CW 2.0

[seapotato]

You prefer to blow her by mouth?


Blow up I mean.


Compressors are risky for blowing up inflatables with 150 psi… had an unfortunate mishap with a snow toy… apparently they don’t flex well below zero.

I'm the wrong guy to ask for blowup doll advice.

My only experience with an inflatable companion was one my friends tried to inflict on me on my stag night.

Apparently their plan was for me to carry the inflatable sheep around town, and not for me to stab it to death before they could even get it out of the trunk of the car.

Remember kids, always carry a knife. Useful in ways you haven't thought of yet.

 

[seapotato]

Ok, after much delay, I finally did a thing with the ebrake.

When I had the tranny and tcase out I picked up a smaller caliper because I didn't like how the big one hung out off the back.

Made a bracket for the little one and then found I'd miscalculated and it would just barely touch the floor pan. So I put it all away for a year.

Could have rotated the output flange one hole and had it work, but I'd lost enthusiasm for it.


Crawled underneath last week with the bigger caliper and figured a few things out.

Here's the two calipers together, both are wilwood, but you can probably see why I'd rather use the big one.

Bracket I'd made for the small one last year. It worked I guess.

Don't mind the booger welds, my welding helmet battery died, so this was mostly blind welding.

So, enter the new CAD templates ( Cardboard assisted design)

Thankfully there's a nice little plasma at work, because this would suck to cut out with a zip.

Which led to this...

Wasn't sure with that top cap if I'd be able to get the output flange with rotor on, but because the rotor is loose until the drive shaft is bolted up, there's enough play in it to get it slid on.

I'll definitely remember to goop the splines before I put it together, all that oil you see is from that. I knew I'd be in there again and didn't want to fight the goop. Didn't think it'd take a year, but here we are.

It'd be a cleaner looking installation if the caliper could face the other way, but you'd need a rotor that was quite a bit larger diameter. This one is 9.5", and I think it would have to be more like 11 or 12" to clear the body of the tcase.

I could have made a larger one, but having the rotor not be lower than the tcase seemed like a good idea.

Makes it easier to mess with the ebrake cable this way, it'd be a pain in the ass if it was up on top of the case, but it does make the bracket more awkward.

Think it'll work tho. I'll park on something steep as hell to test. Has to be better than the s***ty old stock 40 tcase brake.


Now to see if I can get an ebrake cable to work out of all this s***.

This truck has the dash pull, so we'll see if I use it or not.

 

[seapotato]

Well that went easier than I thought it would.

I had a cable from some sort of acura that Monsieur Crusty gave me before he was sentenced to transportation.


Some minor modifications were needed at both ends. Factory cable has a big nut to clamp it to the dash pull, I had to use a little collar with a set screw.

I had something in my rando bin that was perfect.

One end done. Would be nice to take the brake pull out for this, but the bolts are buried under the booster, so **** that noise.

Other end just needed a little filing down so it fit the caliper, and then I made a retainer clip.

I know there's a factory version of this thing somewhere on a cruiser, but ****ed if I can remember where???

Beyond some adjusting that's about it. Now to goop the flange on, fill with oil and see if this does anything or if it was all a total waste of time.

 

[seapotato]

Works pretty well. This is steeper than it looks. Idling in neutral, and I'd ordinarily never leave it on a slope like that if it wasn't shut off and in gear as well.

Just need a cable clamp to hold it away from the throttle pedal. Idles up when engaged

 

[seapotato]

Being able to use a parking brake to go through the driveway gate is a ridiculous luxury.

Almost makes me want to get an edic working. Wonder if a guy could rig it all up on the bench, and have it functional "stand alone" and then install in truck with minimum of connections.
Sounds like an interesting experiment even if it goes nowhere.



Having no electricity (still) I thought I'd dig out my compressors. On left is a blissfield, right is a York.

Head bolts are all loose on the York so I had a look to see if anything was ****ed. Seems ok.

They're very similar, other than one is cast iron and the other aluminum. And 24 and 12v clutches.

I dimly remember doing the modification with a grub screw to stop a York from losing its oil 20 odd years ago. Suspect the same trick will work for the other one.

Something spectacularly violent happened to the York. Under the 3/4" thick mounting plate (seriously??) is another plate that's totally shattered.

WTF???

Mild overkill...but maybe it stopped the whole York from breaking in half

Seems ok other than that. Blissfield weighs twice what the York does.

I'd rather be working on this but no electricity is making woodworking a bit too old school even for me.

 

[seapotato]

And almost 6 months later...I did precisely ****all with the compressors

Pretty much just drove the old girl with the top off and enjoyed it, and made the wooden thing in previous post happen.

It's now in the " where the **** is that hum coming from" fine tuning stage.

