threads right out of the casting holding the nut in place and cracked it. I looked at some of the Wilton BASH vices but read mixed reviews on them, so I got my hands on a mid 90s Wilton 450S.

 The vice was mechanically sound other than a few drill starts along the top and some dents in the back jaw where someone beat on it with a hammer.

Thanks to the great information on the  Garage Journal forum I was able to take it apart, clean it up and repaint in about six hours. Not a museum restoration I just wanted it to look nice again. The most difficult part and what took the longest was flat filing the back jaw to remove most of the damage. There are still three marks that weren't worth the amount of material I would need to remove for something that was basically cosmetic.

The vice is mounted to a hitch plate which slides into a receiver I welded to the bottom of the work bench. It lets me move the vice out of the way to use both benches.
 

I like keeping the original machining marks on steel or aluminum whenever possible. The shaft on the front jaw wasn't heavily corroded but wasn't going to wipe clean either. I used a nylon wheel on it which cleaned it very well without leaving any marks like a wire wheel or sand paper would.

Sill Plates

The sill plates on my corvette are not actually plates but just decals. The one on the drivers side is showing 9 years of me not always completely lifting my foot over the sill while getting in and out of the car. It has actually started to wear through.

These OEM "decals" are stupid expensive and the aftermarket has stainless, polished aluminum and even carbon fiber replacements that make the OEM ones look like a bargain. After looking at pretty much everything available and debating options of making my own I came across the sill plates below that were a reasonable price and I actually like better than the ones that were on the car.

The removal and installation was fairly simple but a day after I got them on the car bubbles appeared in a few areas of the black part of the decal. After looking at them closer I realized these were separate decals that came stuck together. Carefully I was able to slide a razor between the decals and work the air bubbles out.

New Foam Project

Friday I picked up a Apache hard case from HF, they had a 25% off sale going.

I spent about 30 minutes making sign board templates from my M&P 2.0 and maybe another 30 minutes on my hot wire cutter. It  was a fun and simple project.

Coin Mat

Afew weeks ago I managed to get my hands on some aircraft coin mat, this is a rubber mat that is generally used in the galley areas on commercial aircraft. These mats are approximately 11' x 12', weigh around 60-70lbs and are fire retardant. They have small slightly raised circles with ribbing inside of them, when they are wet the ribbed circles prevent slipping.

This shows the mats laid out in the two car bay, I wanted them to get warm and lay out before I started taping them down. The two mats closest to the door had been down for a week longer and are fairly flat at this point.

This shows the mats a week later after I taped them down. I would have liked that they lined up better but they are not made to be installed as a whole mat so they are not identical to each other in size, each one varies an inch or two. Cutting them the same size to line up the coins would have induced its own issues in trying to cut them perfectly straight so I left them uncut. This also allowed me to roll them up the stem walls.

Ive washed my car numerous times since installing the mats. Ive also pulled them up to see the amount of water that might be getting under them. The main seam had maybe 6" of dampness under the mat, nothing I'm going to worry about. I have nothing invested in these other than my time, if they make the garage smell etc. Ill just pull them out. For now I am very happy with them, I like how they look and the floor is less slippery than bare concrete even when wet. They also made a huge difference in the sound, its much quieter in the garage with the compressor running etc.

Neighborhood Garage Sale

Yesterday was our annual neighborhood garage sale. I usually jump in my car and make a pass through the neighborhood, in the past I have gotten some good deals.

This year there was everything from a really clean 55 Chevy Sedan Delivery,

to a barely used Bocee Ball set.

A block from my house I found this brand new bike with a $20 post it note on it. I didn't really even look at it before pulling cash out of my pocket. After a quick conversation with the owner he told me he had been given they bike at work and had never ridden it.

After explaining I would be back to pick it up I started walking to the next house, thinking I would now need to find one for Tania as well. I had been looking for a his and hers set but nothing I had really pursued.

Next door there were two his and her Schwinns that I was not sure if they were for sale or if someone had ridden them there. I looked around a bit and then asked the home owner if she was selling them. At this point I was just curious since I had just bought a bike. She informed me they were for sale for $10 apiece.

Now I have three bikes...

I looked them up online last night and found the Polaris is currently available and sells for around $240.00. The Schwinns are about 8 years old and sold for just over $200.00 apiece. I think I will sell the Polaris on Craigslist (the Schwinn is a better bike) and use the money to buy some lights for the Schwinns.

There is trail head for a bike path about .5 miles from our house that I would like to start riding on.

Snowblower - Oil Leak

Two weeks ago I was "summerizing" my snow blower and noticed it had a fairly big oil puddle under it. It has always leaked a little bit since it was new, a few drops here and there but this was a puddle.

Looking at the motor it is mounted to a flanged steel plate which is attached to the main axle. It looked like the oil was coming from around the plate, which appeared to be the bottom of the sump or an oil pan.

Its item #14 in this picture.

The gaskets for this engine are not available separately, you have to buy them as a set for $52.00.

Last week I bought a hole punch set from Harbor Freight in anticipation of making a new gasket, and last Monday I started taking the engine out. It was of course the first thing they put in place when they built the snow blower so getting it out took a little work.

When I unbolted it from the engine plate I realized that was not the leak, it was leaking from the engine side plate. That wouldn't be any harder to make a gasket for, just more things to take apart.

My new Harbor Freight hole punches worked very well and I was able to make a gasket quickly. I did learn one lesson, punch the holes before you cut out the gasket. The material is brittle enough that it will split if the hole is very close to the edge.

Once I got the gasket made it only took a little over an hour to get it back together and running.

