One thing I really need to figure out is lighting. The simplest solution would be to get some of the lights from this thread (https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/threads/the-best-light-fixture-ever.278420), but because this will be used as shop space and event space, I think that bright white LED lights are going to feel a little weird. Ideally, I'd like to be able to change the color temperature (maybe even color) of all the lights for the whole space. I've done some searching here on the forum, and haven't found anyone talking about high-quality/high-output lights that fit that description. If anyone has recommendations, I'm all ears!
Above 1200 Sq/FT An experiment in Bushwick
- Thread starter jlevers
- Start date
Wokspaces above 1200 squarefeet.
broinkrist
Well-known member
I used the popular Barrina T8 and T5 light strips for my garage and work space. They're relatively inexpensive and easy to install, although your ceiling height is a lot higher than mine so not sure how bright they would be. They're not color temp adjustable though, but I found the 5000k white light pretty good for car/shop work.
Barrina LED Shop Lights, 4ft, 5000k, 10pk
For the quickest/easiest solution if you already have bulb fixtures up there, I used 2 of these pedal LED lights in my parents' garage that had 2 single bulb sockets on the 15' ceiling. They worked well and light up the space pretty well considering the effort and price.
Tanbaby LED Garage Light E26/E27 Deformable LED
Both aren't great solutions and the Barrina's definitely don't work well for video (light flicker).
American Green Lights makes lights that seem to be pretty popular with the youtube shop crowd, but they do get pretty spendy.
Barrina LED Shop Lights, 4ft, 5000k, 10pk
For the quickest/easiest solution if you already have bulb fixtures up there, I used 2 of these pedal LED lights in my parents' garage that had 2 single bulb sockets on the 15' ceiling. They worked well and light up the space pretty well considering the effort and price.
Tanbaby LED Garage Light E26/E27 Deformable LED
Both aren't great solutions and the Barrina's definitely don't work well for video (light flicker).
American Green Lights makes lights that seem to be pretty popular with the youtube shop crowd, but they do get pretty spendy.
The bad: the front of the building still completely leaks. Both my landlord and myself are utterly baffled as to where the water is getting in. He’s hiring some contractor who hopefully will be able to figure it out. There’s also a leak that I just discovered coming down one wall…that wall is directly up against the wall of the building next door, and I think water is somehow getting stuck between the two walls. Urgh. It doesn’t leak much unless it rains really hard, but we had a massive rainstorm recently and the floor looked like this:
That water is also being carried along the floor joists into the back room, so even though there’s no more leak in that room, the floor is still getting wet.
The good: we made some real progress on the back room!
I removed all of the old drywall screws from the walls and ceiling, of which there must have been a thousand. Some came out with an impact, and the rest I cut with an angle grinder. I also removed some of the plywood that made up the ceiling, because it was permanently waterlogged. Here I am demonstrating OSHA-approved ceiling removal technique.
Dan came down from MA again to help, and we (mostly he) installed new pressure-treated baseboards to replace the old rotten ones we had removed:
Put down a sheet of thick plastic against the concrete to protect against future moisture:
And finally nailed new floor supports into the concrete, and added leveled joists on top of those.
We started, but didn't finish, installing the actual plywood flooring. I think things will start moving pretty quickly from here (famous last words), because “all” that’s left in this back room is the rest of the plywood flooring, and then insulation and drywall. Amazing.
I need to start actually using the warehouse to work on my car soon, because I’m driving from NYC to Tennessee in June for a music festival, and I need to pick up an RV in Nashville on the way. My brakes are pretty toast and I recently learned that my timing belt has NEVER been changed. I should have all the parts in the next week or so. I’ve also never towed a trailer as big as the one I’ll be towing in TN (22ft, 4700lbs), so that should be exciting!
I also found a bangin deal on a Festool TS55 track saw on eBay, so I’m excited to start using that instead of the circular saw. We’ve reached the phase of the project where instead of just tearing **** out, we’re actually making the space better and more usable, which feels great.
That water is also being carried along the floor joists into the back room, so even though there’s no more leak in that room, the floor is still getting wet.
The good: we made some real progress on the back room!
I removed all of the old drywall screws from the walls and ceiling, of which there must have been a thousand. Some came out with an impact, and the rest I cut with an angle grinder. I also removed some of the plywood that made up the ceiling, because it was permanently waterlogged. Here I am demonstrating OSHA-approved ceiling removal technique.
Dan came down from MA again to help, and we (mostly he) installed new pressure-treated baseboards to replace the old rotten ones we had removed:
Put down a sheet of thick plastic against the concrete to protect against future moisture:
And finally nailed new floor supports into the concrete, and added leveled joists on top of those.
We started, but didn't finish, installing the actual plywood flooring. I think things will start moving pretty quickly from here (famous last words), because “all” that’s left in this back room is the rest of the plywood flooring, and then insulation and drywall. Amazing.
I need to start actually using the warehouse to work on my car soon, because I’m driving from NYC to Tennessee in June for a music festival, and I need to pick up an RV in Nashville on the way. My brakes are pretty toast and I recently learned that my timing belt has NEVER been changed. I should have all the parts in the next week or so. I’ve also never towed a trailer as big as the one I’ll be towing in TN (22ft, 4700lbs), so that should be exciting!
I also found a bangin deal on a Festool TS55 track saw on eBay, so I’m excited to start using that instead of the circular saw. We’ve reached the phase of the project where instead of just tearing **** out, we’re actually making the space better and more usable, which feels great.
ed-oorklep
New member
This looks both like a nightmare and the ultimate dream.
Respect, and good luck on taking it on!
Respect, and good luck on taking it on!
Whoa, first post -- I'm honored!
And hah, yeah...nightmare/dream is kinda my MO. Previous undertakings include buying a trashed (although I didn't realize it initially) '79 Honda CX500 having never worked on a motorcycle or car and riding it across the country twice on a shoestring budget, buying/fixing an absolute train wreck of a 1996 G30 cargo van and then blowing it up on another cross-country trip, and a couple other not-too-smart fixer-upper projects. I'm real good at picking projects that I think are in better shape than they actually are
and I looove a good sufferfest of any kind. I describe myself as a Type 2 fun enthusiast.xtremek
Well-known member
I had to look that up. Is there such a thing as a type 1 3/4? Where you're enjoying the catastrophy? Not that you enjoy catastrophy, but you understand they happen, and you enjoy resolving the issue. Kirkism #23 "But be afraid to fail. But if you're going to fail, make it epic." BUt I feel you on always feeling things should run smoother than they do.
I know, I know, it’s been QUITE a while. I didn’t get much done in early May, but I’m back in the swing of things again!
My friend Dan, who was going to finish the back room, seems to have gotten lung issues from all the mold and dust we kicked up while we were clearing the place out. Can’t imagine why…we only pulled 10,000lbs of moldy drywall, insulation, and framing out of here. (I’m not kidding -- you can check my dumpster bill.) He’s improving, but slowly. Less important than his health, but more relevant to this thread, is that I now need to get that room finished by some combination of doing stuff myself and hiring contractors. I’m leaning towards hiring contractors, even though I’d ideally like to do it all myself, because I just don’t have the time right now and my top priority is making the space usable.
