Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

[m3a1]

I was not prepared to dig out my torch set which is ancient (and probably empty). In my world, which is 89.675% rust, Allen heads are always like playing Russian Roulette with 5 bullets in a 6 shot revolver. I hate em with a passion. Fabulous, and clever when new, Allens are a complete headache when they're old. In these particular screws there simply isn't enough meat around the Allen socket to hold up when additional pressure is exerted.

Heating things to cherry red is the last, final act of desperation around my place. I know it is sometimes necessary and effective but it has the potential for creating larger problems than what one began with. I very much prefer exhausting all other possibilities first. Those screws were coarse thread and we all know how far moisture can migrate into a coarse thread; twice that of a fine thread bolt or more. In this case, both were FAR more.

Provided the fitment is healthy, fine thread screws generally rust about one turn into the threads, if at all. From the perspective of a restorer, this alone makes them far superior to coarse thread screws. I am always glad to see fine threads. These coarse thread screws were rusted all the way across the full width of the casting...about 7/16". It wasn't a lot of heavy rust. Just enough to efficiently seize the screw. I mention this to the readers because sometimes it is important for one to consider that maybe you aren't dealing with one big rust monster but rather a lot of little rust monsters all working in harmony to ruin your day.

Knowing when to use finesse rather than brute force is, in my humble opinion, an important part of a mechanic's repertoire. Of course there is also a lot to be said for the efficiency of 4' long breaker bars when finesse is no longer an option.

Once I got it broken loose, I dosed it with PB Blaster and 3-in-1 oil (a potent combination and my favorite recipe) and just worked it back and forth a little at a time until the rust simply gave up. Now they all move perfectly. I will keep them because they are original to the machine. Perhaps the better thing to do would be to replace them with something a bit more user-friendly and just keep them in a little medicine bottle attached to the machine somewhere.

For most of us, nuts, bolts and screws are just plain boring but they ARE important to everything we do in this hobby.

Cheers,
TJ

[de officiis]

Every once in a while we would have a windy day on my father's day off. He would take me outside to our big back yard and strap me into his old parachute, fluff the canopy to catch the wind and then watch me disappear over the horizon and end up somewhere in the next county as I was dragged along by a full-sized Army parachute. Do, or die, I soon learned how to spill the air out of a parachute and I ain't kiddin' ya!

Wow, I never heard that story!

Respectfully,

Little Brother

HEY, Y'ALL!

This fella, right here, is my kid brother!

Welcome to the forum, Adam!

Not only did I find out that my old man did this to my brother, I also discovered that he did the same thing to my cousin!

[m3a1]

Today was a matter of rounding up new hardware and the continued renewal of the right and left Side Gauges.

The side gauges are graduated to assist the user in setting the depth of the cut. Their mounting holes are also slotted in order to move them a little bit either forward or backward so as to accommodate for the variables in forward or backward adjustment of the Bed.

What follows are 'progress' photos of the process of repeated soaking in distilled white vinegar (a 5% solution) and buffing off the rust that had accumulated there after it had softened.

Unfortunately, there is no way to simply make rust pitting disappear but the goal here is to get these pieces rust-free and ready for paint. In this case, sand blasting would not have improved matters as it would have simply hammered away at the visible details of the graduation markings so, I'm using a rather weak, but effective (against rust) acid bath. It IS time consuming but because the vinegar is working on the piece gently, rather than aggressively, so it is easy to manage.

When is the process done? It is done when you put the piece in the bath and there are no dark spots magically appearing on the piece. If the surface turns grey, that just the acid working on the bare metal.

JFYI, my previous vinegar bath was becoming contaminated with a lot of rust from the work it was doing. Gentle heating of the vinegar will make it work more energetically on the rust, by the way. I just put my container out on the metal work bench and let the sun beat down on it which warmed the bench which warmed the container and warmed the vinegar in turn. Even after repeated uses the vinegar was not becoming noticeably weaker but it was becoming harder to clean up the piece because of the tiny particles of rust in solution which were finding their way pack into the pores of the piece.

