Very rare Truck. Makes my 1924 Model T 1 ton a common vehicle, even with the 2 speed Ruckstell rear axle.
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Very rare Truck. Makes my 1924 Model T 1 ton a common vehicle, even with the 2 speed Ruckstell rear axle.
Likely they didn't have a reduction drive because DC motors exert maximum torque at zero rpm. That's why they're used to propel locomotives.
I'll have to take some close up pictures of the motors and drives.
But yes there is a reduction drive I'm not exactly sure what the ratio is.
there were 2 different voltage motors used on these trucks some had 85/90volt DC motors some had 60volt motors and different sizes for the smaller 1/2 through 3 ton trucks. C.T. designed most of the componentry for the truck not all parts were made by C.T. Such as the Batteries are Edison nickel Iron in this one but some of them had lead acid Some of the trucks had Westinghouse motors and a few had General electric both manufactures made them for C.T. the ceramic insulators and screw in sockets were off the shelf items of the time.
You need to remember until last week I had forgotten all about this truck other than I knew Eddy was bringing it to me for he and I to restore eventually right now it is in a preservation state. When we start on it he will have to source some old growth white Oak trees and I will come up with a band saw and probably a circular saw mill
He is of the mind that he can just have a miller cut him the lumber to the sizes he wants and that will be that but if the truck is to match original then the saw lines should match as well to include the proper tooth pitch of the era. A lot depends on how close to a factory match he will allow me to re fabricate the truck
There are some missing and broken forgings that I am positive I will have to make unless he already has an assortment of them in the container packed in and around the Factory 4 wheel drive 59 ford that was disassembled to the last bolt some of those parts have been refurbished and many have not
possibly not this truck but some of the trucks in the fleet pulled a trailer which also had batteries and motors in each wheel.
this truck has the receptacle for the trailer control but none of the drawbar parts there are only the 2 holes where it may have been mounted.
That's the sort of restorations I like, the machine needs to look exactly the way it left the factory. Mint condition. That can be hard to do.
I watched a video the other day of some back alley shop in India rebuilding 12 volt auto batteries. Lots of recycling of the original components. I assume that will be a major task.
I recall that the 6 volt battery used on the electric start Ford Model T, were rebuilt. Their price was crazy from seeing it listed in a price sheet, ~$85, that would probably be $3K in today's cost.
Good luck with the restoration. Seems your too busy to start thinking retirement.
No just the opposite since I retired in 2013 I wondered how I ever had time for a job
You found time by putting off other little things that needed doing, like throwing together a work shed. :cool:
I tell you what I've learned about it - I was born to be retired and wish I had done it years ago because it suits me just right. Every day is Saturday now.
Your posts always seem to be a guy working on a commercial shop for hire (trailer, diesel repair). That's why I assumed you were retired from working for others with a paycheck, but still a hire-able "prostitute". :D
I'm a year younger then you, and in big need of another shop building as 2600 sq. ft. is too cluttered to have all the machinery accessable. And I have two trucks to get under cover, a 1.5ton 56 Chevy model 4100, and a 3/4ton 57 Chevy model 3600. Both have horrible body cancer from the salt infected by previous owners. On that subject, is there some off the shelf chemicals that will neutralize the salt that has berried into the steel, that keeps doing what it does of iron to iron oxide? I've seen products from Eastwood, but do they work, or just a sealant, and would like to not pay them for something if common.
How did the antique airbrake tanks turn out? I'm amazed you made your own heavy duty sheet rolling machine, for this.
Well I finally got both trailers I had been working on out of the shop so I can get back to laying down some more fill between 6 to 10 inches needs to be laid down in some areas to bring the floor up to 6 to 8 inches below finished floor level
so the way I have been adding fill is to add a few yards at a time then drive back and forth hundreds of times then add more. I plan to build it up above where I want it then build a 2 or 3 blade scraper to drag all over the floor to make it level then I will probably till it to a depth of 6 to 8 inches while mixing in an enzyme and lime stabilizer with water, level it again then convert my scraper to 2000 lb. double roller mount my plate packer on it and slowly roll that over it until the clay sand fill is packed to 125% compaction then try not to use the shop for anything for a month while the enzyme reacts in the soil. what this will do will be make the surface hard and nearly dust free similar to creating 6 to 8inch layer of caliche then later once I can afford to lay in the rebar and pour concrete I'll put down a layer of sand pour the concrete and have a lasting floor
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metric_taper very few years out of my over 55 years+ of working have I ever been a wage slave I have almost always either been on my own doing it my way or the highway type of an attitude or I had thrown in with companies for a % of the companies sometimes taking a set yearly salary or merely living off of an expense account hedging on a settlement of the profits this sometimes worked in my favor and other times costing me my entire life's savings. But that is the chance you take.