If anyone in the NYC area has contractors they like, I’m all ears…I’ve heard a lot of horror stories.
My friend Chris just moved from Boston to Bed Stuy (the next neighborhood over from me), and after we moved him in, he let me use his UHaul to pick up all the drywall and insulation I need to get the back room finished.
I rented a framing nailer (damn those things are fun), cut and nailed the floor, replaced some rotten bits of the plywood ceiling, and (to questionable standards) framed out the big window that had been covered up before.
A bunch of friends came over to help me start scraping the walls to prep them for a paint, so that’s on the docket too! I’m just going to repaint them white, and then have random artists come in and paint over that.
Today I had a serious case of needing to work smarter, not harder: after an hour of trying to remove the window into the back room I realized that two pieces of the window frame were removable, and had screws hidden inside them that were holding the window in the frame. Doh.
After I pulled the window I discovered two things:
…and that’s about as far as I got, because after a couple hours of grinding and test fitting, the new bumper mount still doesn’t quite fit. I’ll figure that out tomorrow.
Next steps: get the back room electrical hooked up, and get the insulation in so that I can get a drywall guy in here to finish things off. We’re so, so close to the whole space being usable!!
My friend Dan, who was going to finish the back room, seems to have gotten lung issues from all the mold and dust we kicked up while we were clearing the place out. Can’t imagine why…we only pulled 10,000lbs of moldy drywall, insulation, and framing out of here. (I’m not kidding -- you can check my dumpster bill.) He’s improving, but slowly. Less important than his health, but more relevant to this thread, is that I now need to get that room finished by some combination of doing stuff myself and hiring contractors. I’m leaning towards hiring contractors, even though I’d ideally like to do it all myself, because I just don’t have the time right now and my top priority is making the space usable.
If anyone in the NYC area has contractors they like, I’m all ears…I’ve heard a lot of horror stories.
My friend Chris just moved from Boston to Bed Stuy (the next neighborhood over from me), and after we moved him in, he let me use his UHaul to pick up all the drywall and insulation I need to get the back room finished.
I rented a framing nailer (damn those things are fun), cut and nailed the floor, replaced some rotten bits of the plywood ceiling, and (to questionable standards) framed out the big window that had been covered up before.
A bunch of friends came over to help me start scraping the walls to prep them for a paint, so that’s on the docket too! I’m just going to repaint them white, and then have random artists come in and paint over that.
Today I had a serious case of needing to work smarter, not harder: after an hour of trying to remove the window into the back room I realized that two pieces of the window frame were removable, and had screws hidden inside them that were holding the window in the frame. Doh.
After I pulled the window I discovered two things:
- For some reason there was drywall all the way around the window frame itself. It seems like they drywalled the whole thing and then hung the window inside the drywall. Bizarre. You can kinda see what I'm talking about here, with the window removed:
- The framing around the window basically fell apart without the window in there to hold everything in place. Most of the 2x4s weren’t even nailed together -- the window was really only secured by a few nails and some caulk. This place just gets hackier and hackier.
…and that’s about as far as I got, because after a couple hours of grinding and test fitting, the new bumper mount still doesn’t quite fit. I’ll figure that out tomorrow.
Next steps: get the back room electrical hooked up, and get the insulation in so that I can get a drywall guy in here to finish things off. We’re so, so close to the whole space being usable!!
xtremek
Well-known member
HOLY COW!!!! That window framing is a total hack. Even I can see that. Hope your friend feels better soon.
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I’m just looking at this as a big learning experience. If nothing ever comes of it, well, I’ll be way better prepared for the next project…and if it goes as well as I think it might, it’ll become a community gathering place for all sorts of interesting people who want to make things.
To give you some context: rent for this place is $3500/mo, and that’s the best deal I found after 8 months of searching. Brooklyn is expensive. I’m 22, and nowhere near being able to buy a property like this in this area (I’m guessing this building would go for near a million dollars right now), so I’m doing the best with what I’ve got at the moment. If my business totally takes off (just hired my first employee, so maybe it’ll happen) and I’m able to buy this place someday, awesome…but I went into this project fully prepared to lose all the time and money I’m putting into it.
Grizz1963
Well-known member
We are getting oh so close to this space feeling like a space to work in instead of a space to work on, and I am really, really stoked about it.
But first, it’s storytime.
A couple weeks ago I had my 4Runner parked outside the building for a few hours, and left the garage door open the whole time. When I brought the truck back inside around 10pm, I went to put the garage door down, and…nothing happened. I spent a couple hours trying to figure out what went wrong, with no luck. Then I started frantically calling garage door places all over the city, trying to find someone who could come that night -- they all say they have 24 hour service, but it turned out none of them could get there before the next morning. Sooo the entire building was open all night, right on a busy Brooklyn street…to make sure nothing got stolen, I blocked off the entrance the best I could with some plywood and my car, and slept on a sleeping pad right above the entrance so that I would hear anyone who came in.
Definitely not my best night’s sleep of all time. The next morning, the techs came and fixed it in under an hour. Phew!
Ok, on to the updates. I got all the electrical done for the back room. I replaced a bunch of outlets, rewired all the ones that were clean enough to keep using, and rehung all the conduit boxes that had been removed while pulling out the old drywall.
Some of the old outlets were pretty gnarly (old on the left, new on the right):
I wanted to hook the ceiling lights up to a switch, and realized that while there was a breaker marked “lights”, and conduit connecting all the lights, I couldn’t find where any lighting-related conduit connected to the breaker box. I figure, with all the drywall I’ve ripped out of here, what’s another sheet or two??
Ah. There were two pieces of conduit coming out of the breaker box that appear to have just been cut off and stuffed behind the wall??? This place never runs out of surprises…not sure why I keep finding them surprising. Ever hopeful, I guess
I’d never done any electrical work before this, so it was quite the adventure. I’m pretty sure I got the correct flexible conduit (12 gauge solid wire BX conduit)...it’s working so far, so I’m not going to overthink it too much. I routed the existing lighting conduit down through the framing to where I want to put the light switch, and then temporarily put a section of conduit in between between the cut-off pigtail on the breaker box and the conduit connected to the lighting. And somewhat to my surprise, it worked!!
Then I wired in a dimmer switch that I bought, and after a few false starts, that worked too
Electrical is super satisfying, since there’s such a clear separation between working/not working. It appeals to me for some of the same reasons that I love writing software.
The room is now ready for insulation and drywall. As I mentioned before, I’m hiring someone to do that, since I don’t find it super interesting and it would take me forever to do it myself. I’m also going to get someone else to reframe and rehang the window. My natural inclination is to try to do everything, but I’m (slowly) learning that that’s not always the best solution. Better to save my time for the things I really find fun!