You might want to keep your old vinegar around for initial cleanings and switch over to newer stuff for finishing, which is what I'm doing now. The final bath is brand new 5% vinegar and will be followed by a baking soda & water rinse for neutralizing the acid and then a final clear water rinse before drying. Happily, I am nearly done with these!



A stark contrast between the rusted areas and where the bolts and washers had protected it.

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The dark line is where the top of the vinegar was. I was doing one half at a time so as to be able to provide pictures of the progress on each piece for you.

IMG_6668.jpg

And here, a side-by-side comparison...

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Note the very slight 'tea stain' on the piece on the right. The brownish tinge won't even buff off because the pores in the metal are contaminated.

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Looking very nice but now, a final bath in fresh vinegar and we'll have what we were looking for....a good, rust-free piece.

IMG_6672.jpg

It's easy to achieve excellent results with very little money and very little labor invested. Better living through chemistry!

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

Are you using regular vinegar or cleaning vinegar? If you are not using the cleaning variety I suggest you try it.

[m3a1]

I began with what I had on hand which is what most people have on hand... straight white vinegar. It does the job very nicely, albeit slowly, even at 4%. It's something anybody can use and achieve excellent results which is kind of the point of the thing. Not everything we do requires special, super-duper, high powered tools, right?

Distilled vinegar is 5%. Do the math. The additional 1% that distilled vinegar has makes it a LOT stronger than 4%....by uh, 25%, right?. Heinz produces a vinegar at 6% available at most grocery stores and there are vinegars out there that are up to 45%. Google "cleaning vinegar" and you get a little bit of everything. There are a lot of choices out there.

I'm not a chemist but I imagine plain, low powered, white vinegar left out in the Texas sun is effectively losing water through the process of evaporation and (potentially) getting stronger despite the fact that it is becoming adulterated with rust through use.. I'm using the same dirty stuff over and over just to map out how much one can get away with. But the stuff is so darned inexpensive it's almost not worth hanging onto unless your next vinegar bath is going to be the size of a baby pool... in which case a person should instead be setting up electrolytic bath instead, It's hard to go cheaper than that, right?

Haven't yet reached a point where the dirty vinegar is no longer performing but cleaning up the piece to remove what rust has been softened doesn't yield the kind of cleanliness I want. There's just too much junk in there. So there is a point of diminishing returns and it becomes necessary to eventually go back to using 'clean' vinegar.

On the whole, vinegar is cheap-cheap-CHEAP and begins to become more expensive in the more powerful varieties. As you can see, and will see later, vinegar, even vinegar on the lowest end of the scale does a very nice job. Some guys want to stand there and watch stuff bubble and foam and pull it out after a short time. I'd rather put it in the bath, go to bed and come back to it in the morning. Managing your time vs labor is really the key to being able to work with vinegar. Dunk it and walk away.

If I'm looking for absolute speed, I might use a stronger acid like Muriatic Acid (aka Hydrochloric Acid) but those stronger acids can work on the base metal and in this particular job, I'm tip-toeing around the hatch marks on the gauge; marks that I want to preserve (which is the same reason I didn't take them straight to the blast cabinet).

And stronger acids present problems in use and clean-up and handling (and health) that just aren't issues with the use of vinegar.

By way of example...use Muriatic Acid inside your shop without massive ventilation and in the morning, you'll find EVERYTHING ELSE that is metal, rusted....which is very disheartening. But we know there are similar results in homes where meth is being cooked, right? The fumes from Muriatic Acid absolutely ruin everything they come into contact with.

Special acids present special problems. Not the kind of trouble I want, Pardner. Use the vinegar that is low and slow and just arrange your labors so that it has time to sit and cook. Easy peasy.

As an aside, I have noticed that the vinegar, particularly the 5% vinegar is actually loosening paint when allowed to soak for a long time so, be forewarned.