My last venture of the 10 years prior to my deciding to pull the plug should have had me sett for life when things turned south I decided rather than make a bunch of attorneys rich I'd be better off to chock it up to yet another lesson learned walk away with what I had left and forget about what should have been
Almost there.
I might have to add another 5 yards of fill to finish out the floor
then I will need to make a leveling drag spray the surface with water cut the high spots allow the low spots to fill then roll the surface
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When you want to put up a wall that eventually will need to become a window so the brick crane can operate around and through it what better way yo build a wall then use a side tarp off of a Conestoga trailer kit.
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Almost an instant wall, well it did take an hour to hoist the 200lb tarp in position and screw in in place
Had a trailer load of stuff arrive last night.
Some will be for the shop some needs to be repaired some will be moving on to another place
and some just because I wanted it
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the dog has the right idea
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so now I get a post hole digger
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everyone needs a 15 KW PTO driven generator Right?
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This used to be a 4 post Globe 5000lb cable driven car lift
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Over 2 years of adding the red sandy clay fill to the shop floor and it being packed down over and over had turned it almost into sand stone.
But now it is time to break it up for the next step in the process of making it into a durable floor that hopefully will not sluff off dust everytime something hard is dragged across it To do this the fill must first be broken up.
the rake Eddy was dragging behind his little tractor would scratch and scratch and eventually do a pretty good job but not nearly deep enough.
My leveling drag blade was too un wieldy in the confined area given its size plus it would just drag over the super hard spots.
I tried my tandem disk and this broke up some of the area quite well but I needed to bare down with so much force I was destroying it and still couldn't make it penetrate the really hard spots very well.
Even using the teeth on the back hoe bucket took all day to do less than 1/3 of the floor but at least with a lot of banging and only taking short gouging cuts each time it is finally being loosened into large rock like clods that should break up more easily
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The floor is broken into large clods but while we wait for the enzyme to arrive the decision was made to try and complete the walls
Today we closed in a section of the East wall that I was going to make into a door instead but decided to use the right opening instead of the left
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This is now how the East side of the shop looks
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The shop has never been this empty even before it was built
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It has been a busy week around the shop in getting the floor prepared.
After breaking it up with the backhoe like we did, we decided rather than me buying a 1950's era seaman pulvermixer, (To do so I would have had to hedge against some future truck and trailer repairs then most likely have to spend some time making sure it ran IE batteries possibly tires, hydraulic hoses and what ever else may or may not be wrong with the tractor like I really need another tractor that needs repaired right now anyway.)
That's not saying that I may not think about getting it in the future or going in with Bob to get it so we could use it as a very large rototiller as well as a means to clearing out and grinding up a forest of small saplings of china berry and dwarf scrub oak so several acres could be seeded in native grasses for possible future grazing. Or possibly even renting it out or selling it to recoup funds once it would no longer be needed. Heck it would make a great garden tiller as long as it were a big garden.
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Eddy figured and I agreed that time and effort would be better spent by hiring a guy with a tractor tiller to come in and turn the floor into flour would be cheaper than if we rented one and did the job ourselves. Turns out it was probably the best decision. Knowing now what just renting a roller to pack things back down after he tilled it up for us and we spread the stabilizing mixture using my pickup with 600 gallons of water on board and the spray bar we made to distribute the mix . If we would have had to rent a tractor tiller the roller and hauled them it would have cost way more in money time and transportation. Plus we got to stand and watch the horribly long boring job of trying to turn the nearly concrete like clay sand fill I had put packed in the shop into the consistency of flour.
after the guy had been grinding away for over half the day
6 hours of tilling
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after spraying
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After many hours of driving a vibratory roller and many miles of driving a pickup back and forth
the floor is not perfectly flat or smooth but way better than some old slab floors I have had to work on
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I've seen concrete floors too that weren't near that good. Maybe when it packs down hard again you can roll things on it with metal wheels.