On that note, I finished grinding and repainting the frame on my 4Runner to fit my new bumper. When I test fit the bumper it looked kinda weird, so I called Addicted Offroad to see if they maybe didn’t build the bumper to accommodate my body lift? You can see a significant gap between body and bumper here:
I talked to Scott, who was super helpful! The measurements on the bumper fit their specs for a 1” body lift, but he pointed out that it might look weird because the white body paint is super visible behind the bumper. He recommended I paint everything in the front below the fender line black, which is what I’m going to do. I just got the bumper back from powdercoat today (ouch, that cost more than I expected), and this weekend I’m going to install the bumper and hopefully get through upgrading my brakes to Tundra rotors/calipers. After that, it’s on to the timing belt…which I have to finish by 6/12 so that I can drive down to Tennessee on 6/13! Yowza. I’m also hoping the timing belt (which is the original, at 135k) is part of the culprit in my obscenely bad gas mileage. We shall see.
I also had my first real event here, which was awesome! I had a rooftop BBQ/birthday party on Memorial Day weekend -- it went really really well, and I’m stoked to have the kind of space where I can invite lots of people over. I didn’t think to take many pictures, but here’s one of us setting up and one (bad one) of the actual party.
But first, it’s storytime.
A couple weeks ago I had my 4Runner parked outside the building for a few hours, and left the garage door open the whole time. When I brought the truck back inside around 10pm, I went to put the garage door down, and…nothing happened. I spent a couple hours trying to figure out what went wrong, with no luck. Then I started frantically calling garage door places all over the city, trying to find someone who could come that night -- they all say they have 24 hour service, but it turned out none of them could get there before the next morning. Sooo the entire building was open all night, right on a busy Brooklyn street…to make sure nothing got stolen, I blocked off the entrance the best I could with some plywood and my car, and slept on a sleeping pad right above the entrance so that I would hear anyone who came in.
Definitely not my best night’s sleep of all time. The next morning, the techs came and fixed it in under an hour. Phew!
Ok, on to the updates. I got all the electrical done for the back room. I replaced a bunch of outlets, rewired all the ones that were clean enough to keep using, and rehung all the conduit boxes that had been removed while pulling out the old drywall.
Some of the old outlets were pretty gnarly (old on the left, new on the right):
I wanted to hook the ceiling lights up to a switch, and realized that while there was a breaker marked “lights”, and conduit connecting all the lights, I couldn’t find where any lighting-related conduit connected to the breaker box. I figure, with all the drywall I’ve ripped out of here, what’s another sheet or two??
Ah. There were two pieces of conduit coming out of the breaker box that appear to have just been cut off and stuffed behind the wall??? This place never runs out of surprises…not sure why I keep finding them surprising. Ever hopeful, I guess
I’d never done any electrical work before this, so it was quite the adventure. I’m pretty sure I got the correct flexible conduit (12 gauge solid wire BX conduit)...it’s working so far, so I’m not going to overthink it too much. I routed the existing lighting conduit down through the framing to where I want to put the light switch, and then temporarily put a section of conduit in between between the cut-off pigtail on the breaker box and the conduit connected to the lighting. And somewhat to my surprise, it worked!!
Then I wired in a dimmer switch that I bought, and after a few false starts, that worked too
Electrical is super satisfying, since there’s such a clear separation between working/not working. It appeals to me for some of the same reasons that I love writing software.
The room is now ready for insulation and drywall. As I mentioned before, I’m hiring someone to do that, since I don’t find it super interesting and it would take me forever to do it myself. I’m also going to get someone else to reframe and rehang the window. My natural inclination is to try to do everything, but I’m (slowly) learning that that’s not always the best solution. Better to save my time for the things I really find fun!
On that note, I finished grinding and repainting the frame on my 4Runner to fit my new bumper. When I test fit the bumper it looked kinda weird, so I called Addicted Offroad to see if they maybe didn’t build the bumper to accommodate my body lift? You can see a significant gap between body and bumper here:
I talked to Scott, who was super helpful! The measurements on the bumper fit their specs for a 1” body lift, but he pointed out that it might look weird because the white body paint is super visible behind the bumper. He recommended I paint everything in the front below the fender line black, which is what I’m going to do. I just got the bumper back from powdercoat today (ouch, that cost more than I expected), and this weekend I’m going to install the bumper and hopefully get through upgrading my brakes to Tundra rotors/calipers. After that, it’s on to the timing belt…which I have to finish by 6/12 so that I can drive down to Tennessee on 6/13! Yowza. I’m also hoping the timing belt (which is the original, at 135k) is part of the culprit in my obscenely bad gas mileage. We shall see.
I also had my first real event here, which was awesome! I had a rooftop BBQ/birthday party on Memorial Day weekend -- it went really really well, and I’m stoked to have the kind of space where I can invite lots of people over. I didn’t think to take many pictures, but here’s one of us setting up and one (bad one) of the actual party.
Krfjkm
Well-known member
Looks like you have a great group of friends— says a lot about you! Keep going with you project. Learning is priceless!
captain14
Well-known member
Great update. Hope you have a good trip in the middle of June.
xtremek
Well-known member
So what was wrong with the garage door, do you know? And I'm guessing they leave that gap to accomodate frame/body flex.
Thank you! I'm lucky enough to have some really great friends, for sure. The one and only reason I live in NYC is because of all the awesome people I get to be around here.
Thank you!
They said the motor got out of sync with the position of the door, or something like that? They also said the rails needed to be greased (and they did that), but I'm guessing that wasn't the main issue. Having seen what they did to re-sync the motor, I think I could probably figure out how to do it myself were this to happen again.
And yeah, you're probably right -- I just found it surprising because I know Addicted Offroad's plate bumper fits the body line really closely from what I've seen. Whatever, not a big deal -- I got the tube bumper rather than the to make the truck look more functional than pretty. A reminder to myself that I got this thing to use, not to baby.
xtremek
Well-known member
For a stock vehicle, street sweeper, or even mild off roading, flex is no big. But if you're going to play even a little hard, real flex is something you have to take into account.
Not sure exactly where the boundary between mild and more than mild offroading is, but I'm not planning to go crawling in it. Once I'm finished building it, I want to keep it in CO (where I moved to NYC from), because it was a perfect vehicle there. (I have a long term goal of buying some land in western CO, but for now I have plenty of friends there whose houses I could keep it at.)
What I want is something that can get me anywhere I need to go, without worrying about it at all. I got to some trailheads in the San Juans in this thing that I think would have been, at the very least, really scary in a less capable car. It's my go-anywhere machine...but it's sort of a silly car to have in the city. Huge, manual, bad gas mileage. It's in its element out west.
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xtremek
Well-known member
Mild off-roading to me is the stuff you see in the commercials when some OEM says their truck is rugged. LOL. I can take most of those trails in my Sonic.
This is more of a 4Runner update than a garage update.
I’d never done brakes before, so the Tundra brake upgrade was a bit of an adventure. I leaned on all the excellent information on toyota-4runner.org (especially this thread) to figure out what parts I needed, how the install process worked, etc. Here's the side-by-side component comparison. My understanding is that the main benefit of the Tundra setup is that while the rotors are a similar size, the brake pad contact area on the rotors is much larger than with the stock brakes.
