Well, it's been a while. I've been working through a Cert 4 in Forest Operations, as I'm starting my Forest Practices Officer course next month, but I've still been getting a bit done on the truck.
The tent is a huge help. Even when it is 6° outside and windy, it can be 18° inside with low humidity. I finished painting the chassis rails, except for one small bit directly under where the transfer case is sitting, ready to go back in.
There's a good amount of room up the sides and the sheet of black plastic on the ground under the truck has made it a lot easier to find all the bits I drop. It also let me work out where the oil leaks are coming from.
There's one from the hydraulic pump, where the main input hose connects, I think. Hard to tell with the thick layer of caked on grease. There's another one from what is likely to be the rear main seal, as its pitch black oil.
I haven't done an oil change yet, or any other work on the engine, gearbox or cab. I wanted to get into the bits that urgently needed to be fixed to stop them getting beyond repair, like the rust in the chassis rails.
The worst oil leak is either coming from the seal in the second ram on the Abbey crane, or the flexible hydraulic lines going to it. I'm really hoping it is the hoses.
Now that I finished another small job that ended up taking far too long and too much money, I'll get it sorted out. I need to run the truck and stretch the crane arm out, then prop it up so I can either remove the ram or the hoses.
When it is all folded up, you can't even see the ram. With it stretched out, I can give it all a blast with the steam cleaner. I will get underneath the truck and do the bottom of the engine, gearbox and pto hydraulic pump while I'm at it.
Should be a fun job with the temps we are getting here at the moment. Add in a sloping work area and the sheet of black plastic. May need to film that.
I put up some lighting in the shed, so I can work at night and to help on overcast days. I bought 10 LED 40w battens off eBay for about $25, I think it was. Cheap Chinese ones that totally block all the radio stations when I turn them on, but they are bright and cheap to run.
I screwed the mounting brackets to lengths of timber that I hung from the overhead frames. The lights clip onto the brackets and I ran the cables across to the wall,
where I put a length of 3 core cable that runs to the far end of the shed. I put socket bases at each of the frames so I can plug in a light or run a grinder or battery charger.
Far less extension leads needed now. At the entrance, it connects to a box that provides earth leakage and over-current protection and my extension lead from the house connects there.
When I finish out there, I plug the lights in and if I want to go out again at night, I just flick the switch on at the house and I bet you could see it from space.
The next big step will be getting the winch and transfer case back in. Before I can do either, I plan on getting a lathe. I need to modify a bolt, sort of like the shear-pin on the MK3/4 winch, but without the groove that lets it shear.
On the back of the F1 winch is a box with a chain drive. The end that connects to the driveshaft has a system where if the winch is overloaded, a plate pushes out and contacts a micro-switch which shuts off the engine. Supposedly.
This one sure didn't.
The end that goes to the worm drive in the winch has a sprocket on it that is held in place with a bolt. This is the bolt I need to make. It starts off at about 1/2" UNF and after it goes through the sprocket,
it needs to be turned down to go into a 3/8" hole through the worm drive shaft. When they wrecked the winch and smashed the main brass/bronze worm gear,
the old bolt sheared and scored the inside of the sprocket and the outside of the worm drive shaft. It made the sprocket a bit loose on the shaft.
I was able to fix this by drilling and tapping a couple of extra holes around the sprocket and using grub screws to lock it all solid.
The other lathe job will be making the metal cups that the suspension bushing fit into for the transfer case mounting.
I found a mob in QLD that had a similar shaped bushing in Nolathane. They do a kit for an early Nissan that has 2 of them in it and 2 other shaped ones. They did a special run for me and sent me 16.
The cups look like the bearing race on pushbike head-stems, but a lot heavier. I can turn up something similar easily enough.
The big issue I had was that I'm out of room to store stuff. Haven't managed to win Lotto yet, so can't buy the place and build a huge multi-storey shed with heated concrete floors. Maybe next weekend.
The house I'm renting is really old. Around the start of last century, the locals tell me. Out the back is an odd little shed, 2.5m x 1.6m on a concrete slab. It may have been an old dunny,
from the days when you still had the dunny man come around to empty your can, or maybe it was just a garden shed. It's a timber frame, used tin roof and the walls are fibro, and not the good kind.
Here's a pic inside before I started.
I photo-stitched 2 panorama pics together, which is why it looks a bit odd. Not much room to move. Once I emptied all the junk out, sorted the truck stuff I was storing from the junk that just accumulated,
I was able to rip all the old boxes off the walls, pull out all the old nails and hose it out.
I made a quick trip to the tip shop, where I was able to find a full, unopened drum of acrylic exterior paint that they wouldn't take payment for.
Apparently all paint left there was treated as hazardous material and they had to properly dispose of it, so me taking some meant less work for them.
I painted the inside of all the fibro, to seal it up. Then I bought some 12mm sheets of ply, painted the backs and screwed them to the walls.
Once I painted them, the whole shed seemed bigger and a lot brighter.
I've fitted one of my LED battens to the ceiling and it makes a huge difference. Last stem is saving up the cash for the lathe I want.
Anyway, that is enough for now. I'll post up more when I actually do something.
Greg.
