not much new

well, Saturday I used my 52 GMC for the first time in 5 years to go get a free truck. was fun-my clutch is worthless but I made it home... =)

Sunday ended up not being a work day for a lot of reasons.

Monday I got the welder fan to turn on for the first time ever.
was welding up the new brake pedal arm to the old jeep one


the pedal arm glowed red hot and I laid down a LOT of new material.
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-NOTE-
the fan on the welder only turns on when the welder has been put to extended or hard use. during all of my typical welding-i can weld solid for 60-90 seconds and it wont turn on. this was over 5 minutes of solid welding at a very high heat range
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today and tomorrow are no-truck days. I’m wiring a 57 Chevy car-pretty much from scratch.
harness was supposed to be a plug-n-play but turns out the ends aren’t terminated so its measure, layout, testfit, cut, splice, crimp, attach, wrap THEN play...


Thurs is t-day so nogo there and then Fri is wreck yard fun and maybe some truck and sat we have our good friends in town-I’m gonna try to drag him out to watch me work but... =) wife override... possibly.
I’m anxious since I don’t have much left before I fire it. new sandblaster is assembled and ready to rumble then its wash/clean/paint and put it all back together. heater first-its getting cold!!!

clicking on pictures

If you click on a picture-it should open BIG in a new window.

more wiring

well, i took the last few days and traced out every wire in the bundle, figured out what i needed and didn't need and cut/labeled so i know where it goes now.

in the meantime i (with franks advice) painted under/behind dash for better lighting when i need to work back there;


then i cut hole in firewall to take 80 jeep fuse block.
its been a bit more of a pain but i think i will be happy-this is functional truck not show truck and modern wiring setup will be nice.


i was worried that the front fender mount wouldn't be strong enough so after discussion with my dad and some head-scratching... i came up with this.
i had welded just the lower part on and not even all the way and wanted to test-front end weighs 150? 200 pounds. more with rad and hood on but i jumped up/down HARD and it held. then i FULLY welded it and added the bracing-should hold now. =)

and yes-the rad is gonna be so close to front of eng i will have to run elec fan in front of rad-NOT my favorite but... and that steel looks thin but the main part is 1/4" channel... tied VERY well to the boxed frame member which will be tied again to the MONSTER front bumper for even more strength

this is the last time the front end will be off (and if i can lift the whole thing by myself-its not that heavy at all) till x? years down the road when i have money/time to paint the outside. inside will be that nice silver hammered but outside will be "patina"

RANT- sony products are worthless-dont buy!!

sony stinks

I paid $250 about 2.5 years ago for one of sony's best pocket cameras. DSC-W50
we chose it cause of its super short response time between power button and actual shutter click.

sony stinks

we put a few thousand VERY careful pics through it.
whenever it wasn’t in the camera bag-it was ALWAYS on our wrist with wrist strap.
it was never dropped or mis-handled.

sony stinks

well, JUST before our Sept HI trip-it FAILED. wouldn’t power up the lens at all.
gave error messages and wouldn’t work.

sony stinks

I googled my camera model- DSC-W50 and the error message about the failed lens and came up with about 250,000 RELEVANT hits-seems this is the most common reason that these cameras are all over ebay BROKEN and even the good ones wont sell since they all WILL fail.
funny-my Nikon and my friends Nikon’s don’t fail.

sony stinks

so I took it back to best(worst) buy where I bought it.
they were USELESS. in fact-they were so useless-they broke it worse! I had to throw a tantrum to get them to fix what they broke. they wanted to offer me $50 credit to new camera. LOL!
so 4 weeks go by and I get a message from service center that my camera is broken and do I want to spend $350 to get it fixed.

sony stinks

my momma didn’t raise no fool so I took off my shoes, did some quick math using my toes for extra help and decided I didn’t want to shell out $100 more than I paid for the camera in the first place. however-there was no toll-free number to call them back.
after getting a huge run-around at the lab where I called I made it PERFECTLY clear that there was NO WAY I was gonna pay more and just fix what best buy broke and give it back.

sony stinks

my intent was(and may still be) to go after sony for repair issues and not standing behind products especially after known issues.

sony stinks

so TWO months after I dropped off camera-best buy calls to say they have my camera. after waiting 20 minutes in a NOT busy store-they finally give it back to me. still doesn’t work(I was hoping the lab tech might take pity on me and fix it anyway)

so there it sits on the shelf-another month goes by and tonight I was up too late and decided I have NOTHING to lose.

I took it apart. pried on it, banged it, took every screw out and pried some more. couldn’t get the lens assembly out via some web jockeys instructions. finally tried the battery again after pretty much sticking a screwdriver in the lens and yanking....

IT WORKS!!!

I’m not holding my breath and there’s a wonderful class-action lawyer who just got through winning a different case against sony for defective TV's who evidently has done some research and would LOVE to tackle this issue too. I’m giving the camera till Jan. and if its still running-I wont call the lawyer but if it fails even once-thats it.

beside NEVER buying or recommending a sony product ever again, I’m going to vent my(and users around the world) frustrations and let the ambulance chasers go to work.

long rant but BLECK on sony....

still workin on brakes

What did i do today? Whole bunch of nothing it feels like but ive got the whole brake system done except for the pedal-major cut/weld fabrication/design.

i unloaded the truck from my shopping trip in Corning-that was fruitful-forgot I had all that rubber.

oh-and I mocked up the front bumper im going to use-it came off of a 3 ton COE(cab over engine) heavy duty truck. Its slightly wider than the 1/2t bumper but my wheels are wider too-it works and will add front weight, stop ANY deer, and since its lower-it will sorta act like an air dam for better mpg.


tired. calling it a day.

project color

this is the color it will be on the outside. 2002 VW golf TDI

or if i can find the owner of this truck-steal his color.

steering column completed

yesterday I spent a good part of my day making one steering column out of 2.
bottom half is 1984 jeep wagoneer.

top half is 1950 Chevy truck.

unfortunately I wasn’t paying attention and neglected to notice the 3spd bracket mounts were not there. so I had to modify and create my own with a special jog...
measure/cut/measure/cut.. and finally weld.

this is the color of the interior paint-its called hammered silver and is actually pretty close to OEM which was either a champagne or mildly hammered silver.

4x4 project

well, once I got it home I put the front fenders on the front where they belong, and proceeded to get the body mounted the proper way. after a week of measure 100x and then again-yesterday I called it good and welded the body mounts permanently to the frame.


it sits a lot higher than i wanted but i can live with it.
stay tuned. i did some other stuff tonight but no pics so ...

new project

Well, we sold all our tow rigs-the 78 gmc Amy got from her grandpa, the 69 van I got from Grammie, and my 52 gmc just isnt up to the task right now.
we also sold amys 98 jimmy with GLEE! 3 dealers, innumerable visits, and money down the drain and it still wouldnt run right.

so with no 4x4 the visits to friends and family in snow country wont happen.

so we did what every normal family would do-we started building another truck for the fleet.
started with this;

then i did this to it;

there it goes-off to the graveyard;

then some test fit with other parts;

then i took this;

loaded it on this;


and took it home.

biking again.

well back at it again. catchup time.
lots of miles this summer on the tandem. accomplished our goal of riding to our friends house in cohassette. 2 hours? 7mph av speed over the 15 miles up to 2500' which meant 38mph top speed on the way down sitting up to block wind and tapping the brakes... all for the stokers comfort.
Amy has been riding to work most every day. nice for exercise and so forth.
and no-thats not our kid. our good friends visited and we took a ride in bidwell park. Seth really enjoyed the ride.