Machine Builders Network+ Forums Machine Builders Network General Discussion What odd jobs did you do today?

A lot of ideas come to the surface when faced with a task that is tuff to do! --- I sold 2 old 300 gallon round tanks here this spring --- $25 for the pair but they are gone and out of my way!

my old Chevy K-30 off-road pickup got water in the fuel tank over the winter,Ive been putting time in on it to rebuild the whole truck..so unbolted and picked the bed off with the forklift,then opened the fuel tank up,took the sender/fuel pickup out of the tank and sucked the old fuel/water mess out..swabbed out the tank with blue shop towels,took 2whole rolls of 'em. the truck only sat over the winter so the tank really didn't look that bad inside, it was a new tank last year...then went down to the local regional airport to get some Avgas..had to wait for a Bell 429 jet helicopter to finish fueling..what an awesome machine, cockpit had all flat panel displays ..owners/pilot were very nice to talk to..with much deeper pockets than I have but nice people nonetheless..never had such a good afternoon at a gas pump

went a bought a vintage Bachtold weed mower!! Still huntin up stuff to tackle the Intek head. Guess I will drill into the side and put in set screws to try holding the valve guides in.--- probably wont work but its junk anyway so might as well try it!
Test dug some sweet potatoes and they are tasteless this year!!! BUMMER!!!!!!!!

Sonny maybe you could knurl the guide's OD on a lathe and repress them into the head? Setscrews might distort the guides dimensions

dont have a knurler . got the little craftsman lathe running.
I was going to drill a slight dimple into the guides,-- not deep --- and probably the 10-24 set screw wont distort the guides.
I was told I blew the heads cause I wasnt runnin the motor wide open! Well this POS cc z-force 48 mower eats the deck belts if you run more than 2/3'rds open plus I dont need it runnin wide open for my use. Cant stand beating across the yard any faster that that anyway.
Motor was as clean as I could ever get it with the air hose after every use too.

sunstar 20 has carb and front tire problems I been trying to fix so I can use it and no time so I been mowing with the Bachtold weed mower. Kills my hands and legs walking behind it and hanging onto it 4 hours at a time non-stop! lol!

Sonny- maybe you could use a hammer and centerpunch to stipple the outside of the guides to increase the diameter..kinda like a homebrew knurl? or just some green Loctite? they have some good products

One guy said to put the valve in the guide to hold its shape, lay it on something solid, and go around it a lot with a center punch then green loctite it heavy and drive it back in, let it set a while before starting the motor. Heat would melt the loctite wouldnt it? dunno,--just askin since I melt it off bolts with the torch.
I dont have any on hand since I never use the stuff.

any torch you use is gonna run waaaaay hotter than that small engine..maybe a couple 4 hundred degrees engine temp on the cylinder head..even a propane torch is gonna run way hotter at 2200degF

good point! anyway I will have to get some to slap on there. Finally got the valve out and guide came back out easy, looks o.k. S'posed to have a pushrod in stock in town so gotta go get it.
Gotta cut trees away from the shed at the farm today too.

digging deep into a 84 Chevy pickup with no working turn signals..hacked wiring harness behind the instrument panel,it has to come out to access the wiring..what a PITA to do without snapping the 40+yr old instrument panel

cuttin/burnin trees that grew up by the shed at the farm.-- Over did it and had a bad night. body cramps set in again!

well i snapped the mount leg off one side of the instrument cluster, the old plastic just isnt as strong as it used to be..good thing for Gorilla Glue,pop rivits and some sheet aluminum to reinforce it with..easy fix. found a relay and flasher up in the dash that was frozen after being inoperative for 15yrs..good feeling once you repair whats been bugging you for so long. On to the next problem LOL

I have a lighter socket in the 350 that shorted out and burned something out,---cant find fuse for lighter and none in the box are blown. Dont know if its a fused line or not. Beacon shorted out on the doorpost and something sizzled. It happened in cold weather late last winter.
got more trees cut/burned. only stand 4 or 5 hours at a time in this heat.

well Sonny its a fuse in the panel underdash and you didnt find it. Bottom row all the way to the left side of the fuse block ,its a 20A fuse..I think it runs the horn too..(Chilton manual open on my desk!)

still have the horn, just no lighter socket.
gotta look some more. I probably missed it. cant get under the dash on these trucks anymore so gotta crawl around and feel mostly.

from my memory of owning a Ford truck the cig lighter had a pole/stud in middle on the rear that was the hot, the push-on connector works loose over the years and develops intermittents, the common or ground was a spade-type slip on the side of the socket

ya sounds about right,--- cant reach up behind it at all. Anyway when it blew it made a sizzling noise from behind the dash area then nuttin, so dont know what blew. Guess I need to get another socket and mount it where I can get to it on the outside. I only use it to run the beacons on the roof so kinda miss it. Might just have to wire all the beacons together and run a direct wire from batt. and put in a heavy switch.

dont forget to put a 20amp fuse inline with that circuit Sonny or it'l go sizzle again in a big way

Got a heavy fuse holder here in the box that I can use.

got a couple patches put on the tractor tube today and that was it!! Too damn hot/muggy to do anything else!

yup way too hot here at 103'degF so I curtailed all outside efforts by 11AM..tomorrow is another day..but today was tomorrow yesterday

Mowed the roadsides at the farm yesterday and cut more trees away from the shed, still gotta cut the rest and burn them. Back tire still holding air so maybe I got the leaks for now.

did an internet auction yesterday --Now to go haul shit home today! Gotta weld some braces on the truck hitch first. --- been puttin it off all summer!

went to Ritchie Bros and picked up another skid steer fork attachment..easier on my back than trying to manhandle 6ft long forks on and off

wanted fork extensions for mine but they are too high priced for me. Almost bought a Hyster with 6' forks on it but no lp tank and s'posed to run/work but I chickened out!! lol!