I have a CG-4A hand crank from a military reeling machine that had been painted a number of times by the military and which also had some very unfortunate rust that made it just too darned awful to use. So, after soaking in 5% to soften the rust, the many coats of paint applied by the military have been sloughing off very nicely. BONUS! In this particular case, that was a real coup because of the complexities of the casting made it impossible to get in there with a 3M cloth....and also, the close tolerances of the folding handle were something that I didn't want to contaminate with sandblast media for fear of seizing it up.

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

After sitting all night...

IMG_6690.jpg

Remember what I said before. Vinegar softens the rust and releases it from the good metal. Those small bits of rust sitting down in those pockets just brushed right out. All that, followed by a final vigorous buffing with a red 3M pad.

Acid bath set up next to the baking soda and water solution. Then off to a final and thorough rinse, wiped dry and hung up to dry a bit more while I shook up the rattle can. This whole process does not prevent flash rust, by the way. In fact, you can count on it. The very best scenario is to get primer and paint on, ASAP.

IMG_6694.jpg

And what have we here? A stray Jeep piece. Something I vaguely recall finding at a yard sale a long time ago. Ford F-script markings can be found on the tin cups. It has never been installed but I'm betting this is a reproduction piece as there are no identifiers on the casting and those grease zerks look awfully new.

Well, since I have a vinegar bath set up, you KNOW what's next!

Yeah, there's ALWAYS something goin' on at the Beverly Hillbillies!

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

Not only a Jeep "Piece", But a spring shackle complete with right and left hand threads.
Wanted to see how long it took huh?

[m3a1]

Believe it or not, it took about 15 minutes in the bath which was fully warmed in the heat of the day. This looked worse than it was but now, it's de-rusted, cleaned, painted and metal prepped (where there should be no paint) and put in a zip-loc baggie for storage.

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

Well, it has been an interesting week. Unusual things coming my way from every direction and some deals are diamonds...some deals are stones.

I received a text from a fellow retiree who inquired as to whether or not I had a blast cabinet. Now, this fellow has a very nice 68 or 69 Camaro so, I was curious as to why he would ask. His car was not the sort that needed anything requiring a blast cabinet. Our text exchange was as follows:

Him - Do you have a blast cabinet?

Me - Is the sky blue? Is the grass green? Do the cows lick Lot's wife?

If you don't understand the reference, Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for being (*ahem*) naughty. Some women just don't listen!

(a protracted pause)

Him - 4 (which is cop speak for the brevity code 10-4)

(another long pause)

Me - (now intrigued) Why do you ask?

HIm - The husband of my wife's friend and co-worker has one for sale.

Me - (smelling a bargain) What does he want for it?

(yet another long pause)

He sends a curiously bad picture of an ancient Trinco Model 36 blast cabinet to me. It has a separate abrasive separator and pneumatic treadle valve (that's a foot actuated valve for you fellas who live south of the Manson-Nixon Line) with a very pretty Porter Cable 80 gallon vertical compressor barely visible at one edge of the photo.

Him - $50.

(my immediate response followed)

Me - Tell him I'll take it. LMK how, when and where.

Him - Here's his number. 210-555-1212

Now, keep in mind, I already have a blast cabinet that is also ancient but constructed from ABS plastic which pretty much makes it immune to most of the horrible things that happen to steel blast cabinets over the long haul so, I really don't need another one even if it is a professional model.

So, I called the seller and discovered he had formerly been involved in the restoration of old tractors. He mentioned that the compressor was also for sale which turned the whole deal in a different direction altogether. I confirmed I would certainly take the blast cabinet and told him I would consult another friend and old police partner, Bill, on the matter of the compressor.

Now Bill has been semi-actively looking for another compressor, which had to be on sale, and be smaller, more portable, and a more horizontal model than he already has. He has been swimming upstream on the matter for quite a while because compressors are almost NEVER on sale. Of course, this particular compressor was the exact opposite of what Bill thought he wanted. I told the seller I would make a call and get right back to him.

