Yes Another Snap-On Box Restoration......
- Thread starter HarrisFD
- Start date
OK, after a couple month hiatus I finally started working on the box project again. This weekend I removed the drawers, slides, and trim off the KR-660. The first drawer & slide set took me a couple of hours to figure out how to remove, but once I got it figured out, i could get the trim off the drawer, remove the drawer, and remove the slides from the cab in about 5-10 minutes.
First to remove the handle trim, I used a 2x4 to block the drawer open about 4", then used a flat piece of steel and a rubber mallet to carefully tap the trim sideways off the drawer. I found that if I held the steel piece square the trim was not damaged. A piece of aluminum would be even better.
First to remove the handle trim, I used a 2x4 to block the drawer open about 4", then used a flat piece of steel and a rubber mallet to carefully tap the trim sideways off the drawer. I found that if I held the steel piece square the trim was not damaged. A piece of aluminum would be even better.
Attachments
I found that most of the slides had been replaced with ones that had little plastic levers, making drawer removal a piece of cake. Others needed the little "hack-saw blade" style tools necessary to remove the drawer.
Once the drawer was out, there was a phillips head screw holding the rail to the drawer, after removing the screw , I pulled the drawer rail up and forward and it came out easily.
The thing that threw me was that the "bayonette" at the back of the slide actually faces rearward as opposed to downward as with many other SO boxes. Once I figured that out, it was a piece of cake to remove the slides.
To remove the slide from the box, I had to extend the slide all the way out and remove a 1/4 hex head screw near the front of the box. On the older slides I had to grind the outside of an old socket down to get enough clearance to reach the hex screw through the access hole in the slide. Once the screw was out, I simply pulled the slides up and forward to remove, no small pry-bar needed. Note that in order to get the top slides out, you have to push the rails all the way back into the box so that there is enough clearance to swing the rails upwards and release the forward bayonets.
Once the drawer was out, there was a phillips head screw holding the rail to the drawer, after removing the screw , I pulled the drawer rail up and forward and it came out easily.
The thing that threw me was that the "bayonette" at the back of the slide actually faces rearward as opposed to downward as with many other SO boxes. Once I figured that out, it was a piece of cake to remove the slides.
To remove the slide from the box, I had to extend the slide all the way out and remove a 1/4 hex head screw near the front of the box. On the older slides I had to grind the outside of an old socket down to get enough clearance to reach the hex screw through the access hole in the slide. Once the screw was out, I simply pulled the slides up and forward to remove, no small pry-bar needed. Note that in order to get the top slides out, you have to push the rails all the way back into the box so that there is enough clearance to swing the rails upwards and release the forward bayonets.
Attachments
Last edited:
Here's the KR660 stripped of locks, trim, drawers, and slides. The metal Snap-On emblem was attached by 3 studs with round spring-clips. To remove I very carefully tapped on the end of the studs with a brass drift, moving to the next one for every .020 or so that the emblem moved out. After a few passes, the emblem came right out unscathed.
Last pic is my trusty HF parts washer loaded to the gills with slides. Looks like I have my work cut out for me!
Last pic is my trusty HF parts washer loaded to the gills with slides. Looks like I have my work cut out for me!
Attachments
rodsnratfinks
Well-known member
Following. I love this era of SO box. I was looking for this series when I was shopping for a box recently, but I ended up settling on a Mac MB 1700 from the same era. It too is a quality box, but I like the way these look/feel better.
Last edited:
I had this problem also for 2 of my slides. I called snap on about it and they said they didn't have the ability to send me just a rubber stopper or even sell me one. I ended up putting the 2 slides with drawers that I doubled up slides on. That way there would still be a slide on one of em with a stopper
Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk
Sent from my iPhone 5s using Tapatalk
469 runner
Well-known member
I replaced a few of those bumpers on a box of mine a couple years ago. They are available. I think Snap On called them detents. The website used to be more user friendly, but they were listed on the parts pages.
Call Accuride, they have the detents you need.
