Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » July 27th, 2021, 1:24 pm

I, like most of you, am still waiting for the dust to settle on the matter of the recovery of this injured website so today's post will be...

پرته له عکسونو

Last Saturday I went back up to do a little work on the nice lady's Champ forklift because she really needs some help and I just happen to have the time and the skills to be of help. The issue - a stuck clutch pedal. Apparently the print was too darned small on the advisory label that instructs the fork lift operator to apply grease to the throwout bearing from time to time and add to that the terribly obvious hose (with grease zerk) sticking out of the floor directly above the bell housing.... just wasn't enough of a hint.

This issue stems from lack of maintenance, compounded by the fact that this old rig has been parked outside, on dirt, on a property that routinely floods (because the county stupidly altered some drainage somewhere up-grade) all of which leads to the promotion of corrosion in places where there normally would be no corrosion. So, I was facing not only the possibility of a fouled throwout bearing and/or TO bearing assembly but also the probability of any and possibly all linkages between it and the clutch pedal being effectively welded together by rust.

Kinda makes you wanna go out and grease something, doesn't it?

Happily, this is a larger fork truck and far different from the rather compact nature of my ancient Allis-Chalmers, which is to say that the Champ actually has a little room under the deck where one can turn a wrench. It would be fair to say that the Champ is probably a bit younger than my AC but it sure doesn't look it. It has had a rough life and has suffered not only from neglect, but also from repairs made by a fellow with poor decision-making paradigms. By way of example, why actually repair a wallowed-out bolt hole in a hub when a stick welder will ensure that the hub flange it was meant to hold NEVER comes loose..... ever ever ever again! :roll:

GAWD!

Oddly, stuck clutch pedals were not the real problem this day. Welded hubs were not the real problem. Spiders and wasps were not the real problem. Rusty deck plate fasteners were not the real problem. Even VERN, the ever-procrastinating, less-than-handy, 'handy man', was not the problem (he had decided to take the day off and thus, was nowhere to be seen).

No friends, sweating was the problem. Normally, I pay very little mind to heat. If it's hot and I've got goals...well, it's hot and there's very little to be done about it. This day was 96 degrees without the slightest hint of a breeze. The fact that I was sweating (nay, LEAKING) THAT was the REAL problem. Profuse sweating, coupled with the fact that I was working on dirt, in and under a filthy, greasy, rusty old machine. It left me looking like I had been doing sugar-cookie drills with the Navy Seals on some beach near Coronado. So, as per usual, I simply bowed my head and just bulled my way through it with only the occasional swipe of my brow with the cleanest corner of the least greasy rag I could find.

But, I am getting ahead of things.

I had a gallon jug of water (for drinking...not washing),
a bucket full of patience,
a basic set of tools,
a wire brush (Mk 1 Mod 0)
a grease gun,
and two partially used cans of PB Blaster that needed to be finished off and laid to rest.

So it began. I spritzed all the deck plate bolts (and anything else that looked like it needed to come apart) with PB Blaster. Then I greased up the throwout bearing service tube. It gobbled up the grease very nicely. Deck plate bolts provided very little resistance. Three turns on every bolt followed up by another generous coating with PB Blaster ensured the threads would be coated and they all came out with little or no difficulty. The deck consisted of three panels; toe board, floor board, upon which the seat/battery box was mounted until it rusted mostly away at the base (that is going to have to be fixed) and an opposing deck panel that was separated from the floor board for no other reason than it allowed the floor panels to be taken up without having to wrangle a single panel up and over the shift levers, each not less than 3' long. As I said, it's a fairly big machine.

What I found underneath the deck was a very sensibly arranged set of mechanical brake & clutch linkages with their respective pedals pivoting on a single shaft housed in a cast iron carrier (probably containing a bronze bushing). The brake pedal was a dead stick because the master cylinder was completely frozen and undoubtedly beyond repair. But when it comes to mechanical linkages, there are only so many ways to do all this and every design ends up being a variation of the same theme.

In short, if you've seen one, you've seen em all.

I also saw lots of grease zerks cleverly disguised as little mud dauber nests. Dried grease, infused with Texas dust apparently attracts mud daubers. Happily, they had all come and gone so I knocked those off and followed up with a wire brush and a rag and then greased the double-compound-doggie-doo-doo out of everything that looked even remotely like a grease zerk fitting until I saw grease squirt out the joints. Grease came out around everything.... except around the base of the clutch pedal next to the iron carrier that holds the wrist pin for both the clutch and brake pedals.

Oh HO! So we have problems there. Probably dried grease clogging up any passage through to the clutch pedal. Well.....duly noted. This might be an excellent location to judiciously apply some heat at some point.

With that done, I laid on the PB in every little crevice between what would normally be moving parts. I took the inspection plate off the bell housing which exposed the throwout bearing and its carrier. There was some junk built up around the base of the throwout bearing in the space the bearing would normally occupy when moved so, with a lot of PB and a long screwdriver wrapped with a rag I got to work cleaning that surface up which came out looking just as pretty as the day it was made. Excellent.

But that pedal. OH, THAT PEDAL! It was stuck like a fly on a pest strip. I resorted to putting my copper mallet in action (I really hate hammering on anything because I believe a good mechanic, with enough time and proper tools should be better than that) and fellas, that pedal....

WOULD

NOT

MOVE!

Oh COME ON! I didn't have enough time and I sure didn't have the proper tools. I am embarrassed to say that I eventually resorted to finding a four foot section of drill stem and commenced to pile-driving that pedal down. What little movement I achieved was followed up by pulling the pedal back, followed by more pile-driving and pulling the pedal back, followed by more PB... Well, you get the idea.

