Drives – I thought about it…but most of the straight sections were fairly short, and overall these tent legs are fairly thin material, so opted to pass and sent it all to the dumpster. Gotta draw the line at some point or wind up on one of those hoarding shows.
Scott – I missed that thread. But if you’re at a place where a tarp is your fix for a roof leak, then you probably need this tarp more than I do.
Continuing with the body lift pucks - Made a little sandwich, bolted it snug, and tacked it together.
Burned it in
Cleaned up on the belt sander. Not spending the time to blend welds 100% flush. Leaving a little extra for strength and plus these will out of sight and mind anyways.
Moving on to more rust repairs. Drivers side, just behind the door, someone did a patch repair that was partially brazed in and gobbed over with body filler.
Cut that piece out
New piece prepped
Similar spot on the passenger side, just a bit higher up in the panel. No patch piece here, just a hole.
Sectioned out and new replacement patch sized up.
The good folks at International put these “X” brace stiffeners on the tub, inside the fender-well area. There’s little weep holes in them for drainage, but inevitably dirt collects in there, traps moisture, and promotes rust. On the drivers side, someone “fixed” this by cutting off one section of the “X” and putting another one of those partially-brazed patches.
“X” stiffener cut out and ground smooth. Cut out old patch and a new one will be welded in.
The passenger side had rust issues on the “X” as well, but did not look like any holes broke through to the inside.
After getting into it, I found that there was dirt/rust was still packed into the low spots. This was hiding another decent sized through-hole into the cab. Same as the drivers side, that got cut out and a new patch sized for replacement.
That’s all the time and stamina I had for Scout work over the weekend. Swamp cooler and fans helped suffer through the heat.
On Sunday helped out the neighbor with the cantilever gate posts. He had already dug some good sized holes in preparation for this. Ran down and picked up Quikrete and a mixer. There’s a ton (literally) in the one-ton.
Earlier we had prepped the posts and welded these pipes top and bottom to maintain them in plane and to be parallel to each other. Measured and added the half-inch square tubes to the sides to be butted up against the block wall. That spaces the posts out perfectly for roller and gate clearance. Used ratchet straps top and bottom to the pipes and ran those back behind the wall to spikes we drove into the ground. Should keep the assembly from moving while the concrete cures.
Fortunately the area we’re working at was under the shade of a big tree close by, so with the mixer doing all the hard work for us, it wasn’t too bad of a job. Will give it a week or two to cure before throwing the rollers on and testing out the gate.