Back to cruisers, needed a little fiddle fart job to mess with today before the pregame nap and the joy of night shifts.

I have a couple weeks off as of sunday, so I'll get the lid back on the 40 then, but I wanted to see if this would work beforehand. 60 series visors into a 40 because I don't have any 40 series ones, despite having like 8 freaking windshield frames.

Scrap.

Custom high tech tapered drill, precisely eyeballed to the arm taper.

Whittling down of the scrap, and countersinking for the spring and nut, because the clips that the 60's use are a bitch to get off without destroying them. ( I kinda intentionally destroyed it. Easy enough to thread for a 1/4" nut. )

Further whittling and filing required obviously, but I wanted a test fit.

Should work. Might be too long to swing sideways when driving but I pretty much never do that anyway.

I really need to buy a milling machine

 

[cruisedeisel]

Sick spalted alder, maple? Guitar

 

[seapotato]

Sick spalted alder, maple? Guitar

Thanks it turned out not too bad. Couple minor ****ups, but nothing that made it a wallhanger.
It's maple cap, and some random redwood from the rack for the body.

Kindof a fun hobby. Not really expensive as long as you don't get too carried away with the boutique components. Like cruisers I guess.

I have a big chunk of the maple I've been cutting slices off...

That part isn't all that fun

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Great work as always!!

But man, there's gotta be an easier way to slice the maple. We've done it at work on a big band saw.... Wonder if you could make a jig for a chainsaw? Would loose more to sawdust I guess...

 

[seapotato]

Great work as always!!

But man, there's gotta be an easier way to slice the maple. We've done it at work on a big band saw.... Wonder if you could make a jig for a chainsaw? Would loose more to sawdust I guess...

Ha, yeah this way probably gets me 3 more slices with the thinner kerf, but oh I've thought about the chainsaw.

I do run it through the table saw so there's a 4" head start all around that acts as a guide.
Also thought about taking a 3' section of bandsaw blade, and spot welding one end to a reciprocating saw blade, and the other to a big ass spring I could tie to a fixed point.

But not 100% sure it'd even work, and then...

told myself to stop being a pussy

 

[bikersmurf]

Ha, yeah this way probably gets me 3 more slices with the thinner kerf, but oh I've thought about the chainsaw.

I do run it through the table saw so there's a 4" head start all around that acts as a guide.
Also thought about taking a 3' section of bandsaw blade, and spot welding one end to a reciprocating saw blade, and the other to a big ass spring I could tie to a fixed point.

But not 100% sure it'd even work, and then...

told myself to stop being a pussy

Why not get a long reciprocating saw blade?

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/67848614

24” enough?

 

[seapotato]

Why not get a long reciprocating saw blade?

https://www.mscdirect.com/product/details/67848614

24” enough?

Nah, that falls back into the " stop being a pussy " category.

Plus, I doubt it'd be much faster or easier than a sharp handsaw.

It's not like I spend all day cutting slices off that lump, so it's not a big deal.

I make maybe one guitar a year, so it'll be a while before I do it again, and the next one will be something different, so probably even longer.

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Yup, just one of those random jobs that doesn't quite justify the effort of setting up better way of doing it. Lots of stuff like that around my place, haha.

 

[cruisedeisel]

Come clamp that wood in my bandsaw mill.

 

[seapotato]

Come clamp that wood in my bandsaw mill.

Haha, thanks.

Might be a while, I don't know when I'll need to slice it again, but cutting some slabs out of a log one day would be awesome.

Next guitar is going to be a little self amplified thing I can hang in my locker at work, for night shift practice...it won't be getting the fancy woods, but it does still need to be cool.
Because that's kindof the point.

Haven't decided what to make it out of, maybe an old oil can or something...or some cruiser parts

Hmm. Actually kinda like that idea. Crap.

 

[seapotato]

There. Now swmbo can fix her jbf hair after a highway burn with the roof off.

 

[seapotato]

Ih8 roof on day.

At least I could use the hoist this time, still a pain in the ass.


If I had a few extra thousand kicking around I'd buy one of these tops and throw this s***ty tin lid in a dumpster.

Only the front bit. Dimensions look fairly close.

Being "icon" they probably pad the bill with a few thousand just to make it the most expensive.

Still might have to look into soft tops and modify something.

 

[cruiserpilot]

That thing looks like a prop in "EXPENDABLES 4" with another big name bald wrestler driving it.

 

[seapotato]

That thing looks like a prop in "EXPENDABLES 4" with another big name bald wrestler driving it.

Yeah I only care about the soft top that'd fit an extended cab

 

[Toshi38]

There was a guy custom making them a while back.... Looked super nice and decent quality I think... But I have some vague memories that he struggled to scale up and ended up with insane wait times...