Wash, rinse, repeat until the pedal was able to go to its full declination but at any point between fully up and fully down, that darned thing was STILL stuck. However, with a lot of grunting and more sweating I was able to move it a bit at a time which was one heck of an improvement. Rome wasn't built in a day and grease and penetrant take time to work their magic, so I buttoned the machine up, leaving it wholly intact (just in case I was killed in a horrible accident before I got back to it). In all, I worked on just this job for about 6 hours. Far more time than it took me to describe it to you, here.

Exhausting work, really.

To say that I was a real mess after this job is an understatement. I actually had to clean out the driver's position in my old Suburban after I got home and cleaned myself up. My clothes?....a total write-off begging for a Viking funeral. Guys who live under bridges are cleaner than I was. Just BLOODY awful.

I returned to the machine on Sunday, clean, rehydrated and rested....and OH, WHAT A DIFFERENCE! WHAT AN IMPROVEMENT! I will not go so far as to say that things were quite back to normal but the pedal and the linkages were moving SO much better that they could be moved by a good strong arm, which is just about the equivalent to what someone's leg could manage. Still, the pedal obstinately refused to come back up but many years ago, someone replaced the broken pedal return spring with *ahem* something else.

Yes, fellas.... There is nothing quite as permanent as a temporary repair.

So, there are a few other issues working against complete success, here. However, I am going to walk away from this for a week. A week of sitting in the hot sun should allow that new grease to soften whatever it is next to and with a follow up lubrication, I am betting I'm going to see some real improvement. If I don't get the results I want, well, maybe a little heat is in order. Failing that, I suppose I'll have to remove the pedals from the wrist pin, drift it out of its carrier and clean the little bugger up. No one said it was going to be a cake walk. But at the moment, I have high hopes for success.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try some time
You just might find
You get what you need.


Cheers,
TJ

P.S. That's Pashto...
Last edited by m3a1 on July 29th, 2021, 11:35 am, edited 17 times in total.

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by Mark » July 27th, 2021, 1:54 pm

Makes me wonder if you do a lot of cussing, I think that helps sometimes, with maybe a little bit of yelling!
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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » July 27th, 2021, 2:13 pm

Well, I kinda reserve my cussing for when I have an appreciative audience... :lol:

Fact is, I have this bugger beat already. It just doesn't know it yet.

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » August 3rd, 2021, 7:27 pm

I took my freshly repaired generator and my cut off tool up to the yard where I had located the Marson Matting. My buddy cleared the tall grass with a machete like some Amazon explorer, including the destruction of vines and a small tree that had wended its way up through one of the holes. And doesn't every good recovery story involve cutting down a tree?

Things were going fine as I cut welds.... until the generator, once again, began to behave as though it was staving for fuel which is the very reason it went in for service in the first place. So, I choked her down just a bit in the hopes that continued use (along with the hopped-up fuel I was using) might just clear things out.

Nnnnnnope! Quite the opposite, in fact.

Reluctantly, I called for a long time-out and we packed everything up and made for the shadier spots where we could hunt down a few more elusive treasures in some of the darker corners of the place. The genset? Well, it would have to go back to the shop. The most troublesome part of that was, the generator's carburetor was declared Obsolete in 2018 and I have MAYBE 12 hours on it and my Marston Matting was still waiting to be recovered.

Truth be told, my generator's 1530 watts (output - 1830 watts at surge) wasn't exactly keeping my cut-off tool (which calls for 1500 watts) spinning at top speed but, it was getting through the cuts, which is all that really counted.

Today I returned the generator to the shop. The shop's owner, Wayne (who is another associate of mine and somewhat less-nefarious than my usual cohorts) announced that he would soon be in possession of an ultrasonic cleaner and with that, he expected my carb might be returned to its former usefulness. But that would be in several weeks and I was beginning to feel a bit nervous about the whole thing because it was supposed to be fixed the LAST time.

Now, small engine repair places are like tiny Lilliputian versions of regular auto shops, sans all the heavy equipment. Walking around Wayne's place, I began to feel like Gulliver. And among all the various tiny machines, THERE was my NEW genset...which is to say, my NEW genset was in actuality an OLD genset and when I asked about why it was there, Wayne announced that it was there because it was going to be put up for sale. I reached around and felt my back for a sign that someone had maybe taped to me that read, "Gullible Person - Kick Me Here" with a little arrow pointing to my wallet.

Not Gulliver's Travels. Instead, Gullible's Travels.

But sometimes fate throws you a bone. This was a 4800 watt model, with a very substantial Briggs & Stratton motor (which are nearly infinitely replaceable) and it was bolted to a very respectable generator made by none other than....

GENERAC! Niiiiiice...but still, it was Oh-So-Ugly.

"What's the story, Wayne?" sez I, pointing at the fugly genset and swirling my index finger like a wizard casting a spell.
Wayne replied, "One of my customers bought a new one and wants to sell his old one."
"Well, Okay.... but WHAT is the STORY? What's WRONG with it?"

Wayne launches into a description of how this genset's present owner is a guy who is pretty well to do and who lives in a rather grand RV that goes no where (meaning 99% of the time, it's hooked up to shore power). He's the guy (and we all know a guy like this) who buys really nice stuff and when it begins to look awful, he sells it. So I begin thinking that his generator, like my generator, probably has some pretty low hours. But of course there's really no way to tell that for sure because these jobber generators have no hour meters. So, the whole thing comes down to a serious crap shoot.

Still, Wayne assured me it that had a clean bill of health, that it had some very serious compression, that it started on the first pull and that it made power just like it oughtta. That's a very bold claim for something that looks like it spent its whole life in the dark cargo bay of a commercial RV-Bus-thingamajig. But as I said, sometimes fate throws you a bone. So I switched it on, gave it a pull and...OOF!