Taking the old calipers and rotors off was pretty easy -- after a few minutes with some WD40 and a deadblow, they came right off. I trimmed the dust shield to fit the larger calipers:
The dreaded test fit was next. Step one: caliper clears the dust shield. Step two: rotor clears the dust shield. Step three (please god work): wheels clear the calipers. Phew.
I sanded most of the rust off the hub in the hopes that it would eliminate vibrations, and prevent this rotor from getting quite as welded to the hub as the last one did. I also got new stainless steel brake lines from Stoptech to replace the stretchy old rubber ones. I was concerned about finding lines that would fit the new caliper and old brake lines, but eventually realized that since I’m keeping the hard lines that connect caliper -> soft line and master -> soft line, anything that would fit the stock brakes would work fine (I went with the Stoptech 950.44007 brake line kit).
Putting together brake pad shims is suuuper satisfying for some reason…it’s like the gearhead version of Russian nesting dolls.
Finishing the first side took me a looong time, but I thought the second side would be a lot faster. Well, it was…but when I took the passenger side wheel off, I noticed an unwelcome but familiar sight: grease! Everywhere!
Looks like my other CV boot finally gave up the ghost. I’m glad I noticed now and not on my way to Tennessee. I actually have all the parts I need, because I got an extra set when I did the other side in November, so it shouldn’t take too long. Famous last words.
The second brake took about half as long as the first
Now I just need to get someone in here to help me bleed em. I really want to get them bled and the CV rebooted as quickly as possible so that I can test the brakes before I dive into the timing belt, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. My car/motorcycle fixes always seem to get finished at truly the last possible second before a big trip, so I’m cautiously hopeful that this will work out.
I also (with help from friends) sanded, cleaned, and masked off the front clip from the headlights down so that I can paint it black before I install the new bumper.
I’d never done brakes before, so the Tundra brake upgrade was a bit of an adventure. I leaned on all the excellent information on toyota-4runner.org (especially this thread) to figure out what parts I needed, how the install process worked, etc. Here's the side-by-side component comparison. My understanding is that the main benefit of the Tundra setup is that while the rotors are a similar size, the brake pad contact area on the rotors is much larger than with the stock brakes.
Taking the old calipers and rotors off was pretty easy -- after a few minutes with some WD40 and a deadblow, they came right off. I trimmed the dust shield to fit the larger calipers:
The dreaded test fit was next. Step one: caliper clears the dust shield. Step two: rotor clears the dust shield. Step three (please god work): wheels clear the calipers. Phew.
I sanded most of the rust off the hub in the hopes that it would eliminate vibrations, and prevent this rotor from getting quite as welded to the hub as the last one did. I also got new stainless steel brake lines from Stoptech to replace the stretchy old rubber ones. I was concerned about finding lines that would fit the new caliper and old brake lines, but eventually realized that since I’m keeping the hard lines that connect caliper -> soft line and master -> soft line, anything that would fit the stock brakes would work fine (I went with the Stoptech 950.44007 brake line kit).
Putting together brake pad shims is suuuper satisfying for some reason…it’s like the gearhead version of Russian nesting dolls.
Finishing the first side took me a looong time, but I thought the second side would be a lot faster. Well, it was…but when I took the passenger side wheel off, I noticed an unwelcome but familiar sight: grease! Everywhere!
Looks like my other CV boot finally gave up the ghost. I’m glad I noticed now and not on my way to Tennessee. I actually have all the parts I need, because I got an extra set when I did the other side in November, so it shouldn’t take too long. Famous last words.
The second brake took about half as long as the first
Now I just need to get someone in here to help me bleed em. I really want to get them bled and the CV rebooted as quickly as possible so that I can test the brakes before I dive into the timing belt, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. My car/motorcycle fixes always seem to get finished at truly the last possible second before a big trip, so I’m cautiously hopeful that this will work out.
I also (with help from friends) sanded, cleaned, and masked off the front clip from the headlights down so that I can paint it black before I install the new bumper.
xtremek
Well-known member
If your rotors are sticking to the hubs, put some NeverSeize on the interfacing surfaces. Go easy on the stuff, it gets every where.
Whoops -- another couple months have gone by with no updates. A *lot* has happened.
I mounted the bumper, and it really brings the car together. It looked incomplete without a front bumper (because, well, it was incomplete), and now with it installed it looks like a proper car again. I now have something I’ve wanted for a very long time: a car that I would stop to look at if I didn’t own it and was walking past it. Sick.
I spent a few hours deliberating on whether or not to dive into the timing belt since I needed to hit the road in 5 days -- if there’s one thing I’ve learned from previous car and motorcycle projects, it’s that there are inevitably delays, usually at the worst possible time. This time, there were 9 other people depending on my car being functional in order to tow our RV, so if I screwed this up, I was screwing all of them, too. On the other hand, we’d all be equally screwed (especially me) if my timing belt blew when I was 1000mi from home)...so I dove into it. Here's the 135k mile old one. It was crisscrossed with tiny cracks.
This is by far the biggest job I’d ever done on a car. I watched and re-watched videos of the process, making sure I had every part and every tool I needed, and then started tearing down the front of the engine. If I was going to break something, I thought it would probably happen during the teardown, so I took everything apart in one night to give myself the most possible time to replace anything I broke. In typical fashion, I didn’t get started till 9pm. Things were going pretty smoothly until it was time to pull the timing belt tensioner…the angles were weird, and the bolts were starting to round off. To get better access to the bolts I had to pull the AC compressor, which clearly had never been removed -- I had to use my ½” Dewalt electric impact on max power to break the compressor bracket bolts free! My battle with the tensioner lasted a few hours, and so I didn’t finish the teardown until almost 7am. Nothing like wiping old grease out of your eyes while watching the sun come up. Everything off the motor:
The rebuild took a damn long time since I had no idea what I was doing. I replaced the timing belt, water pump, idler pulleys, cam and crank seals, and all three accessory belts (3rd gen 4runners have separate AC/power steering/alternator belts). I spent a couple hours wrestling the new timing belt on (I eventually figured out I had to intentionally line it up off by one tooth and let the tensioner stretch it into the correct spot).
Roughly 12 hours before I needed to start driving to Tennessee, I refilled the coolant and turned the key…and to my complete and total surprise, it started right up!
YES. The marathon was over. Well, the wrenching marathon anyways…that night I picked up a couple friends from the airport around 10:30pm and drove 11 hours straight to Tennessee. On the way, we came up with a name for the warehouse: Highside. Inspired by the type of motorcycle crash
We picked up an RV in eastern TN. I had never towed anything more than ~2500lbs before, and the RV was closer to 4500. When we first got on the highway, there was some minor trailer sway, but I didn’t think anything of it. As I got more comfortable, I ended up in 4th gear going 60mph as we crested a hill…and when we started down the other side, the trailer sway suddenly got much, much worse. It was a steep, curving two-lane highway with no shoulder, and I couldn’t get the rig to slow down. I tried braking, which made the sway worse and didn’t slow us down. I tried accelerating (on a motorcycle that helps with wobbles, which is why I thought of it), which also made things worse. The trailer was whipping the car in and out of both lanes, and I was barely able to keep us on the road at all. It was perfectly silent in the car, and I think all three of us thought we were about to jackknife, flip, and get nailed by a semi.
