Above 1200 Sq/FT The Salvage Garage

[casmurbax]

You had to much weight past the rear axle?
only guessing.

Did you ever get some sort of contract written up between you and your father over the latest agreement?

 

[FarmerWill]

Yeah… slow start today… but uh… here’s lunch.

 

[Strouty]

Definitely too much weight past the rear axle, the forklift weighs more than the Mitsu, so it is deceiving. I found a place where I could safely move it forward. Just got back to the Salvage Garage, trying to figure out where to land it, still not sure if it is a straight to the scrap yard deal or if it will come back to life. I have to at least do a few things to appease my mind.

 

[Strouty]

Got it unloaded and did a couple really quick checks, the battery pack still has voltage, not enough to run it, but it powered up the digital screen. It has 14k “traction” hours and 2400 “pump” hours. I will do a bit of online searching, maybe tomorrow I can try and charge the batteries. The cover to the battery hits the seat because the steering column won’t tilt far enough to get the seat out of the way. I may have to unbolt the seat, definitely need full access so I can check the water levels and then charge 24 volts worth of batteries at a time. I don’t have a 48 volt charger, but if this thing works, a charger will be on the short list. First cell had 2 volts, my guess is there is one or more cells that are weak.



Had to use a pulley and some rope to get the forklift off the trailer, I can see I need to add some additional rings or some way to hook a pulley in the middle for this exact reason. Then of course having the winch on a remote would be the bees knees.

 

[casmurbax]

Forking crazy

 

[Strouty]

At the Hill, getting things together to go and get the 12k Hyster. Rain has essentially stopped, shouldn’t be too bad of a day. This forklift is going to stay at the Hill for now, I need to be able to work on it and the shop at the Salvage Garage is a bit crowded.

Hopefully I can get that forklift functional in the next week or so, will depend a lot on the parts it needs and availability. I expect to be over at the SG this afternoon, want to mess with the new electric forklift even if it is just to satisfy my curiosity.

 

[FarmerWill]

Morning from Texas….

 

[walrus]

The battery in that fork truck would cost?? Got to be thousands? Solar guys love fork truck batteries, might get more money than you would scrap if has anything left in it??

 

[Strouty]

I will know more about the battery this afternoon, just got back to the Hill with the 12k Hyster, got to unload it. I am not ready to bring it inside, but I would like to do a quick assessment, also going to spray down the linkage for the side shift, would be nice to get that functional with minimal effort.



The forks are definitely worn past the point of being safe for the rated capacity, that was what had me buying the electric one, might be on the hunt for forks again.

 

[Strouty]

Unloading was fun, you can’t move it without starting in gear and the power steering is non existent, I had to let the winch lower off the trailer, I couldn’t get the rear tires the direction I wanted, luckily it made it off the ramp without incident, one of the duals was hanging off the side of the ramp. It runs pretty good, it is a GM straight 6, guessing a 252, it is supposed to be from the 1980s, looks right, carb and HEI distributor.

One of the front wheels has the bolt holes all wallowed out, going to have to do a repair for that, the torch will be involved in the removal process. A couple tires are fairly new and the rest are not.

No e-brake, no regular brakes, no throttle, no clutch, standard procedure for any Salvage Garage project, right? They must have broken a bolt on the bell housing, they “fixed” it with a nice USA made hargrave C-clamp.

 

[Strouty]

At the Salvage Garage now, took me a minute to figure out how to get to the batteries, after removing some bolts on the seat and realizing there is no way it would ever open that way even if I remove the seat, I figured it out, you fold the side panels, then lift up and pull back on the rear of it and then it opens up in a fairly crazy looking way.

 

[Strouty]

So far only two of the individual packs are excessively low, neither has much water, one has white nastiness in there. Going to add distilled water to all cells and then see if I can get a couple chargers going. Looks like each individual pack is 6 volts, assuming that the cells would read a bit over 2 volts each, maybe 2.5? Almost all of them in the entire pack read 1.9 or better.

 

[Strouty]

The overall pack has 44.5 volts, no clue if it has any actual amps available to power anything. I will have to do a voltage drop reading after getting it so it will power up. The thing I still can't understand is the way to charge it, I get one side that makes sense, I go from the positive to the negative of half the individual packs, I get 22.5 volts, but when I do the same to the remaining packs I get negative 22, if I reverse the test leads then it reads properly. I am not sure if I should reverse the leads to charge or just put them on the positive and negative that reads the negative voltage. What makes even less sense is that there are 24 packs and they each have three battery terminals and they are all connected together. I read across the positive at one end to the negative at the opposite end (reading all three bars) and they still read the same as the individual readings, at least of the cells that have all three readings the same voltage. I will have to check one that had different voltages on the same cell (not sure if I am using that term correctly).

I have hooked up the battery chargers, I found that the cell that is connected to the other cell (last one of the 12 needed to make 24 volts) has to have one of the chargers on its positive side and the other one on its negative side, seems to split everything up. The pack had 46.7 volts with the chargers running, so I know they are putting some voltage in there. Nothing has smoked, yet, I am not sure I want to leave things hooked up, I added water to all the cells to make sure they weren't totally dry (technically not supposed to do that until after a charge). I will be here for another hour or two and see how things are progressing. It would be cool to see the forklift function, still not sure it will be worth saving, a used pack is probably $4k and then if there is an underlying issue, well, you get the point. I am still investing the effort to see what I can find out, it is really quite interesting.