Last edited:
Hey I'm back, the project is not dead, sorry for not keeping things up to date. First off, a little blurb about safety. Shortly after my last post, I had a little incident in the garage that could have easily been avoided. I was cutting some PVC conduit for my compressor wiring when my hand slipped and I got a little cut, Naturally my mechanics gloves were sitting on the workbench nearby instead of on my hands. Here's the pic, not too bad eh.........
Attachments
![WP_20150320_001[1].jpg](/forum/data/attachments/369/369835-1739d8a77102db63cf067b1e9a652225.jpg)
Last edited:
Then about a month later, the skin had healed up but grip strength was gone and my middle finger was good for flipping the bird but nothing else...so I went to the doc and this is what things looked like a couple weeks later. Turns out the middle tendon was 90% severed. Dumb on my part, 7 months after surgery and my hand is only back about 80%....shoulda' worn those gloves......
Attachments
So back to the toolbox project. I cleaned all of the slides and they were a mess. Full of grease from the previous owner. Several of the slides were binding so instead of cleaning them, he greased 'em up and made things worse. I used this spray moly dry lube off of amazon. works great and does not come off once it's dry. Some of the slides were binding because they were slightly bent. I used a bench vise to carefully straighten the rails and they now all work smoothly.
Attachments
Then it was back to the dent repair. I cleaned the whole box several times and used plenty of Wax & Grease remover before I did any prep. I used a little body solder to smooth out the welded area, then I filed it down, put on a skim coat of rage gold filler, block sanded almost all of it away, sprayed the whole end of the box with UPOL 2K surfacer, block sanded, and then prepped the rest of the box. Lots of little dings here and there, I worked out most of them, washed many times with wax & grease remover along the way & then sealed the whole deal with Eastwood Gray Epoxy primer. I did not want to take the time to paint the inside of the box, so I just cleaned it and masked it off. Check out my $20 spray booth!
Attachments
For the drawers, I built a little rack out of 1x3 from home depot. I think it cost like $8 in materials. I cleaned and prepped the drawers, worked out as many dings as I could, shot with surfacer, sanded, then shot with epoxy primer. Again I was pretty heavy on the Wax & Grease remover. I only planned to paint the faces so the rest was masked off.
Attachments
Finally paint day. I picked up a 3/4 gallon can of Kirker 2K urethane in Dodge Viper Red and a quart of hardener for around $100. Its just a little more red than the Snap-On "tomato soup" red and very close to the more modern Snap-on Red. I had to 400 wet sand the primer because I waited a week between primer and paint. I used a CA technologies Jaguar HVLP gun to shoot the paint.
Attachments
Things did not go on super smooth because I was spraying medium hardener in 100 degree heat and I had the wrong quick connects on my spray gun. Turns out that you need "hi-flow" air-line connectors on your air system or the HVLP guns don't get enough flow at the recommended pressures. Once things were squared away with the connectors, the gun performed great. Also, I used a really good full face respirator, this stuff is nasty. Urethane usually goes on with a little orange peel, and my using too fast of a hardener aggravated things a bit. But one of the nice things about urethane is that you can color sand (600, then 1000, then 1500 grits) and buff out the imperfections. Yeah I know its just a toolbox, but I wanted it right because I'm only doing this once. Besides, I figure this is practice for when I do my cars. See pics of the end of the box where I repaired the dent and you can see how well the surfacer and block sanding paid off.
Attachments
Last edited:
MattVette89
Well-known member
Looks great!
DSLTRK
Well-known member
Wow! Good job, it's always great to see old stuff look like new. Glad you didn't cut your finger all the way off too.
Nermal43
Well-known member
Great work! I love to see this type of thread. That box should last for generations.
motofool33
Well-known member
looks, good i need to source some casters for my kr1000B but cant swallow the 1000$ snapon wants.
are you happy with the urethane wheels?
are you happy with the urethane wheels?
So far so good on the casters but I have yet to try them with all the drawers in and it loaded up with tools. Seems to roll very easy right now and I have had no issues with flat spots. Not bad for $50-$60. I'll know the loaded performance in a few weeks but I think it will be fine. The box is something like 400 lbs plus 70 for the butcher top plus 80 for the side box. So loaded up we are probably looking at 1000 lbs or so. The casters are rated to 500 each.
gabriele82
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 29, 2015
- Messages
- 156
Nice work!