I was afraid to shift because of the momentary loss of engine braking when I had the clutch in, but at this point I didn’t have many options. We’d been getting whipped around for 20 seconds, and I was no closer to getting us under control, so I slammed into 3rd gear as hard as I could, and for a moment the jolt made things even worse -- but then we finally started slowing down, and I was able to get us back in our lane. I’ve done a lot of pretty dumb things in cars and on motorcycles, but that was by FAR the scariest driving experience I’ve had. We didn’t go over 50 with the RV after that.
Other than that, it was an incredible trip.
When I got back, a couple of my friends came back with me, and we went to work on the warehouse. My friend Jonah made the excellent point that until this place feels like a chill spot to hang out, I won’t get the critical mass of people I need to make it the community gathering point I’m trying to build…so we started going on furniture missions. NYC has just about the best Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace scene anywhere, and within a couple days we’d brought back three couches and a desk for a whopping $220 total! We also got a few small sheets of turf, and more lights for the roof, and threw another party up there. This time something like 35 people showed up, and it seemed like everyone had a great time! A couple people who I hadn’t met before told me that it was the friendliest party they’d been to in NYC, which made me really happy. That’s exactly what I’m going for.
I got a call a few days later from my friend Sam who was driving from VA to NH for a 4th of July weekend party called Senderland when his van’s transmission blew in Queens! Ah, how I love having lots of space in the city -- I told him to get it towed to my place. He ended up selling the van and staying for a week! He had his RM85 on a hitch rack, so I got to blast around on that thing and now it’s sitting in the warehouse for me to use until he comes to get it in September. I’d never ridden a two-stroke before -- they’re a whole different animal!
My friend Logan was driving down from Nova Scotia to go to Senderland, so Sam and I drove up to NH together. It was an absolutely wild event -- you should check out their Instagram that I linked above.
It was an excellent weekend.
I mounted the bumper, and it really brings the car together. It looked incomplete without a front bumper (because, well, it was incomplete), and now with it installed it looks like a proper car again. I now have something I’ve wanted for a very long time: a car that I would stop to look at if I didn’t own it and was walking past it. Sick.
I spent a few hours deliberating on whether or not to dive into the timing belt since I needed to hit the road in 5 days -- if there’s one thing I’ve learned from previous car and motorcycle projects, it’s that there are inevitably delays, usually at the worst possible time. This time, there were 9 other people depending on my car being functional in order to tow our RV, so if I screwed this up, I was screwing all of them, too. On the other hand, we’d all be equally screwed (especially me) if my timing belt blew when I was 1000mi from home)...so I dove into it. Here's the 135k mile old one. It was crisscrossed with tiny cracks.
This is by far the biggest job I’d ever done on a car. I watched and re-watched videos of the process, making sure I had every part and every tool I needed, and then started tearing down the front of the engine. If I was going to break something, I thought it would probably happen during the teardown, so I took everything apart in one night to give myself the most possible time to replace anything I broke. In typical fashion, I didn’t get started till 9pm. Things were going pretty smoothly until it was time to pull the timing belt tensioner…the angles were weird, and the bolts were starting to round off. To get better access to the bolts I had to pull the AC compressor, which clearly had never been removed -- I had to use my ½” Dewalt electric impact on max power to break the compressor bracket bolts free! My battle with the tensioner lasted a few hours, and so I didn’t finish the teardown until almost 7am. Nothing like wiping old grease out of your eyes while watching the sun come up. Everything off the motor:
The rebuild took a damn long time since I had no idea what I was doing. I replaced the timing belt, water pump, idler pulleys, cam and crank seals, and all three accessory belts (3rd gen 4runners have separate AC/power steering/alternator belts). I spent a couple hours wrestling the new timing belt on (I eventually figured out I had to intentionally line it up off by one tooth and let the tensioner stretch it into the correct spot).
Roughly 12 hours before I needed to start driving to Tennessee, I refilled the coolant and turned the key…and to my complete and total surprise, it started right up!
YES. The marathon was over. Well, the wrenching marathon anyways…that night I picked up a couple friends from the airport around 10:30pm and drove 11 hours straight to Tennessee. On the way, we came up with a name for the warehouse: Highside. Inspired by the type of motorcycle crash
We picked up an RV in eastern TN. I had never towed anything more than ~2500lbs before, and the RV was closer to 4500. When we first got on the highway, there was some minor trailer sway, but I didn’t think anything of it. As I got more comfortable, I ended up in 4th gear going 60mph as we crested a hill…and when we started down the other side, the trailer sway suddenly got much, much worse. It was a steep, curving two-lane highway with no shoulder, and I couldn’t get the rig to slow down. I tried braking, which made the sway worse and didn’t slow us down. I tried accelerating (on a motorcycle that helps with wobbles, which is why I thought of it), which also made things worse. The trailer was whipping the car in and out of both lanes, and I was barely able to keep us on the road at all. It was perfectly silent in the car, and I think all three of us thought we were about to jackknife, flip, and get nailed by a semi.
I was afraid to shift because of the momentary loss of engine braking when I had the clutch in, but at this point I didn’t have many options. We’d been getting whipped around for 20 seconds, and I was no closer to getting us under control, so I slammed into 3rd gear as hard as I could, and for a moment the jolt made things even worse -- but then we finally started slowing down, and I was able to get us back in our lane. I’ve done a lot of pretty dumb things in cars and on motorcycles, but that was by FAR the scariest driving experience I’ve had. We didn’t go over 50 with the RV after that.
Other than that, it was an incredible trip.
When I got back, a couple of my friends came back with me, and we went to work on the warehouse. My friend Jonah made the excellent point that until this place feels like a chill spot to hang out, I won’t get the critical mass of people I need to make it the community gathering point I’m trying to build…so we started going on furniture missions. NYC has just about the best Craigslist/Facebook Marketplace scene anywhere, and within a couple days we’d brought back three couches and a desk for a whopping $220 total! We also got a few small sheets of turf, and more lights for the roof, and threw another party up there. This time something like 35 people showed up, and it seemed like everyone had a great time! A couple people who I hadn’t met before told me that it was the friendliest party they’d been to in NYC, which made me really happy. That’s exactly what I’m going for.
I got a call a few days later from my friend Sam who was driving from VA to NH for a 4th of July weekend party called Senderland when his van’s transmission blew in Queens! Ah, how I love having lots of space in the city -- I told him to get it towed to my place. He ended up selling the van and staying for a week! He had his RM85 on a hitch rack, so I got to blast around on that thing and now it’s sitting in the warehouse for me to use until he comes to get it in September. I’d never ridden a two-stroke before -- they’re a whole different animal!