I handle heavy loads on a pretty regular basis and need thru long forks, cant use extensions..so I have a set of 60"L forks but one is bent slightly, total PITA to use for picking up pallets of material..Ive tried to bend the one back but its impossible..the bend is at the heel,really tough to try to re-bend it there..I bound them down to my 2"thick steel plate fab table and used ratchet chain binders, tried to apply pressure to the fork to bend it back, with no luck..tried for days to increase pressure on it gradually..didnt work. Tried to lift up on it underneath the Cat 977 to try to bend it back,didnt work..afraid I was going to pop a seal on the forklift lift cylinder. That heat treatment of the forks is set in good..that I will say

A little bend in forks makes for big trouble trying to fork stuff. Wouldnt think it would but it do!! lol!
finally got the mower fixed on the "new" 140 I think. Still gotta do some fine tunin on it yet.

putting a hydraulic oil cooler on a Ferris 3100 zero-turn mower..cant believe they didnt include this in their design..only a 2-qt hyd tank for something that potentially runs all day..not even a little one! so amazingly I FOUND something I had in inventory when I needed it..a BIG hyd air-to-oil cooler, itl fit right on top of the engine area with airflow..hope it works out..I got bolts loose everywhere

Ya my mini ex. does have a cooler with electric fan on it direct from chimna! Its a wonder they put one on it!
Just spent 2 more days mowing the waterways and part of the road ditches at the farm.
picked a few more tomatoes and sis took a bunch to the food bank again. Nother 100 pounds ready to go today.

got the farm mowed and started diggin in the sinkholes and found a tile disaster! Gotta replace several hundred feet of 5" and a bunch of 10" stuff.

built a generator support frame out of 1/2"x4 angle..what a breeze to work with the DoAll cut-off bandsaw cutting 1/2"thick stock to length..Im done struggling with a sawzall..then deburred and MIG-welded it all together,at over 6ft long and 3ft wide..it started getting heavy moving it around for painting..all day job totally filthy when we were done..cleaned up and then went to local steakhouse for a few cold beers and a ribeye..on to the next job

trying to dig sweet potatoes.

went and found an old Davis trencher. no tags on it, ( came from Chicago many years ago so was probably stolen at some point and tags ripped off) anyway it looks like a tf- 300.

Finally got sweet potatoes dug yesterday and making sweet pepper relish now. got 16 pints so far.

Case Davis sweet potato digger project soon in the works..

Not really today, more like over the last fortnight or so.

Pulling posts. The 6x6 gateposts took a lot. Some posts left the bottom in the ground. Since the spacing was changing, I didn't worry about that.


Starting on the gateposts. 3" pipe, mill scale scrubbed off and starting on endcaps. You can see my rotating ground, and a bolt that the ground would thread on to. I'm not a very fast welder, so it was just as easy to put the ground clamp directly on the bolt. But at least now I know the rotating gadget works. Could use a softer spring.


Putting on the fence mounting brackets. This being New England, everything gets primed right away. I made a jig to space them out the same as the fence rails, double sided (one left, the other right).



You can also see the holes for the 1/2" pipe I used to keep the gate hinges from crushing the pipe. Welding it in, using one of the 5/8 pins as an alignment tool. Sometimes my measuring was off and I had to weld the slugs back in.



And sometimes I still got it wrong. I bent the last pin to be in line with the other two. I later figured out the one was right, the two were wrong...but it didn't matter, made about an inch difference in the length of the gates.

Okay, one more jig photo that slipped by me on the last post.


I didn't get any picks of jigging the pipes up in their holes, the pipes are 8' but the holes are 4' deep. Threw a few sticks of rebar in to keep them company. And I didn't use the mixer, just mixed in the wheelbarrow. The bottom rail is 7" up from the bottom of the panel, so I rested the bottom rail bracket on 2 chunks of 4x4 and a piece of 1x (3.5+3.5+0.75) and then braced them in two planes.

Some people say my welding looks like chicken poop (mostly me), but my QA inspectors would like to differ: it looks nothing like theirs, it's a songbird at best.


Three gates made, a truck gate (11', because the last dumptruck guy here didn't think he could get his rig through a 9-1/2' opening), a walk gate, and and a double walk gate, so six posts. One post didn't need hinge pins.





The rest of the fence was easy, drop a chainlink endpost in a 2' hole, add dry concrete, three brackets, and a cap. Well, brackets first with the rough heights set. Some tweaking needed when the panels were added due to post heights, slope, etc.


The old gates used a 1' chunk of pipe in the ground for the drop rods. They were always clogging up, and you were never quite sure where they ended up. So this time, I made a slot bracket 9/16 wide out of 2 pieces of 2" angle with a 1" strap welded across the bottom. Added two pieces of 4' rebar, so hopefully they won't frost jack out. The idea is that the ends of the slot are open, so I can grab a stick or a screwdriver and clean them out.



I added the pavers to keep my dogs from getting ideas.

And yes, the truck gates ended up being slightly different heights. The gap was also on the big side, so I added a picket at the gap. I really like how well the drop bar keeps the gates in line, we'll have to see how it stands up to storms.

Looks great! You had a BIG project going on there! Truck driver cant go thru a 9 1/2 foot wide gate???? WOW I put semis thru 8 1/2 foot wide gates before with no problem!!

Glad you got your fence in order!

nice work Glyford