:shock: OH MY GOD PULLING THIS THING IS LIKE PULLING A DIESEL LOCOMOTIVE UP A GRADE!! :shock:

Obviously my wimpy 'Harvey Milquetoast Suburban Lawn Mower Pull' wasn't quite up to par but even so, it caught immediately, chugged over once, ever so slowly and then, WHAMMO, the thing roared to life. I love engines with moxy! Naturally, I made a lowball offer which was countered by Wayne's lowest price (which he undoubtedly gets a cut of) and that price was pretty much right where I wanted to be in the first place.
SOLD! ...and I even like the color.

Rust.

Well, to be entirely fair, not all rust but rusty enough that if placed in a line with other generators, it would be the last one stolen. So, I've gone from 1830 watts on my old generator (which looks pretty but doesn't run worth a darn) to 4800 watts (with up 6000 watts on a surge) on a machine that looks curiously awful, like maybe it ought to be out by the curb on Bulk Trash Pickup Day. After having my shoulder and arm reattached to one another... I'm gonna have to start eating my Wheaties...because this thing is a beast and it's moving a LOT of generator. Not so grand as some of the newfangled stuff to be sure but still, a helluva lot cheaper.

I brought it home, fired it up and tried my cut-off machine. Sweet baby Jay! My cut-off machine never ran this fast on household power! So, I am good to go and soon, we'll go Round 2 with the Marston Matting.

Cheers,
TJ
Last edited by m3a1 on August 4th, 2021, 1:38 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by rickf » August 3rd, 2021, 8:37 pm

An RV genset with a pull start? I think Wayne just got over on you..................... Big time. And you do realize that Generac has been made in China since the 90's? I think your buddy Wayne the Less nefarious, has been taking nefarium lessons from your other cohorts. :roll: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :twisted: :twisted:
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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » August 3rd, 2021, 9:58 pm

Well, that is my terminology, not his but YES, if you search RV gensets a lot of these medium sized jobber gensets come right up. So whose terminology is it then? Hopeful purveyors of any and all Chinese generators, no doubt but I don't believe calling it an RV genset is necessarily wrong.

Yeah, I know....What I bought wouldn't run a large coach to any acceptable degree nor is it quiet but it would certainly power a smaller RV rather nicely when out in the boonies. But I don't have an RV...unless you count the M109A3 as one and it would be wickedly good for that.

The generator, as it is, is going to do what I want it to do and do it WAY better than my other one...which is really the point. It doesn't have a DC-DC verter so, yes, it is not quite as capable as a brand new one... but again, that isn't a necessity at this point and I'm not going to have my wallet turned inside out just to be fashionable. The verter can be added at any time if I get to feelin' frisky.

But, whatever qualifier you choose to use, you KNOW I paid only a very small percentage of what a similar model would cost. Where-ever they are made, Generac is still a leader in gensets so how far wrong did I really go?

Not far. Not far at all.

Cheers,
TJ

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by lpcoating » August 4th, 2021, 9:28 am

According to Generac's website, some are made in the USA. Depends on the model. I have a whole house system that kicks on automatically when the power goes out, runs on natural gas. Works very nice.

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » August 12th, 2021, 10:35 pm

I finally got back out to the PSP plated platform (say THAT ten times, really fast!) and began cutting welds. Generac genset was running like gangbusters. But I began to notice that the welds were becoming more prolific and more formidable the deeper into this I got. Whoever welded this was using a stick welder and getting into places where my cutter could not go. So before things got crazy, I stood up, shut everything off and told my buddy we were going no further on this. The game simply wasn't worth the candle. He seemed relieved and I CERTAINLY was relieved. Enough is enough.

So, we returned to the Nice Lady's forklift and ......it wasn't there. What th...! Then Vern, the no-so-handy handyman rolled up and after a brief conversation I determined that Vern put the forklift to work without it being finished and furthermore, he was moving heavy loads with the drive shaft still only held on with ONE BOLT. Vern declared, "it only needs one bolt." To my credit, I did not strangle Vern with my trouser belt. I did not remove his cojones with my channel locks and I did not knock his teeth out with my ball peen hammer.

Nope.

I went straight to the Nice Lady and told her point blank that as long as Vern was allowed to do as he pleased with that machine without oversight I would no longer do any work or perform ANY repairs on it. Period. End of sentence. I made it clear that continued use in its current state would absolutely result in a broken drive shaft flange, for which there is most certainly NO replacement....it being completely obsolete and out of production for many many years. And that was that.

Sometimes you just have to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

Being a 'good joe' I provided her with the new and correct hardware for securing the drive shaft flange and then completely washed my hands of it until something changes. And it's not that I'm closing the door on helping her out but I'm just not going to allow myself to be put on the treadmill of pain with someone else's machine that will consume my precious time while my half track still lies dormant.

Cheers,
TJ

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by rickf » August 13th, 2021, 9:52 am

As Vern struts off "Well I showed his arse who was boss now didn't I". :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I am guessing you will no longer be sourcing goodies from there?
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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » August 13th, 2021, 1:27 pm

Oh no, I'm still a good customer. Besides what I buy for myself, I'm also 'pickin' some of the long lost goodies out of the piles and bringing them up to her so she can do a little research, tag em' and put 'em up for sale. All the Verns of the world can't screw that up.

Nice Lady even graciously gave me a few things which, after I got them home and did a little checking, turned out to be some high dollar items (which is to say they are far more salable than any of us imagined). So, I gave them a bit of a tidy up and brought them back to her.

She's still giving me really exceptional deals on, not all, but most of the things I pick. That's good enough because most of the things that catch my eye wouldn't interest anyone else, anyway.

But as for that one man wrecking crew we all call Vern, well, I'm not gonna help him destroy her machine. That's her business, not mine.