Hammer1963
Well-known member
FANTASTIC looking tool cab! It's so good to see that I am not the only one that goes to those extremes on refinishing a tool cabinet
Looking forward to the pics.
The front trim was pretty hammered so I was faced with few options since apparently the trim is no longer available from Snap-on, and I'm sure if it was, it would be expensive to replace. One was install as-is, which would have looked terrible. So I looked into powder-coating and cost was $120, having stainless trim fabbed up was about $200. So I decided to hammer out the dents as best I could and polish it. That turned out to be a lot of work, like an hour + per piece. First, this stuff is hard anodized and sanding it was next to impossible so I had to strip the anodizing. I picked up a five foot section of 1-1/2" pvc pipe from Lowe's, capped one end, put the trim in the pipe, and filled it with Greased Lightning cleaner. Even then it took about 24-36 hours plus sanding with 220 grit to get the anodizing off. Whatever coating Snap-On spec'ed back in the day, it was tough stuff! Once anodizing was stripped, I sanded with 400, 600, and 1000 grit, then buffed it out with Flitz metal polish. I also picked up 5 new trim caps from Snap-on at around $4 a piece. Attached pic is the results. It's not perfect,but looks pretty decent and much better than before. BTW, you can get a quart can of Flitz for about $40 from Amazon , which seems like a lot of $, but its the equivalent to 5 large tubes which are $16 each. I used about 1/16 of the can on this part of the project. Time for some locks & drawers.
Attachments
Last edited:
OK time for an update, sorry it took so long but better late than never. I decided to do the top before I put the drawers in since it needed to be secured from underneath. First I had to extend the length about 6" so I cut some end pieces from the leftovers, put some dowels in and glued it together with the best urethane construction adhesive i could find. I used my trusty Harbor Freight pipe clamps to hold it all together.
Attachments
Next was to mount the top to the box. I decided to make a 5/16" OSB plug to fit in the top recess and bolt the plug to the box. This gave about 1/16 clearance between the top and the outer edge of the box. I screwed the plug to the box using countersunk screws. Then I glued the butcher block top to the plug using clear silicone glue. This way I can cut the top off the box with piano wire and flip it over if I ever screw it up. The weight of the top (~60lbs) held it in place while the silicone dried. Third pic is after sanding. Then I hit it with a ton of butcher block conditioner (mineral oil & bees wax) to preserve & seal the wood.
Attachments
Then it was time for slides and drawers. Accuride sent me a bag of 50 of the rubber bumpers (aka detents) for free and after cleaning all 46 slides, I found that all but a few were salvageable. Snap-on sent me replacements under warranty. Previously I mentioned the Seymore dry lube as a lubricant, but I found that a silicone "food grade" clear synthetic grease worked best. I notice that's what the new slides were lubed with. I cleaned and polished the locks and emblems, no cheesy plastic emblems here, these were metal. I repainted the black part of the emblems with a small brush and some rustoleum sprayed into a spray-can lid. The thin spraycan paint flows nicely and doesn't leave brush marks. Color sanding each drawer face and buffing was tedious work, but I'm glad I did it. I'm happy with the results.
Attachments
Last edited:
CRCRFT78
Member
Nice job.
I lined the drawers with "Elephant Bark" 3/16 rubber floormat, about $200 worth off Amazon, kind of pricey but gives a nice solid feel to the drawers and better than spray-on bedliner because it can be easily removed and cleaned. You'd be amazed at how much it takes. Here it is, the finished project. I cut down a handle off an Epiq box that I snagged on Fleabay for $45 because I couldn't find the center piece for the original handle. The KR290 happened to have factory 1/4-20 holes that matched the Epiq handle's hole spacing. Time to load this one up with tools and start on the top-box!
Attachments
Lookin4'67Galaxieconv
Well-known member
Wow, that is one high quality job!