Discussion of the matter with Bill determined that we would simply go have a look which took my comments in the direction of - Why don't you consider buying the whole lot? I'll just step aside and let you take the whole shebang but either way, that blast cabinet is coming home with one of us. I knew that Bill, ever the suburbanite, was going to have difficulty shifting gears on the matter of compressors..from little, to big. This was going to be interesting.

Suburbanites are forever looking to adorn their garages with small, shiny, portable, garden-home style tools which only approximate Big Boy tools but are, quite frankly, anything but Big Boy tools in terms of their performance and longevity. Bill is finally at that stage in his life where he is beginning to be disappointed by some of his former namby-pamby tool choices and it is high time for him to level up!

As usual, Bill hemmed and hawed because beyond the fact that he is a stellar individual in most categories he is ALSO the sort that, when given counsel to turn left, he will inevitably turn right. He's a big guy who is forever buying compact or subcompact vehicles and then telling me he fits in them (which he does not). Driving square pegs into round holes and doing things bass-ackward is his idiom and somehow it all seems to make sense to him. I don't understand it but, whatever floats his boat....

He agreed to come along if for no other reason than to help load things. So, I called the seller, committed to buy the cabinet and set things up for our visit.

That evening we drove out (sans trailer because one does not want to appear to be too willing) and we simply looked things over and talked turkey. The seller's place seemed to be curiously upscale and really not at all tuned to what I would consider to be a 'dedicated to the cause' kind of place where old tractors were brought back to life. He he had a nice 1942 John Deere in the garage and under a sheet. It appeared to be an older restoration but there were no large tool cabinets, no shelves of parts, no oil stains on the ground and no jacks of any kind. Weird. Maybe he hired the work done.

The reason for the sale of these two items was that he was clearing out and walling in the third bay of a 3-car attached garage and converting it into a dedicated Man Cave (too many daughters in his house, apparently). That space, when it wasn't being used as a guest bedroom, would be his space alone...sort of. No matter how hard one tries, one can never really filter out all the estrogen in a house full of little women. So, according to his plan, the big stuff had to go in order to make way for all the Man Cave-ishness that was soon to come.

Well alrighty then!

The blast cabinet was a veteran in every sense of the word and the seller had purchased it used but, it had a working light and it had a clear plastic sacrificial panel (meant to preserve the plexiglas window) along with a generous stack of even more pre-cut sacrificial panels. It also had a hole cut in one side made by some boob who apparently wanted to put a 37" piece in a 36" cabinet (that hole would be easily patched) along with layers of duct tape here and there, doing who-knows-what. The treadle valve gave every appearance of being serviceable and all the hoses and gauges were in place. The cabinet was, otherwise, very straight and solid.

Then there was the abrasive separator... but that contraption was now nearly deceased. He had done what I do with mine and simply hooked up a big shop vac to scavenge off the broken-down media as it floated in the upper air of the cabinet and he had simply put the big separator aside. Bill looked the whole thing over and said nothing which left me rather annoyed but I half hoped he wouldn't want it. With a bit of a tidy-up, it could be easily flipped and it would be a definite money maker.

Finally, our attention turned toward the big compressor. It had been purchased new, was now used, but like most of the other stuff in the place, it had been kept up. Power connection for the compressor (now unhooked) had been made by a certified electrician so this fella wasn't a cavalier about his tools.

Yes, the compressor was now disconnected and it may seem odd to you that we were moving forward with no proof of life but we used our cop powers and after a lot of conversation (what a cop would call a roadside interview) we determined this guy was legit and so was his compressor. He just needed it to be gone from the one space he wanted to claim for his own. Good enough for me. Good enough for Bill.

But again, Bill hemmed and hawed and now, also played coy (which is not my personal negotiating strategy) The price? Well, I stayed out of it. I have watched too many deals go straight into a ditch because of too much danged talking by fellas who are supposed to remain on the sidelines...but don't. The seller's price wasn't a giveaway price like that of the cabinet, chiefly because it was just too pretty for that. Bill struck a deal that he could live with, even considering the possibility that the compressor might end up needing a nip or a tuck.