Cheers,
TJ

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » August 15th, 2021, 11:53 pm

I decided that today, I was going to take a break from it all.

Friday was spent playing Mister Plumber around the house with The Kid in tow, learning and taking notes. As with many things, despite being capable and having certain skills I am ridiculously slow, meaning, if I were doing the work professionally, I would inevitably starve due to inability to crank out the work in any speedy manner. This plumbing was taking far too long.

Along with that there was a lack of correct replacement parts because some of my fixtures are woefully aged. So, we pulled things apart, jotted down what was needed and their parts numbers and not unexpectedly, (despite our best efforts and a trip to and from San Antonio) we would not find the replacement parts we needed on any retailer's shelf. So those parts got ordered online and in the mean time the old parts were reinstalled, with them leaking even more energetically than before.

I know exactly how Noah felt.

Saturday morning I woke up at 2AM after approximately 2 hours of sleep. :shock: My wife happened to be off from work at the hospital (people are dropping like flies, folks...even the young and healthy) and she, being a night-time physician, under normal circumstances would not be at home in bed with me. Hey, somebody has to deal with this Covid stuff 24/7. At night, folks end up seeing my wife for their medical needs. So, with her being at home in bed and with her delightful snoring, I awoke early and, wide awake, I was unable to get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried.

Grrrrrr.

Now, I've had an ongoing project that has involved the retirement of one gazebo in favor of another and Saturday was to be the day that the wooden deck that forms its base would be pressure washed so that it would be all pretty again (my wife's stated goal). Naturally, NO ONE around here lifted a finger to remove all the accumulated stuff on that deck and since The Kid was suddenly down with pneumonia (I know...I know... in mid Summer, in Texas, with temperatures hovering in the 90's, HE gets pneumonia!) he would be of no use...especially in the wee, early hours. I suppose I'll have to give him a pass on the matter but that doesn't change the fact that I seem to be the only person around here actually doing anything productive.

So, wide awake and with things to do, I got up and so as not to disturb people who were lucky enough to be actually able to sleep, I tip-toed around the joint until I was dressed and loaded up with the customary amount of caffeine, the critters were fed and watered and a satisfactory level of news was consumed from the internet. Finally outside, with even the mosquitoes still in their little beds, I turned on the lights in the gazebo and began a protracted and reasonably well-organized purge (which might be better described as a sort of Fire Sale. Everything goes!) of the gazebo's deck. Chairs and all sorts of flotsam and jetsam littered the lawn around the gazebo and they, being on the periphery of the illuminated provided by the pale gazebo lights, all looked a great deal like the sea surrounding the Titanic must have looked on April 15, 1912.

With that done, I fired up the pressure washer back in the shop area (again, so as not to disturb anyone who was lucky enough to be asleep). I half expected the poor old thing to not want to start and then where would I be? But, it caught on the first pull and so I shut it right down and went about the business of setting up the pressure washer and hoses where they would be needed. This included a hand pump sprayer filled with bleach which, once the washing was complete, would be distributed over the deck to lighten it to a uniform color and kill off any of nature's grunge that I might have missed with the sprayer.

I don't know where the time went but, by 0730, I was really altogether ready to begin the whole process. The work was completed by 0830 when, by some strange quirk of fate, the trigger group on the sprayer of the pressure washer began to gush a LOT of water every which way. Lovely. I had been waiting for some malady to develop in my pressure washer which is only...uh...fifteen years old... Probably more.

Naturally, starting my day so early means having to take a serious nap at mid-day to recharge myself...which usually leads to MORE insomnia but because Doctor Amy would stay up all night long on this particular day (so as to begin switching her sleep over before going back to work) I would once again have my usual night-time bed all to myself while she occupied herself watching endless reruns of Grey's Anatomy and cooking shows in the living room. So, I was able to get some excellent rest that evening, despite the mid-day nap.

Before I went to bed I promised myself a day of rest doing what I wanted to do and nothing more. All work and no play and all that stuff...

Friends, when I woke up on Sunday morning I was feeling energized and lucky. REAL lucky. Now, for me, 'Feeling lucky' can be characterized by a certain breathless anticipation and a very slight feeling of elation that cannot be attributed to any tangible set of facts. When I get that feeling, I've learned to mark it well and if an opportunity presents itself, to act upon it. It may be just a feeling but most times, it pays off in spades.

Imagine if you were a race horse in the starting gates of the Kentucky Derby. There's a lot of open racetrack ahead and anything can happen and you just can't wait to get out there and run like the wind. That's pretty much the feeling. So, I threw on my clothes and a ball cap, I grabbed a cuppa and called my buddy who said he wanted to come along and watch the fireworks.... because he knows from experience, when ol' TJ is feeling lucky, some crazy stuff will usually follow.

Bussey's Flea Market here we come!

When we got there the place was rockin' and rollin'.... There were a lot of people there and, despite the temperature climbing like crazy and despite my Covid vaccination, I masked up anyway knowing full well it was going to be not especially nice to have to wear it. No sense in tempting fate, especially when my kid (who is also vaccinated) has pneumonia. We waded into the maelstrom with me sweating into my mask.

So many good things to be gleefully pawed through and held up to the bright sunlight to be examined with careful scrutiny. Table after table of the Weird & Wonderful STUFF...all of it laid out, waiting for the next owner. Everything from brand new Civil Defense fire extinguishers from the 1950s to broken RONCO Pocket Nose-Pickers. There were Turnip Twaddlers with all the chrome worn off and old containers of Tang, filled with assorted (and tiny) nuts and bolts. THEY HAD IT ALL!

What is there not to love about STUFF???