 

[Strouty]

Also, forgot to mention, fully charge cells will have 2.1 volts, so a lot of them weren't too far off the mark. Next thing will be trying to charge individual cells if they don't come up to voltage properly. Not sure if I can easily make a battery charger the does 2.5 volts and maybe 10 amps, or if I can just use an adjustable voltage power supply to do the same thing?

 

[Strouty]

So it has been about an hour, it now will power the pump (doesn't have enough juice to do anything yet, but it will attempt to move forward or reverse before it cuts power and then resets. I think I am going to leave the two float chargers going all night and come back in the morning to see what it does at that point. I may have a winner here, if it does function fully, next step would be to get a real 48 volt charger and see what that does, I don't mind buying one as I run across 48 volt stuff and have avoided it due to lack of charger or way to test it. I am slightly excited and a little paranoid that something will go wrong overnight, but I charge my other forklifts inside all the time, this one is outside and 15 feet from the shop. I am starting to pack things up, then going to get some dinner. Probably go home early tonight and get started early tomorrow.

 

[Strouty]

On another good note, pretty sure the forklift I picked up today is not what the guy thought it was, he said it was an H120 and I am 95% sure it is actually an H130. There isn't a huge difference, but it looks like a 120 would be closer to 11k and the H130 is a bit over 12k. Regardless, it is a rugged forklift, just have to get it fully functional.

 

[Strouty]

Last night I did find some forks that could be used as a stop gap for the new Hyster H130 forklift, they are not big enough, but they are totally junk in my opinion and I would not hesitate to cut off the brackets and weld the rings on to make them work temporarily. All my other forks are way too small to put on a 12k lift.

Lots to do today, going to look at another forklift, not sure at all about it, could be a good runner it is an estate sale and I am first on the list. It could be used for a bit, then flipped for profit in the Spring. I have been in the office for the last hour, I am about to head over to the SG and check out our battery charging experiment.

 

[Strouty]

Forklift is still there, we were at 49 volts, the weaker cells had a better surface charge, but still below where they should be. It will move a little more before kicking out, it steers, still won’t do anything with the mast. I think it probably needs a couple more days of charging.

 

[kent_323is]

So why the buying splurge on forklifts all of a sudden? Do any of these turds actually move the ball forward in a meaningful way? I'm sure it's fun to buy, I get that, but do you really have the time to be messing with these?
We're getting closer to snow, and I don't see any progress on a payloader that would make snow removal fun and effective.

Anyway, carry on, it sure is fun to see them on and off the trailer!

 

[Spareparts]

Back in the early 70's I worked in maintenance for the Kroger Distributation Center in St Louis, we had one guy who's
only job was rebuilding those batteries, never did we buy a new battery. He had all the tools to disassembly and replace cells
links any connector that might not make a good connection, what ever they needed. If you have any large dist. centers they have that one guy, find him and that could save you $$$$. Replacing the cells, links, terminals, whatever, is just one big soldering job, just need the
right molds. This is not a job for the inexperanced person, do it wrong you have a 3,000--4,000 lb BOMB. Be careful my friend

 

[Strouty]

So why the buying splurge on forklifts all of a sudden? Do any of these turds actually move the ball forward in a meaningful way? I'm sure it's fun to buy, I get that, but do you really have the time to be messing with these?
We're getting closer to snow, and I don't see any progress on a payloader that would make snow removal fun and effective.

Anyway, carry on, it sure is fun to see them on and off the trailer!

Practice.

 

[Strouty]

I guess all I can say is this coming Saturday will offer more drama and adventure. Going to be a “will it start” and a “how am I going to load that” type of day. I made a deal with an estate to buy a couple things, one being a forklift, go figure.

 

[bimmer1980]

I can see the roller and compactor would come in handy...... Some years ago there was a smaller ride on roller that I almost bought, but missed out on that deal... oh well. Ended up with a walk behind plate packer and then later ended up buying a jumping jack packer....

 

[Strouty]

I think the compactor is going to have engine issues. I checked the radiator and it looked empty, checked the oil and it was way over full. The engine is a 14HP 3 cylinder Kubota diesel. I think it was a D600, I am not sure how heavy the compactor is, seems like it wasn’t light. I paid a little over scrap price for everything. The forklift weighs 14k, according to the specs online, I guessed the roller and compactor were another 3k or so. I messed with the forklift a bit, it turns over fine, but it has been sitting there for a long time. The rear wheels didn’t seem like there was going to be much chance that the tires would hold air, so the plan is to bring some spares. I am going to try and get it running, if I can do that, I can load things much easier, otherwise I will have to use the knuckle boom.