My friend Logan was driving down from Nova Scotia to go to Senderland, so Sam and I drove up to NH together. It was an absolutely wild event -- you should check out their Instagram that I linked above.
It was an excellent weekend.
(hit the picture limit in the last post)
Oh, and I got carpeting installed upstairs! It completely changed the feel of the whole place. Now it feels like an actual work/hang area instead of a construction zone…best upgrade yet.
At my first rooftop party back in May, my friend Dom (who goes to a music school called the New School in Manhattan) pitched me on having a concert here. I told him that if he puts together the set list, I’d host it. He figured it out, scheduled the bands, and so last week I was in a frenzy getting the warehouse ready for that.
The first step was finally finishing the back room. I decided to get rid of the window, so I pulled out the old framing for that, put new full-size studs in, and finally was able to finish running conduit for the light switch for that room. Flipping a light switch never felt soooo good.
I finally accepted that I need some help getting things done in here, so I hired a couple guys from Home Depot to scrape, fill, weatherproof, insulate, and drywall the back room. It doesn’t need to be pretty (and honestly I kind of prefer that it’s not), and they were super cheap, so it worked out. We’ve got a room here!
The final step before the concert was cutting back the old wooden floor some more. The floor acted as the stage, raising the bands up a few inches, and I needed more audience space and less stage space, so the night before the show we went bananas.
Then it was time to vacuum everything, set up, and get this show started!
Dom and I basically invited everyone we knew, and told them to invite everyone they knew. We had no idea how many people would show up, and we’d paid the bands ahead of time, so we needed some people in there to get anywhere near break-even (we charged a $10 cover). To our surprise, ~60 people showed up! It went incredibly well -- the music was awesome, and the audience was both stoked and respectful of the space. I had 10+ people try to book shows on the spot, and I’m damn sure we’ll have more people at the next one than we did at this one. What an awesome experience.
I was stoked, to say the least.
The next concert is in a month. If you're reading this, you're invited!
Next up: fixing my friend’s CM400A that’s been sitting for 2 years, ******* oil. An automatic motorcycle…how weird. Wish me luck.
Oh, and I got carpeting installed upstairs! It completely changed the feel of the whole place. Now it feels like an actual work/hang area instead of a construction zone…best upgrade yet.
At my first rooftop party back in May, my friend Dom (who goes to a music school called the New School in Manhattan) pitched me on having a concert here. I told him that if he puts together the set list, I’d host it. He figured it out, scheduled the bands, and so last week I was in a frenzy getting the warehouse ready for that.
The first step was finally finishing the back room. I decided to get rid of the window, so I pulled out the old framing for that, put new full-size studs in, and finally was able to finish running conduit for the light switch for that room. Flipping a light switch never felt soooo good.
I finally accepted that I need some help getting things done in here, so I hired a couple guys from Home Depot to scrape, fill, weatherproof, insulate, and drywall the back room. It doesn’t need to be pretty (and honestly I kind of prefer that it’s not), and they were super cheap, so it worked out. We’ve got a room here!
The final step before the concert was cutting back the old wooden floor some more. The floor acted as the stage, raising the bands up a few inches, and I needed more audience space and less stage space, so the night before the show we went bananas.
Then it was time to vacuum everything, set up, and get this show started!
Dom and I basically invited everyone we knew, and told them to invite everyone they knew. We had no idea how many people would show up, and we’d paid the bands ahead of time, so we needed some people in there to get anywhere near break-even (we charged a $10 cover). To our surprise, ~60 people showed up! It went incredibly well -- the music was awesome, and the audience was both stoked and respectful of the space. I had 10+ people try to book shows on the spot, and I’m damn sure we’ll have more people at the next one than we did at this one. What an awesome experience.
I was stoked, to say the least.
The next concert is in a month. If you're reading this, you're invited!
Next up: fixing my friend’s CM400A that’s been sitting for 2 years, ******* oil. An automatic motorcycle…how weird. Wish me luck.
Jayman17
Well-known member
Looks like your plans for a community space are coming to fruition! Looks like everyone is having fun. Enjoy!
Jay
Jay
fourmotioneer
Well-known member
Man, this bit here.
The adventure, the “****” is self-imposed. Sort of a pastiche of grit. Brooklyn.
Krfjkm
Well-known member
Dude, you are living your best life! Keep it up- you got the rest of your life to be an “adult”! Love it!
qwerty18
Well-known member
Awesome space and write up! And super sweet 4runner. I had a 96 4wd 5 speed and miss it greatly.
You don't live there too, do you? With that sky high rent I'd try and live there too!
You don't live there too, do you? With that sky high rent I'd try and live there too!
Thank you! Yeah, it's finally starting to come together
I'm stokedTotally. What fun would life be without any ****?
When I was preparing to ride my '79 CX500 cross-country right after I graduated high school, someone on ADVrider said something to me about "embracing the ****," which is something I still think about all the time. Here's the post.
Hahaha, thank you! I definitely never plan to be an "adult" if I can help it. So far, so good...
Thanks!! I plan to never get rid of my 4Runner...it's too capable and too much fun to part with. Plus, it's my first legit car (I had a van whose transmission blew in South Dakota, but I'm not counting that since it only lasted a few months).
I'll leave whether or not I live here up to your (and my landlord's) imagination. Let's just say my truck's roof tent has gotten a lot of use in the past few months
Last edited:
qwerty18
Well-known member
Thank you! Yeah, it's finally starting to come together
Totally. What fun would life be without any ****?
When I was preparing to ride my '79 CX500 cross-country right after I graduated high school, someone on ADVrider said something to me about "embracing the ****," which is something I still think about all the time. Here's the post.
Hahaha, thank you! I definitely never plan to be an "adult" if I can help it. So far, so good...
Thanks!! I plan to never get rid of my 4Runner...it's too capable and too much fun to part with. Plus, it's my first legit car (I had a van whose transmission blew in South Dakota, but I'm not counting that since it only lasted a few months).
I'll leave whether or not I live here up to your (and my landlord's) imagination. Let's just say my roof tent has gotten a lot of use in the past few months
ha. loud and clear!
broinkrist
Well-known member
Definitely a great improvement on the space and putting it to great use. We had similar types of spaces/apartments when I was around the city in college and enjoyed every moment of it.
I’ve been neglecting this thread for a long while…but finally, the calendar popups reminding me to update it have gotten the better of me.
It’s been a packed few months. I was away for the majority of August, September, and October.
And when I was here, there was always something happening at the warehouse. We’ve had another few concerts, and they’ve been going REALLY well. Like, way better than we could have predicted. We turned a profit on the second one, and each one has been more profitable since. It’s nice to see that we’re putting something together that people are excited about. And more importantly, everyone who shows up is incredibly nice AND seems to be having a great time. Here’s a recap from the second show:
And since it’s now at a point where it’s actually nice to hang out here (couches, beer, etc), I have friends from out of town staying here most of the time. And that’s really what I wanted out of this project: community. I’m really, really happy that this place has transformed from a complete train wreck into somewhere that people actually want to be
The back room is now actually inhabitable, and we’ve added a LOT of new lighting. My friend Chris made some custom controllable LED tube lights, which we use to frame the stage.