My pal spilled first blood with the purchase of a repurposed Elgin pocket watch filled with pressed flowers and resin....using three $1 bills from MY wallet (you can count on him to buy some pretty weird stuff) which put him on the path of looking for a watch fob (a rather dubious pursuit IMHO) but I surely have found stranger things there. In this place, anything was possible.

Then he spied a rather modern ship's emergency lighting lantern without it's charging mount and while he disassembled it to examine the interior to see if it could be repurposed in some way, I paused to examine a drum wrench (for bung holes on large drums of whatever) because I didn't have one and....YOU NEVER KNOW! Having a drum wrench might just be useful during the Zombie Apocalypse. (Think of all the useful things you could do with a freshly opened barrel full of molasses when the zombies are coming!) But I digress.

I asked for a price on the wrench and got a price which was a bit too high considering how little use such a tool would ever get, and so, I put it down. I picked up a toy cap bomb and fiddled with it while the exam of the emergency light's internals continued, unabated. The young fellow who was selling these things asked me if I knew what what the cap bomb was because he sure didn't. (some people lead really sheltered lives) Well...SURE! DUH!

After I explained toy cap bombs to him in great detail (Amaze your friends! Annoy your enemies!) he was obviously awed by my vast knowledge about such minutiae. I did also mention that Boy Toys from 'back in the day' were all centric to turning us into wannabe stone killers by age 12 so that by the time we reached 17 we couldn't wait to run to cadence and dig cozy holes in the ground, drop real mortar shells on Commies and if necessary, happily throw ourselves on hand grenades. He was mesmerized.

So, once again I picked up the drum wrench and holding it to my eye like some weird monacle, I stared at him through it and said coyly, "How much....?" Low and behold, a very correct price was given, as if by magic.

Mine! (Yes, some times, a little bit of theater really pays off.)

My buddy gave up on the emergency lantern and after he put it all back together we returned to wade through the bacchanalia of dead people's stuff and other unclaimed escapees from garage sales. Eventually, I came upon a very capable-looking section of crane cable with a large, heavy duty locking hook on one end and a rotating contraption on the other which terminated in a large cast steel loop. That device allows whatever is being lifted (or pulled) to be turned without twisting the rest of the cable. I must say it was a Very Nice Bit Of Kit and undamaged (at least to my eye) and I wanted it because it would certainly make my winching of stuff all the merrier.

I looked around for a second opinion but my chum had disappeared.

He was lagging behind, then catching up. Why? Well, not trusting himself, he came to the flea market with a crisp new $100 bill which was meant to cast a spell over him if at some point he found something he might want because, presenting a $100 bill for a $3.00 purchase would be (if nothing else) rather exasperating for the sellers, all of whom had wads of $1 bills on hand but very few large bills. So, I quietly decided to put an end to that nonsense. I called him over and said, "I don't have the cash to buy that (pointing at the Very Nice Bit Of Kit). Pay the man." And so, that $100 bill was quickly busted up and the smaller bills he received as change and my chum was now out of excuses. After the transaction, I handed him cash from my wallet (minus the $3 he owed me) and now he had $97 in useful sized bills. :lol:

BullSh--.-Killer Achievement Badge AWARDED!

Fellas, it was HOT. It was even hot where there was shade and hotter where there was shade and limited airflow. Help was on the way in the form of a very large, very dark section of sky that continued to get closer and darker and at this point, a whole lot of venders who were set up out in the open were looking at it and beginning to pack it in and pack it up. So we upped our game and moved a little faster.

I came upon a set of used composite lights from the same fellow who promised me limitless supplies of them several months ago (but never delivered). I snagged them and then I noticed a large industrial drum fan, four feet in diameter. Everyone else had THEIR fans going. (I DID mention it was H-O-T?) Why wasn't THIS big cuss moving air? Well, as it turned out, its motor was gone. Like, G-O-N-E as in ABSENT. But everything else was intact. :) Here come the fireworks!

I live for these moments.

"Is that for sale?" I said, pointing to the big fan.
"Yup" said he.
"How much?"
"$30" said the seller, spinning the fan blade which turned over quite happily.
"I'll have that" I said.

Now it was at this point my buddy was looking at me the same way he might look at me if I suddenly had lobsters crawling out of my ears. He was looking at me the same way your dog looks at you when you serenade him with a harmonica. My pal couldn't figure it out... but owing to the fact that he has known me for some 30 years or more he kept quiet and just went with it. I paid the man and he wrestled it around behind his cubicle and out of sight for me to pick up later.

Mine!

After we walked away my friend couldn't contain himself anymore. "What the hell are you going to do with that fan?"
"I have the correct motor for it sitting on the shelf in the garage. It already has a pulley and it's already wired, with a switch. All I have to do is bolt it on there" I said, matter of factly.

I could see his eyes roll up and to the left as his brain conjured up images of the interior of my garage. His memory banks conducted a virtual inventory of what was on my shelves.

"ONLY YOU could pull THAT rabbit out of a hat!"

Yes, Friends, it has been said that I could take a deep dive into a cement mixer filled with manure and climb out, grinning like a madman, with a diamond clenched between my front teeth.

And so, a short while later we transformed the interior of my suburban into something more truck-like and we shoved the day's finds into every corner and capped it all off with one exceptionally large fan which immediately got a new motor after I got home. But, the day wasn't over yet and the luck had not yet run out.

After we played with the fan a bit, I ran an errand and when I returned I found a young fellow speaking with my son on the front sidewalk. I though maybe it was one of his friends but this was a person with whom I had chatted about former military vehicles some time ago. He had stopped by to see the half track and to give me something...

An M37

for free.

I'll just let that sink in a bit....

Free.