 

[Strouty]

I may have guessed light in those two items, it may be close to 5k pounds between the two of them. They could be useful in the future, glad I didn’t pay a lot for them, they weren’t asking too much for them, but I didn’t really need them, the guy kept trying to get an extra $50 out of me, but I told him I already was having second thoughts at my current price. I ended up paying $600 for both those and $2k for the forklift. Other than the fact that the forklift is jammed in there next to a small tractor, it shouldn’t be too bad to get the stuff loaded.

 

[walrus]

That roller will start, its a honda. Fork truck actually looks pretty good

 

[bimmer1980]

At those prices, they would find a way onto my trailer too!!

Altho, there would be no way I could haul the forklift on any of my trailers, so that would have limited my purchases....

$600 for the two roller equipment is a deal in my book... even if there are motor issues....

 

[Strouty]

The roller does run and move, the forklift has an “oil clutch”, not sure what that is, but it doesn’t feel like a normal clutch, assuming it needs to be running to work. The hour meter was ticking away when I hooked up the booster pack, it reads under 2k hours and it is probably correct based on what I was told. Engine is the same continental flat 6 as Clark, even has the same style intake and exhaust.

I knew I was the first person on their list, so I figured if I didn’t buy the stuff the next person was definitely going to.

 

[Strouty]

Of course I did find the forklift that I would really like, but timing is awful. I am not sure I can swing another $10k, but it will lift 30k pounds. Would be enough to cover what I want to do with some room to grow. I will say it is a great deal though. I may talk to the guy a bit more, it is not too far away either.

 

[walrus]

Go big or go home. What would you lift that weights over a few ton?

 

[bimmer1980]

If it's truly "what you need" and it works as advertised, it might be worth it just to avoid all the fix and repair, rinse and repeat with all of the projects you are buying currently.

Remember, opportunity costs. Meaning the repair time takes away from other "fun" projects... payloaders, knuckle boom trucks, etc.....

Go with the Force... or in this case....Fork...... lol

 

[rvieceli]

+1 for buying this new find. Sounds like it's something you want and if it can be ready to go with minimal effort that's even better.

Flip or scrap the others and don't let those take you away from other projects

Ron

 

[Allenw]

I messed with the forklift a bit, it turns over fine, but it has been sitting there for a long time. The rear wheels didn’t seem like there was going to be much chance that the tires would hold air, so the plan is to bring some spares.

I was going to grab a tire of another implement tonight to keep going, three tires on it and not a one of them worth pulling.

 

[Strouty]

I am going to look at the big Clark tomorrow morning. It isn’t perfect either, but it is fully functional. I will report back after I have more info. Ultimately I don’t need one that big, but having the 8’ forks and essentially unlimited capacity would be a pretty good thing. It would move the Conex boxes without unloading them. It would also be a big asset for my future plans. It would definitely make moving the loaders easier, just pick them up and set them down wherever I need them to be. It would live at the Salvage Garage, I don’t think it would be all that useful at the Hill.

 

[Strouty]

I wish I had bought some of this stuff a couple weeks ago, it would be good auction fodder. My plan is to hustle and scramble as best I can and make the big girl happen. I am sweating off forklifts for the rest of the year though. Unless…

 

[Strouty]

I can’t haul this one myself unless I borrow Dad’s truck and trailer, not sure I want to do that, might be worth paying someone to haul it to me. I don’t have to answer that question right off, would be interesting to use his truck and trailer, might also make me hate Perk, Dad’s truck has about double the power. I don’t use the detachable neck trailer often and it makes me a bit nervous, but I don’t want Dad to go with me, that would just open up a can of worms I don’t need opened.

 

[bimmer1980]

I can see the point of not having your dad involved in this.... candidly, if you are getting the property deal on a good path, don't do anything to mess that up. Even if you have to pass on the forklift... there will be another deal. You have proof of that with the number forklifts you recently bought........

I would still be tempted to find an excuse to use your dad's trailer to haul one of his items and then make a quick side trip to get your forklift... it is tempting. But history has proven, it will backfire and not worth it.... maybe being forth right and ask to rent it, but at that point, it may still not be worth burning a current chit and many future chits.... if just thinking of how this will spiral down quickly .... sad to say...

Are you positive that your rig would not haul it? Would you be over weight or over height with perk and the muvall?

 

[Strouty]

I would be overweight and overweight. I can be a total of 69k combined, Perk is 23k, Muv-All is about 18k and forklift is about 40k. Muv-All deck is just over 3’ and forklift will make it over 13’ 6” for sure. I will know more tomorrow, my estimates could be off, but I don’t think so. Dad’s truck is good for 80k without permits, his trailer is lighter and lower, (close to 24”), but his truck is heavier so it would be close if not over max weight, but his truck has gears, power, and the extra axle, so it shouldn’t be an issue.

 

[Monza Harry]

Strouty Perk is that heavy? I figured that would be about 11-12 plus the knuckle crane are they that heavy? Muv-all is pretty portly as well but it is made from lots of steel and all of the hyd's as well so I guess not that heavy, but still more than I figured. Harry

 

[Strouty]

I am not 100% sure on the Muv-All yet, should know after a scrap run. I have scales and I weighed Perk, 12,500 front and 10,500 rear. It fluctuates a bit depending on what I have on the truck for tools/fuel/supplies.