-I'm just curious, Frank - what "enzyme"/ chemical are you using to stabilize the floor?
A name, link to a supplier/ MSDS would be much appreciated.
ATB
Johan
I'm pretty sure with Frank's water treatment and the vibrator compactor this is as solid as it is gonna get. Pretty good for driving heavy equipment over!
I'm not at all sure if I would class it as a chemical per-SAY The enzyme appears to be a derivative of an organic concentrate or an extract my best guess would be soured or fermented fruit probably grapes combined with a surfactant.
the recommended amount for my floor was 1 1/2 gallon to 300 gallons of water to do the entire floor.
I had the opinion that the soil should have had at least a 20% moisture content to aid in the natural wicking action but was told no you wont have to wet the soil first as long as there was at least a 20% clay in the soil it should be fine.
What I couldn't get them to understand was my fill had a higher clay content and 0% topsoil in the mix as it had only clay and what is known as silt or a red clay sand dust with a small amount of caliche and the moisture content was lower than kiln dried bricks It has had 2 years of traffic over it while being added to and packed down.
the poor guy who tilled it up for us spent from 9AM until 4 PM trying to grind it up the best he could. it wasn't until the last hour of his tilling until it stopped sounding like he was trying to drive as rock crusher over it. For the first 4 hours as he tried to till it the huge clods I had left when I broke up the floor with the bucket of the back hoe would get caught in his tiller and stall his tractor once in a while.
After he finished grinding he leveled it out pretty good then we sprayed 300 gallons of the mix then he tilled that in a few inches releveled it then drove his tractor back and forth until every inch had been ran over then I ran a 5000lb steel drum vibratory roller over it until after 9PM at least a good 4 hours.
The next morning we added a second application rolled it again for another 4 hours. So what ever it is will be what it is. We should know in a week but the process may be delayed due to expected cooler temperatures
https://www.substrata.us/perma-zyme
The product is supposed to wick through out and be drawn to the drier subsurface. As it does it will travel several inches into the fill.
Clay acts as medium to cause the wicking and the structure to create a stable strong bond it requires a minimum of 20% clay to sand and top soil . I took a few tests samples of just the powdery fines and crushed clods the results reviled an average of 35 to 45% cay to silt with almost no sand and zero top soil type dirt
Once it cures it is supposed to repel moisture absorben and provide a good resistance to sluffing off dust from the surface
Terrific surfacing Frank!
If I had that foundation, there'd be little hesitation finding sufficient material topping it in wood blocks. At the same time, my space needs about 76,000 4x's to accomplish that. Likely yours is comparable.......
Thanks, Frank (and a Happy New Year)!
MSDS sez 70% proprietary and 30% water. (also sez "material not to be disposed of in the environment"*...
"Active enzyme" seems to be sugar beet waste that has been thoroughly fermented, then an undisclosed surfactant added.
For any other nosy personalities, here's some info on constituents and effects in the following lab report (from 2005):
https://www.lrrb.org/media/reports/200525.pdf
For instant gratification readers: "Conclusions and Recomendations" (sic!) is at p 85 in the pdf.
Lotsa pics and graphs for textually challenged persons:)
Relevant points: Effects largely dependent on soil type, Resilient modulus improves over time.
Significant shear modulus improvements to the soil takes over 4 months...
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O M G great shop! I would love to have something better than 1 1/2 car garage but have to do with what I have.
Agreed I've seen many an old shop floor that was well over 100 years old made out of wood planking applied directly on the ground or end cut blocks driven into the ground between wood stringers making a checkerboard or butcher block pattern with lots of heavy machinery on them.
I don't recall planked floors with heavy machinery, but many done in end-grain. When possible, I search remnant lumber, 12" or larger radial saws easier to find. Intent would be frames around machine bases and leveling pads, and block remaining areas in. Some would be grouted, others would find some convenient but loose filler. Interest of clearing the space for traditional install, uuuh no.
Making tall machines a little more height-challenged friendly, that's a different story.
I closed in the East side of the shop yesterday with a section of new billboard tarp.