So the deal was, a local guy (with whom I am already acquainted) had been cleaning up around his place and there was this rusty old M37 without a single molecule of paint on it anywhere and he wanted it gone...as in, you come get it and it's yours. Except, this young fellow was smart enough to know if HE took it he would be in WAY in over his head. And, I am experienced enough to know that I certainly do NOT want a crusty old M37. But.. I DO know people who aren't nearly as smart or experienced; people and who would love to have it. So, I said yes, I'll take it and he said he'd set it up.

And that was that.

Later, my buddy and I went to Home Depot because he needed MORE stuff to mount the stuff he bought at Bussey's and I needed a new trigger group for my pressure washer. While I was there I wandered over to look at New Fans, and Dear Reader, the fans like mine, are not less than $400. I spent $30 and made a bit of extra space on my garage shelves. Do the math. So, I left the store feeling pretty good about myself...and even better after I found a bright shiny quarter on the ground on the way back out to the car.

Cheers,
TJ

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by rickf » August 17th, 2021, 5:10 pm

Ok, So you have a couple of places where you can find all kinds of fabrication stuff and you always want to build something "Special". Well, Here you go. Watch the whole thing and check out the ladies with the Harley engine powered saw. :mrgreen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ1slXxrAYo

These are the people that tell Tim Allen to pack up his toys and go home!!! :twisted: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
1964 M151A1
1984 M1008
1967 M416
04/1952 M100
12/1952 M100- Departed
AN/TSQ-114A Trailblazer- Gone

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by rickf » August 17th, 2021, 5:26 pm

An M37 for free is right down my ally except I also have nowhere to put it even though I own 3 1/2 acres of ground. Apparently I must only rent that ground from the Township since they keep changing the laws to make sure I can't do anything with it or put anything on it.
1964 M151A1
1984 M1008
1967 M416
04/1952 M100
12/1952 M100- Departed
AN/TSQ-114A Trailblazer- Gone

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » September 3rd, 2021, 9:02 pm

Oh boy.....oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-BOY!

Where to begin?

Day One.

Well, the focal point of this little expedition has been the eventual recovery of the derelict M37 which I initially decided would be a game not worth the candle. I was oh-so-right and yet, oh so wrong. But, being ever willing to participate in a new experience (of the automotive mayhem kind) I kind of agreed to bring out my toys and tools and then we would see what might be done.

All of this began with moving some civvy derelicts from point A to point B and my Gama Goat, Dirty Gertie, would be doing the honors but my assistant, the young fellow who set this all up, was late. Texts went unanswered. Calls went straight to voicemail. So I packed up my truck and drove over to the site by myself. No one was there. Hmm. After 45 minutes, he returned my call.

"I-I'll be right over", he said breathlessly, after I told him I was no longer waiting for him at my place but instead was at the site... and that I had been waiting for far too long (and was not happy about it).

When he showed up he explained that Mommy had things for him to do. I asked if Mommy takes his phone away when he does chores or did he just neglect to call the people he had made appointments with? No answer to that question. He was too busy spooning Lucky Charms out of a cup and into his face because, you know, breakfast is the most important meal...blah blah blah. At that point, I began to suspect this was going to be a long day.

Now, in order to help grease the skids for this tale it is important that you realize that this young fellow was about as green as grass and equally as naive. For that reason, I'm going to refer to him as, Skippy. Seems like the right name to me. Not only was he 'green', he was also the vociferous type; someone who never shuts up (or am I just getting old?) and apparently he was also the type who uses the totality of his mental processes in preparing for whatever it is he wants to say next, and none of his mentality on the matter of actually listening.

That's a dangerous combination when it comes to the matter of moving large objects with large, powerful machines.

Now, in order to help you fully understand the things I would be facing, and the type of work I would be doing, since we began this adventure I hadn't seen one inflated tire. Not one! In fact, all the tires had the appearance of having been run while flat. Heck, I suspect they were flat before the cars arrived.


Where have all the tires gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the tires gone?
Long, long ago..
Where have all the tires gone?
Gone to junk yards, every one.
When will I ever learn?
When will I ever learn?!


A point of fact; there was not one vehicle out there with air in the tires (if there were tires at all) and compounding those problems, this was ground that occasionally flooded (with the usual silting-in that goes with it). And so, with Skippy flitting and fluttering about like an excited moth, we began the process of moving vehicles, starting with a fine example of Detroit's inexorable decline.... a Ford Tempo.

Poor, sad little thing. A plain vanilla fleet car designed to be sold, used up and then resold (or re-leased) to only the most desperate buyers, i.e. people who needed a set of wheels and who were also out of options, either through their financial misbehaviors or out of pure ignorance. Yes, Ford Motor Credit used this very plan to wring a few more dollars out of the indigent until the pips squeaked. Bad credit? No Credit? No problem! Ford Motor Credit will gleefully stuff you into a Tempo...especially a used one. Ford figured it out - make cheap (but not quite bottom of the barrel) cars and sell em once (which is okay) or they can make cheap cars and sell them twice (which is WAY better) and finance them at full value, ensuring the poor slobs who would buy them would pay absolute mountains of interest. I cannot remember another car that was ever built wholly for the purpose of loaning money. Pure genius.

So, after admonishing Skippy that NOTHING out there was worth dying for I explained his responsibilities as Ground Guide and then I saddled up. He immediately set to work on anything but guiding me and busied himself petting the wretched carcass of a Datsun 280Z that had been stuffed with a ridiculously large Ford V8 that probably began its life in a Lincoln.

So, I climbed back out of the Gama Goat, explained everything again, in greater detail, climbed back into the Goat and fired it up. I looked in the mirror and prepared to back up and, alas, Skippy was gone once again.