Pressure Washer

Tania bought me a AR Blue pressure washer for my birthday back in February.  I wanted a low volume pressure washer I could connect to my CR Spotless water de ionizer.  Utilizing it will allow me to use less de-ionized water when I rinse the car. The downside is connecting two water sources to it because demonized water is a solvent and left in the pump it will eat it up.  To make this work I needed a bypass for the de-ionizer.

Last year in anticipation of getting a pressure washer, I built a bypass out of PVC. When I connected it last week it literally exploded sending PVC shrapnel around the garage. Looking at it, I have no idea why it failed but the fragile nature of the PVC had me concerned to begin with.  I went to Lowe’s and looked at copper then quickly dismissed that idea due to the cost, so I started looking at PEX.  I was able to source everything necessary from Menards, including all the garden hose adapters.

Because the PEX is much more flexible than PVC or copper, I needed to build a bracket to attach the splitter valve to. I had some aluminum angle left over from a previous project that I highloked together.

Unfortunately I didn’t notice the feet on the valve were too wide for the aluminum.  I debated making a new support or adding a plate to the support. After looking at the valve again I realized I could re-drill the holes closer too each other.

After I re-drilled the holes I trimmed down the ears.

The bracket was easily attached through existing holes in the CR Spotless and the PEX went together rather quickly. I also purchased another section of Gladiator wall system. I had plenty of extra hooks to hang the pressure washer and more importantly the hose which allows me to store it in loose coils. Hopefully this will help with some of the memory these high pressure hoses have.

Now I can easily run normal water through the pressure washer to remove all the de-ionized water.

Steering Column

One of the few things I have never liked about the Corvette is the driving position. It seemed no matter how I adjusted the seat or the tilt column I could never find the right spot. Specifically I didn't like sitting so far away from the steering wheel, I have always liked it fairly close.

In most cars you can just move the seat closer and its problem solved. In the Corvette moving the seat closer puts my knees into the bolster and I am unable to use the clutch properly. This problem was very apparent when I went open tracking and felt like I was fighting the car instead of controlling the car. My arms extended straight to the wheel made it a very tiring experience along with making me drive much slower.

After that weekend I started researching options to move the steering wheel closer to the seat.

Option 1 was to buy a telescopic steering column ($350-$400).

Option 2 was to buy a custom made steering wheel with a deeper dish to the wheel ($1,500+).

Option 3 was to buy a quick release steering hub, after market steering wheel, 5 point harnesses to make up for no airbag and a track bar to mount them to ($2,000).

None of those options seemed reasonable at the time, so I did nothing.

A few weeks ago I was looking on Ebay for a trim piece and came across a column for $250.00, so I started searching to see if they had dropped in price. I ended up finding a column from a 2012 with 18k miles on it for $100.00 shipped. It was also a complete column with all the controls, clock spring and trim pieces installed.

After taking the disconnecting the battery the air bag and steering wheel took maybe 15 minutes to remove. Fairly simple stuff, I've had both off the car 3-4 times before. The column itself has one connector for all of the controls and one for the airbags. After disconnecting those, there was one cross bolt though the steering shaft and four bolts holding the column in place.

While the physical structure of the columns were completely different the mounting points and connectors were the same. The mounts are slotted so I was able to move the column towards the driver an additional 1/4" while installing it.

Once installed and after driving the telescopic motor fully extended the column moved the steering wheel 1.5" closer to the driver. Everything on the column worked properly except the telescopic motor, without memory seats in the car there is nothing to power or control the motor. I plan to rectify this with either a pair of relays or an H-Drive circuit, either way should be fairly easy to wire up.

In addition to replacing the column I took the drivers seat out while the steering wheel was removed. Its far from necessary but makes it that much easier to remove. This allowed me to easily access the drivers side seat belt. Over the last year or so it had become very slow to retract and many times would not retract without help. While I was looking for a replacement I came across a video on YouTube where the author claimed he had the fix for most all seat belts with this problem. He went on to explain that the oils from your skin and hands along from dirt the belt attracts would cause it to swell up and then become too large to retract properly. In the video he cleaned about 60% of a belt by soaking it in water mixed with detergent. I basically did the same thing but by removing it I was able to soak closer to 95% of the belt.

This picture shows the belt after soaking for about five hours. The water turned almost oily with a small amount of dirt in the bottom.

After reinstalling it along with the seat the belt retracted like it was a new assembly, I was actually quite suprised that it worked this well.

Parts Storage (Update)

This week I got my hands on 17 large hanging bins for next to nothing. They were covered with grease and oil which I tried to clean with little success until I loaded them in the dishwasher.

Now I can finish loading all the hardware I have in boxes around the garage.

Recover

A friend form work gave me some items his room mate no longer wanted. One of which was a rather nice NAPA "Balkamp Racing" creeper. There is no way I would ever pay over $200.00 for one of these, I just wouldn't use it enough, but if someone wants to give me one...

It looked like it had been used very little but the covering near the bottom had a tear in it.

I couldn't think of a good way to fix the vinyl that would have any longevity or wouldn't end with duct tape residue all over my back side. I decided to just recover it, so Tania and I headed to the fabric store to buy some vinyl. I ended up buying black, there wasn't a blue that matched and the black was cheap. Buying one yard is enough to cover it twice and was less than $12.00.

It did take a little work to get the old covering off it was built like a piece of furniture.

Putting it back together I used some 3M #77 spray adhesive to glue the foam pieces together along with the vinyl to the foam.

I'm happy with how it turned out, it took me longer to find my can of spray adhesive and the staple gun than it did to recover the creeper..