First off I needed to serve off the cut end of the tarp to strengthen and provide a means of hanging I, I started a few days ago by painting a 6 inch wide swath with a special vinyl tarp adhesive.
folded that over and pressed the surfaces together then once the glue had set I stretched a 3/16" braided nylon cord from end to end at the center point of the now 3" wide strip brushed this with the glue again and folded that over and pressed that together left it over night. this would become the top of the door. I repeated this process for the 2 sides once those had each cured over night I added a series of #3 sized stainless steel grommets to both sides .
I predrilled some strips of 3/16 by 3/4" flat bar on 12" spacings then hung the tarp on the flange of the header beam by clamping it between the flange and the flat bar then drilled each hole through the flange and bolted it in place using 1/4 20 bolts and nuts. Then secured the sides to the wall by the grommets with rubber tarp straps. Then used 4" nylon load straps inside and outside attached one end to the wall and welded strap winches to an angle iron on the purlins on the other side
it only takes a few minutes to release everything to open the tarp to allow passing through the door and later I will add a pipe in the pocket in the bottom of the tarp and a couple of pulleys to roll it up.
These lightweight billboard tarps are supposed to be rated for some fairly high wind loads, so I guess time will tell at any rate it makes for a simple cheap way of closing off a wide open hole in the wall for now at least.
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Great idea.
Wish locale of mine had less pirates. Vinyl would not deter them. Need to get a few hundred feet of fence stretched around it first.
Yep if my shop was located about anywhere else I wouldn't be able to get away with doors that can be cut with a box knife. "Well I could", at least after the first attempt of unauthorized entry.
I used to have a shop located right in the middle of a gang controlled neighborhood of Ft. Worth a lot of businesses had layer upon layer of various security systems to protect their establishments. the only thing I used for security was a gate at the entrance with a chain looped over it to keep the wind from blowing it open and the FEAR of FRANK. Shortly after opening my fab and machine shop there my shop dog was poisoned I found out who had done it and openly very publicly subjugated him to every thing I had learned many years before in Military psyops training plus a few things I had picked up on my own. It wasn't very long before we could drive off leave the gate and all of the doors wide open, if anything if we hadn't returned by late afternoon he would come over check to make sure no one un authorized to be on the property was present then lock up the building and call me to let me know what he had done.
My shooting range had a sign that stated "Anyone found here at night will be found here in the morning". I never heard of any problems there.
I don't remember which battle it was, some long ago battle in a tropical area, but a survivor told my wife about it when she was a kid.
He was in a tent near enemy territory at night and heard a rip sound. A copper knife was jammed in the chicken wire he had lined the walls of the tent with.
He being old gave the knife to my wife, we still have it.
So, having a surprise second line of defense can save your life.
When forced to own, work at, or run a business where the conditions are less than friendly or downright hostile in nature, it is by far better to establish a rumored reputation of being someone who should be feared far more than the police. Developing frenemies doesn't hurt either
there's a lot to be said for appearing as a crazy old man
Its always worked for me even before I was an old man. When people absolutely believe that you are completely bats**t crazy without any remorse for your actions then by nature they are going to be very cautious around you. Of course most cops I have known were more than willing to help fuel that assumption when they would tell someone about me. Free coffee and doughnuts in my break room for any officer who happened to pop in helped
Before my dad went to WWII, he was given an old Colt 45 revolver by an old man in the community, and it had two notches carved into the grip when he got it. My dad carried it through the Central Pacific and it came back with six notches.
Having a surprise in these sorts of situations is always a good thing.
Let there be lights
In the main part of the shop there are now 14 of them
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lately I have been adding more fill to the South side of the shop to bring the elevation up to near floor level in doing so I found the perfect way to dispose of a lot of old truck tires that had accumulated over the years in the form of a retaining wall
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I decided that since i was going to raise the elevation behind the shop it would be a real good time to run the electric line to my well under ground before i built up the area too much. So I excavated a 12" wide trench the 250feet from the machine shop van to the well then buried a 1/1/4" orange drop line tubing to run the cable in
the tubing was donated by the fiber optic contractor who gave me the steel hose reels
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I've been wonderin' if you were still alive, in this pandemic you never know who's gonna be gone next. Looks like you've been doin' some big stuff and that can eat up all of a fella's time too.
That shop is comin' along and already looks like a pretty good place to work and it's still gettin' better, so I bet you're already glad that you decided to take on this project Gettin' rid of overhead lines sure opens an area up if you're moving big stuff around, and I prefer to bury lines too though I seldom have the funds for conduit so I usually use direct burial cable.