Now, the noise that a Gama Goat makes is legendary. When someone says that two people, seated side-by-side in a Gama Goat cannot hold a conversation because they cannot hear one another, that is not hyperbole. It is the gospel truth. It is like wearing a garbage can over your head with R. Lee Ermey's Gunnery Sergeant Hartman banging on it with a riot baton. Therefore, you might also conclude that anyone seated in a running Gama Goat cannot hold a meaningful conversation with anyone standing outside the vehicle. Which is also....the gospel truth. So, with Skippy who-knows-where, I shut Gertie down once again, stared intently into the mirrors and yelled, "WHERE THE DUCK ARE YOU?!!"

.....except I didn't say DUCK.

"RIGHT HERE", he said, sounding boyish and embarassed.
"WHERE is HERE", I replied.
"Right behind you", he said.

Have I mentioned that at this moment it was just about midday, in the summer, in Texas, with no air moving and I am seated in a metal box painted dark green? Ergo, I was hot to begin with....and getting hotter with each passing moment.

"Ahhhhhhhhhh-haaaaaaaaaa", I replied sarcastically, "Can you see me?"
"no," replied Skippy in a rather small voice.
"Well....What....A....Coincidence", I said in as caustic a tone as I could manage, "because I can't see you EITHER!"

Skippy's head appeared around the back corner of the Goat. He looked like Wile E. Coyote waiting behind a tree for the Roadrunner. MEEP MEEP! Now that I could see him in the mirror, I've no doubt he could decipher the look of fury on my face.

"Get THE HECK out from behind there. You're gonna get run over, you bonehead... Get the HECK out of the THERE! Get to where I can see you! If you can't see ME in the mirror, I sure as HECK can't see YOU!"

.....except I didn't say HECK.

Yup, this was going to be a long day.

In my defense, I hadn't ever run over anyone with a former MV...yet. I have actually shot another human being with a Sherman tank's main gun (no lie!) but that is another story altogether. But I darned sure wasn't going to run over anyone on THIS day. So we tried it again. THIS time, Skippy made a point of being visible in the mirror, except that now, all his hand signals were in some way obscured by the back of the Goat and certainly no higher than his belt buckle. *sigh*

True, it was an improvement to our situation. Our long day became longer and I shut everything down once again, climbed out once again, walked back once again and read him, chapter and verse, the method by which a person acting as Ground Guide would communicate to a driver with limited view and absolutely no ability to hear....once again. Finally, he began to act as if he understood and we actually got hooked up to the Tempo and hauled it out. As you might imagine, the Gama Goat made short work of it....even with the Tempo on four flat tires and locked up in gear.

With a mighty tug, I began forward and at that precise moment, Skippy's tiny little brain somehow decided that being on the driver's side of all this was somehow wrong so, he leapt over the cable as it tightened and barely made it to the passenger side without being run over by....of all things....a Ford Tempo. The odds against being run over by a Ford Tempo in year of our Lord 2021 are astronomical. I've been told that God loves drunks and fools. I have little reason to believe otherwise.

One down. Two to go.

We went back to the stuffed Datsun and did a hotwash on the first pull. In other words, I chewed him out for running (nay, LEAPING) between two moving vehicles. With the Datsun, the hook-up was rather straightforward, but the pull wasn't. The Datsun's tiller was hard over and there was no way of telling whether or not it was in gear with the mysterious transmission and no apparent way of shifting it. And, of course, it also had the obligatory four flat tires.

Off we went with the Datsun fretting and thrashing about at the end of the cable like a rabid coyote caught in a trap. I must say, there was a surprising amount of activity considering I was only chugging along at about 10 MPH. I greased her in alongside the Tempo but she was all cockeyed and the back axle was obviously out of line with the rest of the car. With the limitations of the space allotted to the cars to be parked, and that axle all akimbo I was going to have to line that Datsun up just a bit better.

Okay, Skippy, I'm gonna learn ya sumpin'. Skippy didn't hear me. He was busy peering in the windows of the 280Z and mumbling to himself as I went to the back of the Goat and returned with a rock jack. Without fanfare, I proceeded to jack the Datsun up with the rock jack centered on the rear bumper.

"Aw MAN! You're going to scratch the chrome", he exclaimed.

I just pointed at the rust perforation on the back bumper (yeah...it was rusted completely through!) and continued lifting.

"See that", I asked, pointing at the 280Z balanced precariously on the jack with its hind end up in the air. "See that", I asked again, pointing at the angle of the Datsun in relation to the unloved Tempo.

Skippy wimpered as I gave the Datsun a bloody great kick toward the Tempo which tipped it and the jack right over.... which had the effect of placing the two cars almost perfectly parallel to one another. Skippy was stunned.

"They don't teach parallel parking like THAT in driver's education" said I.

We unhooked and returned to the boneyard for the third hulk; an early 70's Ford pickup. Now these are much-loved trucks in Texas. You can't swing a cat without hitting one around here. Back yards, driveways, and fields are chock-a-block full of them; all to be categorized as either Living a second life, Dying, or Dead. This one was most certainly in the latter category. Once a proud truck, snow white with its belt line cove painted a bright red, it was now covered in lichen and all sorts of filth and clearly deceased.

Skippy, fickle as ever and with the Datsun suddenly forgotten was, once again, officially in love. A car doesn't have to be Christine to capture this boy's soul. So I decided to pour a bucket of cold water on the lad because at this rate, Skippy was going to do something really stupid and bring some leprosy-riddled THING home to his parents and Stephen King would probably hear the horrified screams from Mumsy and Daddums all the way up in Maine.

I tucked the Gama Goat in real close while Skippy stroked his new objet de amour. I climbed down and did the hook-up myself. This pull was going to be from the rear of the pickup and we needed steering control. Skippy was about to find out why old derelicts aren't really 'all that'...

I opened up the driver's door and rolled the window down (because he was gonna need the air).

