Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Last of the big messes...

The weekend of Feb. 14, we stripped the rest of the old stuff off of the frame. Bare, clean steel was the goal.

Friday evening, I removed the tires and rested the frame on a pair of small moving dollies. Then I hitched up the frame and towed it out to the center of the work area for the weekend.



My Mom came into town on Saturday morning to watch the boys. What a help! So Katie and I went to work on getting the old axle and springs out. Old sticky grease deserve a big screwdriver and a set of rubber gloves. After cutting the original hydraulic break line, we rolled the running gear out.



Plenty of wheels are really useful here.



I've ordered a brand new torsion axle from Six Robblees in Seattle, so I'll weigh the new setup before installing. Hope to lose a few pounds from the trailer this way. Later in the morning, we drove the old axle and springs to the recycler along with the original axle from our old trailer.Both axles and a bit of this and that, we netted 700 lbs of steel. The $17 we got from that bought lunch! If you were wondering how much your running gear weighs, here you go:



More mouse poop! Yuck! Getting this dirt and gravel out of the belly will shed a few pounds too.



With Norms help, we placed the two pieces of belly skin out on sheets of paper and traced their outlines. This way we can keep a template for the new belly, but sell the old stuff to the scrap yard. We made $25 from scrap aluminum.



Most of the plywood was in remarkably good shape. We spent some careful time removing the elevator bolts with a grinding wheel and screws with an air chisel. All that came off pretty well. I swept the old subfloor, then placed the sheets of new plywood on top of the old. We cut the plywood around the wheel wells and made index marks on each sheet. We should be able to line everything up easily when it's time to screw it down for good.



We're using marine grade ply this time. I relied heavily on advise I got from Edendaw in Port Townsend.



After getting the plywood all layed out, we traced the shape from the old floor to the new. All that was left to do was spend some quality hours with a circular saw breathing through a dust mask. Proved to be a productive Saturday.





Sunday, we finished cleaning up the frame. We use the air chisel with a pointy head to beat out all the old bolts that we'd ground the tops off of. Look everyone, my valentine packs and air chisel!





Messy frame, I'll clean you soon!











I got three hundred pounds of Green Diamonds from Glacier Northwest, the concrete plant down the street. They have a new name! Used to be Glacier, but I guess CalPortland has more zing.






Sandblasting starts out seeming like a fun project. You get to wipe away decades of rust in a few minutes and inspect for decay. Feels great until blast media finds a little crevice in your goggles and jambs pellets in your eyes. Fun! Then you get to sweep and sift hundreds of pounds of sand over and over again. The buzz wears off fast. And no, I'm not in the Klan.




Clean!






Clean!



Clean!



Can I go home now? It's time to play with my boys!



1 comment:

  1. Excellent progress. You guys are moving right along and I'm enjoying your posts.

    ReplyDelete