Recent content by Rackety

There's a lot I don't understand about the PO's motivations, including why it got parked up in the first place. I asked some questions to the seller, who operated as a yard basically - he stripped the thing down to parts but to my knowledge never drove this vehicle, but his recall of the...

Just read some of those - big thanks for posting. Interesting to note about the avoidance of perpendicular welding on the inboard frame face.

I'm in the process of stripping the chassis and other related tasks on my 1982 BJ45 Troopy, European spec. I bought the vehicle in pieces, and it hasn't been on the road in 10-15 years - or so I've been told. Currently it looks like this: When I got towards the back end, I noticed the...

While I tried to find replacement axles & birfs I continued on with the knuckles. The knuckle ball was very rusty and pitted. I cleaned it up and applied a very thin layer of JB Weld over the whole thing and sanded it smooth. I had to do this twice to fix the defined groove at the back where...

Well, after some events in my personal life shortly after my last post derailed progress for most of December, I have resumed work. Regarding the frame welding, that's on hold for a couple unrelated reasons which I'll go into in a later post. I moved on to rebuilding the knuckles. The truck...

Yeah, that's a good idea actually, I might do that. What do you make of all those holes? I thought they were random when I first looked at them but they are mirrored exactly on the other side.

Thanks all, that's helpful. I'll do some more testing tomorrow. @Augustiron you're not wrong about penetration, I have to really go slow and let it heat up to get all the way through anything over 1/8". The machine literature claims it can handle 1/4" at max settings with 35 mil wire, so I'll do...

You're not kidding. Subscribe, this build thread will be full of such hilarity. In actuality I did practice on some scraps of similar thickness, until I felt comfortable. But...it came out a lot better on the table than it did on the frame. I think the vertical orientation had something to do...

But...I have virtually no welding experience. Can you tell? 😂 No idea what I'm doing. I watched some YT intro to welding videos and gave it a go. Why not? Got to learn somehow.

Got some steel today, got it cut out and lined up. Felt pretty pleased with myself actually lol.

Spent another couple hours wire wheeling and stripping. The frame overall is in good condition, which got me thinking about why the rust was concentrated in that one area. Then I jacked up the front to take the front tires off to start assessing the knuckles and it became very obvious. Any water...

You're not raining on my parade @Augustiron - it's literally comments like this that I'm here for. I wire-wheeled for about 3 hours today and about 98% of the frame is in good shape, really solid. The portion with the patch, which is on the right main chassis beam is easily the worst of it...

@rkymtnflyfisher are you also from Tulsa? I read your build thread the other day actually, really useful.

That's a really interesting idea actually. Unfortunately my pressure washer is max 2300 psi, which is plenty to wash the cars. I will keep this in mind for the body, however. The tub is in pretty bad shape.

Then I started looking at the frame. According to the PO, it had a coat of POR 15 before it sat outside for a decade or so. It's not terribly rusty, although it's clear the frame suffered at some point before being treated. This is typical of the condition on much of the frame: Other spots...