And today we got the shop lights working. Chris and I worked on it together, and neither of us had ever done any significant electrical work before…so we made some dumb mistakes (as evidenced by this thread, where I got roasted). We connected some of the lights in series, instead of in parallel, which we didn’t realize was a big no-no, and weren’t sure why the lights were flickering so much. Lesson learned there. We’re not done yet, because we still need to run flex conduit from the conduit to the lights, but they work on a switch as intended. Whenever I work on something new, I’m always sorta surprised when it actually…works.
I realize that most of this isn’t very garage-y…this space is used for all sorts of things, and I want to get back to some of the shop stuff I haven’t had time for recently. I’m in the middle of replacing the front wheel bearings on my 4Runner -- one of them came close to catastrophic failure, so the car’s off the road until that’s fixed. I'll be posting up the whole process of getting that fixed eventually, but for now, here's how trashed that bearing was:
And I have another project showing up in a few days…but that’s for another post.
It’s been a packed few months. I was away for the majority of August, September, and October.
And when I was here, there was always something happening at the warehouse. We’ve had another few concerts, and they’ve been going REALLY well. Like, way better than we could have predicted. We turned a profit on the second one, and each one has been more profitable since. It’s nice to see that we’re putting something together that people are excited about. And more importantly, everyone who shows up is incredibly nice AND seems to be having a great time. Here’s a recap from the second show:
And since it’s now at a point where it’s actually nice to hang out here (couches, beer, etc), I have friends from out of town staying here most of the time. And that’s really what I wanted out of this project: community. I’m really, really happy that this place has transformed from a complete train wreck into somewhere that people actually want to be
The back room is now actually inhabitable, and we’ve added a LOT of new lighting. My friend Chris made some custom controllable LED tube lights, which we use to frame the stage.
And today we got the shop lights working. Chris and I worked on it together, and neither of us had ever done any significant electrical work before…so we made some dumb mistakes (as evidenced by this thread, where I got roasted). We connected some of the lights in series, instead of in parallel, which we didn’t realize was a big no-no, and weren’t sure why the lights were flickering so much. Lesson learned there. We’re not done yet, because we still need to run flex conduit from the conduit to the lights, but they work on a switch as intended. Whenever I work on something new, I’m always sorta surprised when it actually…works.
I realize that most of this isn’t very garage-y…this space is used for all sorts of things, and I want to get back to some of the shop stuff I haven’t had time for recently. I’m in the middle of replacing the front wheel bearings on my 4Runner -- one of them came close to catastrophic failure, so the car’s off the road until that’s fixed. I'll be posting up the whole process of getting that fixed eventually, but for now, here's how trashed that bearing was:
And I have another project showing up in a few days…but that’s for another post.
Krfjkm
Well-known member
Glad to see you back! Missed your updates and btw- the band sounded great!
xtremek
Well-known member
Looks like you got your money's worth out of that bearing. And it looks like you had a fun summer.
civhatch90
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2007
- Messages
- 83
This is awesome! Thanks for the updates.
Ah well, it's only been...6 months?! Whoops.
This winter was a whirlwind of concerts, trip planning, and a month-long moto trip through Mexico (thread on ADVrider, if anyone's interested). There has been a lot less garage-ing and a lot more music in here than I ever anticipated, and that was really fun and rewarding, but I started to get kind of burnt out on having very little space or time to work on my own projects, and instead organizing tons of events. It's hard to get momentum working on anything significant if the whole space needs to be cleaned up for an event in the next few days...and it was pretty much in a perpetual state of needing to be event-ready for a few months.
That said, we had a pretty huge New Year's event, and it was one of the cooler things I've ever been a part of. We got a full new sound system that's truly sort of ridiculous, made a bunch of visual upgrades to the space, and had 3 bands and 2 DJ sets from 8pm to 3am. There were ~200 people in here at one point...it was pretty packed. My cousin Jonah made a really fun video from the night:
He actually also made a tour video with me as the talking head, which was both fun to make and I think does a better job of showing the space than any picture can.
That's not very garage-y, though, so let's get into the good stuff.
In late November, Sean and his girlfriend Anna projected our logo (which he made) onto the wall and painted it on. It looks so good that it almost looks...fake or something?
Then, ahead of NYE, we made some upgrades.
Chris installed another set of computer-controlled RGB lighting tubes in one of the skylights, which looks cool from below, and as we later discovered, looks cool from the roof through the skylight too.
He also put 4 more DMX'd lights on the ceiling pointing straight down. Sean and Anna painted the whole stage and back wall matte black:
Then they drew a pattern that Sean free-handed on his iPad onto the wall in chalk, then painted over it in gloss black. It came out awesome.
All together now:
I also tidied up the wiring for the shop lights with a bunch of MC (this picture was when I was halfway done):
And finally got around to running the MC for the shop lights that are under the loft, which was a HUGE improvement. It's been annoyingly dark down there since the day I moved in, but now that space is actually usable.
And with that photo, I give away what I mentioned at the end of my last post – my "new" big project!!
(I say "new" because it arrived in November and I've made embarrassingly little progress since then.)
It's a 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230, otherwise known as a Fintail. It just sort of fell into my lap. When I was in New Mexico in October I saw it parked across the street from where I was getting lunch in Santa Fe, and I just went over to check it out. It didn't have a For Sale sign on it or anything, but a woman came out of the pottery shop it was parked in front of and told me I could get in it if I wanted, and that it was for sale. I sorta fell in love with it...it's so old and classy looking.
It's a manual, has shockingly little rust, and kind of ran when I got it. The brakes were so bad we practically crashed it rolling it off the trailer that it arrived in Brooklyn on. Its arrival was its own adventure. The warehouse is on a pretty busy, pretty narrow one-way street, and the car arrived on a 40-foot 3-car trailer just before rush hour. We had to block the entire street for 20 minutes to get it off, because we couldn't get it started, and backed up about 200 cars in the process. I helped unload it while Logan (who took that picture of me with the car) redirected traffic. Whoops.
I've never worked on a car other than my 3rd gen 4Runner, and the Mercedes is a totally different beast. The carbs are completely trashed, and so much more complicated than motorcycle carburetors. This particular car has a pair of Zenith 35/40 INATs, and given how hard the car was to start, they were clearly the place to start. I pulled one of the carbs, and left the other one in place to use as a reference.
Yikes
I got a larger ultrasonic cleaner and tried a 6:1 water to Simple Green combo, which stripped some of the grease but hardly touched the corrosion...and that's about as far as I got before prepping for the ride through Mexico took over. Now that I'm getting back to working on it, I'm going to try Simple Green Extreme (an aircraft-grade cleaner) in the ultrasonic, which was recommended to me by my friend Larry who's an absolute beast with carbs. Hopefully that will get things clean enough to start reassembling.