Bill laid claim to the blast cabinet as well (with me getting dibs if he ever decided to part with it) and he laid out some earnest money. We returned the following morning and picked it all up and made off with the booty like a couple of pirates and returned to his house and stuffed it all into the garage where both pieces would receive a going-over.

By golly, he DID manage to buy a compressor 'on sale'!

Not long after, Bill and I were chilling at my place and watching cable; some never-ending drama about Danes and Anglo Saxons who weren't playing well together. I received a heavy knock on my front door of the type I usually associate with the local FexEx guy. The dogs went nuts. Grrrr.. NOW what?

Long story short, there was a fella at my door who had a not-presently-running-but-turns-over military genset he wanted to sell for $200. *sigh* Okay, let's go have a look. Hoping for something in the GOD WATTA MONSTER DIESEL POWERED category, we piled into the suburban and followed this fella a little ways into the hill country. It was just far enough out into the boondocks where I was pretty sure I heard a banjo playing and if we were to be ambushed, no one would ever hear the shots. Terrific.

After going all the way to the end of a dead-end road and driving up a narrow, winding driveway far enough that my suburban would never be seen from the road (and anyway, by whom? There are no passers-by at the end of a dead end road!) I saw this guy has more junk laying around than I do and my junk was a darned sight better than his junk. Things were not looking promising.

We parked and we walked around the corner of a building and there, on the ground, was a very plain vanilla-flavor military generator comma portable comma green comma derelict. It was of a size that would benefit greatly from a set of wheels and maybe some handles like a wheel-barrow but the military went cheap and decided they had enough slave labor to forgo the additional expense. Adding to my doubts about all of this, it began to rain a little bit.

My first observation was.... there was no carburetor. Top dead center over the small 4 cyl Wisconsin was a damp wad of paper stuffed into the throat of the intake. Where is the carburetor, I ask. Oh, it's in here, he replies (speaking as though he wondered why I even asked). So we backtracked and entered a shed where he handed me precisely one half of a carburetor.

I laughed. Well...! Here's your problem, fella! You only have half a carburetor!

Yeah, I actually said that because I was beginning to be a bit put off by the realization that he didn't disclose the obvious state of disassembly outright.

Oh, I have the rest right here, he said, and after five minutes of digging, he handed me a small cardboard box containing parts for not less than three carburetors and explained that "some other guy" worked on the carburetor. Apparently, the phrase worked on the carburetor included not only removal and disassembly but also mixing the various parts up with other carb parts, making the whole thing a kind of Chinese puzzle. Now I was even more put off and felt like I should be showing this fella some tough love and bring him back down to earth because this was going nowhere fast.

So I picked through the parts and sifted out those that were best suited to his carb and kind of tossed it back together so that maybe it was at least whole....ish.....or not. Frankly, I didn't really care. We went back out and by that time the paper wad in the intake is wet. I took a knee, plucked it out and tossed it to the side and fit the carb to the intake. Every linkage seemed to match up with nothing left over. I turned the engine over by hand. It was turning over but it wasn't moving all slippery-like.

He produced some other odds and ends including a cover plate for an opening where a starter motor might have been (but was otherwise absent) and I felt a starter was probably never installed. Half the cylinders had no means of providing spark to the plugs...disconnected, missing bolts, all evidence that whoever fiddled with it hadn't cared much about the final result.

I checked the oil which was (a) overfilled and (b) smelled like gasoline. Yeah, someone had been trying to start it...a lot. Those cylinder walls were almost certainly washed down and not a drop of oil left on 'em and perhaps even scored at this point and folks, this was a 1967 model genset. Not exactly state of the art. I told him I hadn't much hope for it even if it could be started and went on to say if anyone bought it for ANY amount they would be taking all the risk on something that was antique and wouldn't necessarily run OR run for long OR actually produce electrical power OR..... All Of The Above.

But it would have been fun to take it all apart and make it run again. There's no denying that....just not for $200!

Alas, he was still stuck on $200 and he mentioned that he could recoup all that if he scrapped it. I said, well, I think you ought to do that. There is NO shortage of these and one more being scrapped isn't going to make a single bit of difference. I took his number (just in case he came to his senses) and we got the heck out of there.

Yeah. Some deals are diamonds. Some are stones.

Cheers,
TJ

[SturmTyger380]

Interesting story you had there. Some the best stuff though is found on those dead end roads.

no large tool cabinets, no shelves of parts, no oil stains on the ground and no jacks of any kind.

Well I have that well taken care of, even my stained spots have stains.

[m3a1]

Earlier, I made very little mention of this and certainly didn't show you the results. Here it is...

64615800342__138F5F64-8F7A-455A-89D3-A05B4CFB0096.jpg

IMG_6697.jpg

[m3a1]

Ever the scrounger, I picked up a completely unused, commercially made, wheelchair ramp at a rummage place which consisted of a large piece of steel diamond plate and some 3/4 x 3/4 square tubing for rails and legs. I might massage that into yet another lightweight ramp for The Bat Trailer some time in the future. The bi-fold aluminum ramps I presently have are good, but not good enough. The one one that normally gets used is beginning to get a bit beat up and I have been keeping the it's doppelgänger aside as insurance.

Quite clearly we are asking too much of it from time to time because not everything that goes up or down on it has pneumatic wheels. One of the benefits of solid wheels (on things like hand trucks carrying 450 lb compressors) is, they are great performers on unyielding surfaces like concrete. Not so great on aluminum panels. I suppose I could switch back over to pneumatic wheels on all my hand trucks but the fact that I haven't is proof that I am not always a sensible fellow. Sensibility comes and goes around here like the clouds in the sky.

Now, sitting on top of my new purchase was a mobility chair lift was one of those tiny cranes you might see being used to lift a wheelchair or anything approximating a powered wheelchair into a minivan or pickup truck. I've always been curious about these. With a brief internet search of Bruno Curb-Sider VSL-670 I came to understand why it was called Curb-Sider. It was cleverly designed with a dog-leg to sneak around the corner of whatever it is to be mounted in, in order to hook up to its intended load. Thus, one can park next to the curb and with the unit mounted fully inside the back of a mini van, it can rotate out and reach around the back corner of the van to the curb. Very, very clever.

I also discovered this particular model was good for lifting as much as 400 lbs even with the dog-leg. Wow! Not only that but, the rotation of the pedestal was also powered if you wish. Double Wow! Okay, thats a bit of overkill for a person who has full mobility but someone else with limitations might find it a necessity so, it's a nice option. 12 volts is required and it has a wired control box. The seller guaranteed it would work or I would get my $30 back. My kind of deal. I'll have THAT, thank you!

Yes, it works just as it should and it moves smoothly and sedately with no complaints and, as you might suspect, the wear on it is negligible. These sorts of things are NEVER going to wear out. Big heavy duty nylon bushings make sure of that. I suppose with newer, mo-betta models being offered and insurance companies footing the bill, nobody ever considers buying the older, used units. So, if you find one on the cheap, take a hard look. You may be staring a really good deal right in the face. They are a very good value and WAY cheaper than back surgery or hernia repair.

The thing is built like the Rock if Gibraltar. Weld quality is FABULOUS. Lots of clever adjustments make it suitable for many applications. The stuff that does the lifting has obvious, no-BS limitations but, 400lbs is nothing to sneeze at. I have no immediate use it for but first and foremost I wanted to play with it. I may just massage it into something better suited for use around here. No one is in a wheelchair (yet) and it may simply end up filling a gap for lifting...like bringing heavy things up into the hard shelter on my M109A3 which is something it would be absolutely perfect for.

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

Ohhhhh BOY! MORE JUNK!
Yup, today was nothing but diamond deals!

.........Keep Calm.........
And Watch This Space

(it's going to be awesome)

[rickf]

Did you get my e-mail the other day? Tractor seats

[m3a1]

I did.
Did you know they are reproducing those seats? It's true!