"Okay, git in there. We're gonna need you to steer this thing as I pull it backwards so it doesn't end up in that ditch" I said. "I'm going to pull you alllllllll the way over there so I can get lined back up to pull it from the front and over to the line of cars we're making."

Skippy's eye's lit up and his eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. He was so excited at the prospect of captaining this once mighty steed I though he might pee himself like an excited puppy. That excitement....that LUST lasted until the moment his backside hit the seat.

POOF. All gone.

Old Car Smell is the antithesis of New Car Smell. Old Truck Smell, particularly when enclosed in an airless passenger compartment, is the plus-sized odor of whatever had been camping out in the truck coupled with whatever else had come up through those holes in the floorboards over the years; molds, mildews, other mysterious tiny creatures that lived and died in that truck. Every bit of it had an odor and it was just Concentrated Evil. Add to the sensory overload things that had formerly been made of plastic or vinyl; all of which were now just....sticky. ALL OF THAT kinda took the bloom right off the rose for ol' Skippy. Truth be told, the interior of the truck smelled exactly there had been a fire in a chicken coop. Being in that cab must have been just like cuddling up to a street bum who has been living under the overpass, one block down from the plasma center, since 1983.

Mmmmmm. Yummy.

Skippy was suddenly no longer in love. Nope. Not even a little bit. The whole house of cards came tumbling down and I probably saved him a lifetime of regret by bringing into sharp relief the reality of derelict cars. They're usually UNusually nasty. Without that lesson, who knows what he might have eventually brought home. Old cars ain't all hearts and flowers, Skippy. You'll thank me later.

And so, stuffed in this stinky old truck, Skippy steered while I pulled and, to his credit, he did a fine job of it and didn't complain. With the truck all lined up in its new space and with Skippy now sadder (but far wiser) we called it a day.

Next up. Day Two. More mayhem!

Cheers,
TJ
Last edited by m3a1 on September 4th, 2021, 3:14 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

Unread post by m3a1 » September 3rd, 2021, 9:06 pm

Day Two.

Several days later, I abandoned Skippy altogether and returned with my regular runnin' buddy Bill. We surveyed the scene and decided the next candidate for a move would be an Iveco cabover cab-chassis. No box meant it would be all the lighter. I liked that! This one came with a twist because not only was it sunk, with not four but SIX flats, and facing the wrong way, such as the pickup truck was, but it also had a nasty mound of earth between the rear axle and eventual freedom. Thus far, mounds of dirt were indicators of little piles of rock or metal scraps and in THIS place, metal scraps are usually at least half an inch thick and exceptionally well dug in.

Oddly, one of the benefits of the flat tires was they were free to roll ON the rims, whether the rims were turning, or not. We discussed our route, hooked up and Bill climbed into the cabover, without the starry eyed look that Skippy had on his face. With a mutual wave we were off....or rather, sort of off. The first tug produced an inch or two of rearward movement. The second tug, now more forthright, got the Iveco out of the holes it had been sitting in. The third tug was loud as I ran the Detroit Diesel ran right up to the governor and kept it there...and friends, in 6WD and low range, that produced a mighty force that spun its wheels briefly as we plowed the Iveco through the mound and then Dirty Gertie dug in and we rolled out of the graveyard to a place where I could unhook, turn around, re-connect and pull the old Iveco forward into its new space. Once there, I noted that one of the tires of the steering axle had taken leave of the truck. The old Gama Goat hadn't even noticed.

FINALLY, there was a clear path to the front of the M37 (or what was left of an M37). But, it was still hemmed in by two junkers behind it, trees to its left and some large metal tanks to it's right.

The ground it sat on was uneven and home to a small army of wait-a-minute vines. Encounters with these vines is much like becoming entangled in barbed wire. Mature vines are pithy and unyielding with very strong thorns. Think rose bushes in vine form and you'd have a pretty good idea about the pain they are capable of inflicting. They cannot be pulled out by the roots and the vines cannot be broken by hand. They must be cut for one to be rid of them. And with them well-camouflaged by the tall grass, eventually we found every darned one. Usually, I am pretty stoic about pain but taking a knee on one produced an instant response from me, coupled with some colorful language.

This truck was well picked over, and absent it's wheels (not one flat on this truck) it was left to rot, directly on the ground. Eventually, the thing sank down to its hubs in dirt and clay. The M37 is not a light truck. Trapped under the rear differential (which was directly on the ground) was a mix of heavy wire mesh that had been nailed to wooden slats along with some sort of vinyl flooring material mixed in. This wreckage had probably been some kind of rabbit hutch at some point. Now it was just a mean, ugly mess that defied removal because part of it was buried deeply in the dirt as well as being trapped....and it was directly in the way of progress. So, we did what any hot, sweaty, angry person would do and ignored it. Instead, we went straight to the front of the truck which was similarly situated....just without the wood and wire and vinyl flooring.

I was never so glad to see an old truck without an engine and transmission. (less weight) Out came the rock jacks and the truck slowly came out of the ground and we placed one castaway steel car wheel under the front axle. It wasn't correct, or even proper but it did have the front of the M37 up and out of the dirt. The sun was beating us to death and we had accomplished more than we should have undertaken on that day (we were ill prepared for propping up heavy objects to be sure) so, we gave up for the day. There was just no escaping the heat and no dishonor in our retrograde movement. We weren't retreating.. We were advancing in a different direction.

That set the tone for the work that would follow. Do a little bit, claim a small victory and skedaddle....or, if it was to be a long day, we would retreat to our truck's air conditioning, run an errand, cool off and consume vast quantities of water and then return for another small victory. You can't eat an elephant in one sitting and even if you could, why would you want to?

Stay tuned.

Cheers,
TJ
Last edited by m3a1 on September 8th, 2021, 11:15 pm, edited 8 times in total.

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