(While the car wasn't getting worked on for a couple months, it was still a great ornament for a bunch of shows, and me and many others passed several shows in or on the car.)
Other than that, we've had a few chiller small events, including one really insane dinner put together by a friend who's a weirdly good cook. The reason I bring it up is because we needed to whip some cream during the event, and while I'm a terrible cook, this was a problem I could figure out how to solve.
Anyway, the food was really really good. I want to do more of these sorts of events...they're easy to put together and really fun.
All in all, this place has turned into exactly what I was hoping for, albeit in a slightly different format than expected: a place where lots of talented people come together to make cool **** and have a good time. I'm pretty damn happy with that.
This winter was a whirlwind of concerts, trip planning, and a month-long moto trip through Mexico (thread on ADVrider, if anyone's interested). There has been a lot less garage-ing and a lot more music in here than I ever anticipated, and that was really fun and rewarding, but I started to get kind of burnt out on having very little space or time to work on my own projects, and instead organizing tons of events. It's hard to get momentum working on anything significant if the whole space needs to be cleaned up for an event in the next few days...and it was pretty much in a perpetual state of needing to be event-ready for a few months.
That said, we had a pretty huge New Year's event, and it was one of the cooler things I've ever been a part of. We got a full new sound system that's truly sort of ridiculous, made a bunch of visual upgrades to the space, and had 3 bands and 2 DJ sets from 8pm to 3am. There were ~200 people in here at one point...it was pretty packed. My cousin Jonah made a really fun video from the night:
He actually also made a tour video with me as the talking head, which was both fun to make and I think does a better job of showing the space than any picture can.
That's not very garage-y, though, so let's get into the good stuff.
In late November, Sean and his girlfriend Anna projected our logo (which he made) onto the wall and painted it on. It looks so good that it almost looks...fake or something?
Then, ahead of NYE, we made some upgrades.
Chris installed another set of computer-controlled RGB lighting tubes in one of the skylights, which looks cool from below, and as we later discovered, looks cool from the roof through the skylight too.
He also put 4 more DMX'd lights on the ceiling pointing straight down. Sean and Anna painted the whole stage and back wall matte black:
Then they drew a pattern that Sean free-handed on his iPad onto the wall in chalk, then painted over it in gloss black. It came out awesome.
All together now:
I also tidied up the wiring for the shop lights with a bunch of MC (this picture was when I was halfway done):
And finally got around to running the MC for the shop lights that are under the loft, which was a HUGE improvement. It's been annoyingly dark down there since the day I moved in, but now that space is actually usable.
And with that photo, I give away what I mentioned at the end of my last post – my "new" big project!!
(I say "new" because it arrived in November and I've made embarrassingly little progress since then.)
It's a 1967 Mercedes-Benz 230, otherwise known as a Fintail. It just sort of fell into my lap. When I was in New Mexico in October I saw it parked across the street from where I was getting lunch in Santa Fe, and I just went over to check it out. It didn't have a For Sale sign on it or anything, but a woman came out of the pottery shop it was parked in front of and told me I could get in it if I wanted, and that it was for sale. I sorta fell in love with it...it's so old and classy looking.
It's a manual, has shockingly little rust, and kind of ran when I got it. The brakes were so bad we practically crashed it rolling it off the trailer that it arrived in Brooklyn on. Its arrival was its own adventure. The warehouse is on a pretty busy, pretty narrow one-way street, and the car arrived on a 40-foot 3-car trailer just before rush hour. We had to block the entire street for 20 minutes to get it off, because we couldn't get it started, and backed up about 200 cars in the process. I helped unload it while Logan (who took that picture of me with the car) redirected traffic. Whoops.
I've never worked on a car other than my 3rd gen 4Runner, and the Mercedes is a totally different beast. The carbs are completely trashed, and so much more complicated than motorcycle carburetors. This particular car has a pair of Zenith 35/40 INATs, and given how hard the car was to start, they were clearly the place to start. I pulled one of the carbs, and left the other one in place to use as a reference.
Yikes
I got a larger ultrasonic cleaner and tried a 6:1 water to Simple Green combo, which stripped some of the grease but hardly touched the corrosion...and that's about as far as I got before prepping for the ride through Mexico took over. Now that I'm getting back to working on it, I'm going to try Simple Green Extreme (an aircraft-grade cleaner) in the ultrasonic, which was recommended to me by my friend Larry who's an absolute beast with carbs. Hopefully that will get things clean enough to start reassembling.
(While the car wasn't getting worked on for a couple months, it was still a great ornament for a bunch of shows, and me and many others passed several shows in or on the car.)
Other than that, we've had a few chiller small events, including one really insane dinner put together by a friend who's a weirdly good cook. The reason I bring it up is because we needed to whip some cream during the event, and while I'm a terrible cook, this was a problem I could figure out how to solve.
Anyway, the food was really really good. I want to do more of these sorts of events...they're easy to put together and really fun.
All in all, this place has turned into exactly what I was hoping for, albeit in a slightly different format than expected: a place where lots of talented people come together to make cool **** and have a good time. I'm pretty damn happy with that.
xtremek
Well-known member
Nice pic of you and the Mercedes. Hope you getting it running soon
Old Man Roger
Well-known member
Sorry if someone already suggested this, but maybe the double walls were for sound proofing?
With all the leaks, the double walls and raised floor must have hidden a lot of it for years. I wonder if the previous tenants had any respiratory issues from the mold? Black mold is no joke.
With all the leaks, the double walls and raised floor must have hidden a lot of it for years. I wonder if the previous tenants had any respiratory issues from the mold? Black mold is no joke.
Thanks! Me too
I would have thought it was for soundproofing too, but they had built a stage in front of the back room and it wasn’t getting used at all, so I’m not sure.
I’m guessing people had some respiratory problems, yeah, cus a few of my friends got pretty sick from being here during the demolition stage. Weirdly I never had an issue, despite spending a TON of time in here.
DrinkMan
Well-known member
Neat thread.
There are a lot of resources online for your Zenith carbs on the Mercedes. I have a pair of the same on ones on my '68 Merc. If you need some links or pdf's, shoot me a PM and I'll send them to you. A real good resource on YouTube is Pierre Hedary. He has a few Zenith carb videos.
Tuning/syncing them can be interesting. Before I got my "official" adapter for tuning, I found that modified red party cups work well (I now have the right adapters for my flow meters but the red cups work just as well. Based on what I've seen in your thread, I imagine you have plenty of red cups.
The official adapters are not as interesting:
There are a lot of resources online for your Zenith carbs on the Mercedes. I have a pair of the same on ones on my '68 Merc. If you need some links or pdf's, shoot me a PM and I'll send them to you. A real good resource on YouTube is Pierre Hedary. He has a few Zenith carb videos.
Tuning/syncing them can be interesting. Before I got my "official" adapter for tuning, I found that modified red party cups work well (I now have the right adapters for my flow meters but the red cups work just as well. Based on what I've seen in your thread, I imagine you have plenty of red cups.
The official adapters are not as interesting: