81 BJ42 - I have to bring it home and pass inspection

[crushers]

that is just too cool a toy to have sitting around ...
score.

 

[iggi]

Thanks T

Maybe a tech night with the RMLCA would work. You will have to come to town

Great work Kevin. It's inspiring to see your progress.
I'd be happy to volunteer my services as garage go-fer for an evening just so I could see your working methods.

You could consider it customer training as I'm sure I'll be sourcing some panels from you when I fix up my 40.

 

[Awl_TEQ]

So yesterday I made the rear sill that is obviously needed. I have some video but just stills for now.

Second pic is forming the inner piece at the shop

Third is welding it at home.

Fourth is spot welded to the outer piece and finished part at work this morning.

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Here is the video of the making the sill on Thursday night.

​

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Friday my wife left me






















with the kids for the weekend while she went to Cranbrook for a "girls weekend". I'm imagining naked pillow fights and truth or dare to the wee hours. Maybe just me

Anyway, I took friday off and watched Independence Day for the umpteenth time.


This morning (Saturday) I picked up where I left off on Wednesday night. Cleaned the weld of this patch and tacked on the quarter patch. Welded that in too.

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Welded in



Then on to the back section. I decided to do the rear portion of the inner fenders and the sill all at the same time. If I cut all of that away the body will flex and move all over so I first pulled the quarters together until the doors had even gaps again (it was already spreading before I even got the 42 home) Then I welded in a scrap section of channel across the tub at the point where the top bolts on.


Then I started cutting

 

[Awl_TEQ]

and cutting

To take out the sill I had to drill out the spotwelds where the floor overlaps the sill

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Yikes!!

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Frame looks good but there are signs of trouble to come

holey

Gravity is not a friend. But I found a solution

 

[crushers]

THAT is amazing. I would love to have learned your job, must be ... well ... rewarding.
thanks for sharing.

Here is the video of the making the sill on Thursday night.

​

 

[crushers]

when you said "wife left me" ... i thought, not another cruiserhead breakup. BTDT, costly.

you must be grateful to have a wife that understands the addiction.

 

[lostmarbles]

THAT is amazing. I would love to have learned your job, must be ... well ... rewarding.
thanks for sharing.

There probably nowhere in this entire country with machinery that sophisticated!

 

[subzali]

I love threads like this. No frame-off - just rolling metal repair to get it on the road again. Inspiring for me as that's what I hope to do in the not-so-distant future...

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Not so,

http://www.statec.co.nz/

And one shop looking for an operator,

http://myjobspace.co.nz/301433

 

[crushers]

humm, does this mean you have been shopping out of country for a job?

 

[Awl_TEQ]

Might be a case of "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" but I have always thought New Zealand seemed like one of the best places to emigrate to. The landscape is just like Western Canada according to the travel shows on TV.

But no, I was just showing Tom that shops like the one I work at are everywhere. Any populace of decent size will have a sheet metal shop. Usually HVAC (which is not what we do) for construction of new buildings but also the CNC custom and production manufacturing shops. Not all manufacturing goes to Taiwan and China as is popularly thought. Many products are too low in production volume to warrant the shipping and go through the trouble of sourcing offshore. For the smaller niche market products there can be a lot of pitfalls with having parts made 12000Km away. We have one customer who had us make a prototype cover for their enclosure. "too expensive" they said. So they went to China and ordered hundreds of injection molded plastic covers. Waited months for the ship to come in. Pushed back the release of the product. Made up all the brochures and hit the trade show circuit. Had trouble with customs and importation laws. Finally received the parts and they were completely different from the "perfect" sample the Chinese company sent them. Not to mention they spent more in the end then we quoted them. They ended up bringing them to us to try and alter them but there was nothing we could do. Last I heard the principals of that company were seeking capital to keep it afloat.

There are a lot of shops like ours in Ontario, though many were wiped out with the recession. We are lucky because we are a "custom" shop. Rather than making several parts for just a handful of big customers in just a couple markets we have a couple hundred customers in every market and have over 12000 parts in our system that we can make on short notice. Diversity, its good. When the oilfield is down we still have electronics, food service, architectural, lighting etc, etc. Our tooling and processes are geared toward variability rather than one tool to stamp out one part.

Suffice it to say I like where I work. It's modern, different every day and cool. But if there was a shop in NZ willing to pay really well......

 

[Radd Cruisers]

Goooood morning, nice bit of work there Kevin.....

My wife was mentioning this morning how she has seen a couple of Bj42s around town as of late and why I do not have one? I mentioned we had one in the driveway for 3 years....

So nice to see this truck getting the care it deserves..


Rob

 

[crushers]

20 years ago i had a hankering to move to NZ after talking to a couple Kiwis that were visiting our church in Calgary ...
they described as Canada 20 years earlier.
now though, it seems NZ is pretty close to Canada with all the crap rules we have to live by so South America is my next choice.

 

[AllenTenT]

wow I could watch videos like that all day

thanks

 

[lostmarbles]

There probably nowhere in this entire country with machinery that sophisticated!..

Not so,

Laser Cutting CNC folding Sheet Metal & Stainless Steel Fabrication - STATEC Manufacturing

And one shop looking for an operator,

MYJOBSPACE.CO.NZ Job - PRESS BRAKE OPERATOR (CNC) - SHEETMETAL

Might be a case of "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" but I have always thought New Zealand seemed like one of the best places to emigrate to. The landscape is just like Western Canada according to the travel shows on TV.

But no, I was just showing Tom that shops like the one I work at are everywhere. Any populace of decent size will have a sheet metal shop. Usually HVAC (which is not what we do) for construction of new buildings but also the CNC custom and production manufacturing shops. Not all manufacturing goes to Taiwan and China as is popularly thought. Many products are too low in production volume to warrant the shipping and go through the trouble of sourcing offshore. For the smaller niche market products there can be a lot of pitfalls with having parts made 12000Km away. We have one customer who had us make a prototype cover for their enclosure. "too expensive" they said. So they went to China and ordered hundreds of injection molded plastic covers. Waited months for the ship to come in. Pushed back the release of the product. Made up all the brochures and hit the trade show circuit. Had trouble with customs and importation laws. Finally received the parts and they were completely different from the "perfect" sample the Chinese company sent them. Not to mention they spent more in the end then we quoted them. They ended up bringing them to us to try and alter them but there was nothing we could do. Last I heard the principals of that company were seeking capital to keep it afloat.

There are a lot of shops like ours in Ontario, though many were wiped out with the recession. We are lucky because we are a "custom" shop. Rather than making several parts for just a handful of big customers in just a couple markets we have a couple hundred customers in every market and have over 12000 parts in our system that we can make on short notice. Diversity, its good. When the oilfield is down we still have electronics, food service, architectural, lighting etc, etc. Our tooling and processes are geared toward variability rather than one tool to stamp out one part.

Suffice it to say I like where I work. It's modern, different every day and cool. But if there was a shop in NZ willing to pay really well......

Thanks Awl_TEQ.

Here in NZ we used to protect our manufacturing industries (with import duties etc) but when they removed that protection (with deregulation in the 1980's) and let them compete open-slather with manufacturers in cheaper-labour countries .... the majority of businesses in that sector died.

For quite a few years there were so many small-engineeering businesses closing that auctions were being held almost every week (and that's actually where I sourced much of my old second-hand tools and equipment - such as my welder, lathe, pipe cutters, reamers, taps, dies, etc)

So it's certainly nice to be shown that there are a few kiwi engineering businesses that are not only surviving, but doing well enough to invest in state-of-the-art equipment.

(Auckland holds about 1/3 of the population of this country so the demand will be highest there making businesses more viable than elsewhere.)

Aquaheat is the biggest-name in HVAC in this part of NZ where I live ... and their Australian parent company has just recently collapsed - so engineering here is certainly not out of danger.



PS. For those thinking of emigrating here. I suggest farming. The farmers lobby group (Federated Farmers) is so powerful that these folk regularly get government assistance (for floods and droughts) and they can still pollute our rivers, streams and lakes almost as-they-please to maximise profit. (Quite the opposite scenario to what we have in manufacturing/engineering.)