POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

IIUC, the spoils will mostly leave your property, rather than be spread around on site.
Correct though we're working on that with our "neighbor" to the north and two other gravel companies. A young family bought the 35 acres that butts up to our north property line with the intent of building back in the woods. He and a buddy were dozing a trail developing a build site when his buddy noted all of the sand and gravel they were digging. So, new plan; the site is now an active gravel pit.

They're in business to make money and will do whatever we want. I'm HEAVILY leaning toward them doing the 300-yard move to the front of our yard instead of me. It's only money; you can always make more money, but you can't make more time.

More boring back story is that I last started our Ford F600 dump truck about 12 years ago. It's been storied inside the barn, but I did nothing to prep for its extended storage. I've been avoiding throwing a battery in it only to find out that the pistons are rusted to the cylinders. I did throw Stabil in the gas tank, but I'll drain it before trying to start it. Writing a little bigger check will let me procrastinate a little longer on the Ford and spend my time on something I want to do. I'm not in denial (too much), I need to eventually take care of the truck or it'll be my kids or wife having to hire someone to take care of it.


Gravel pit to the north of us. It's been WONDERFUL since they started the work. We hear a little equipment noise, but the 15-foot berm they piled up does a great job shielding us from the noise. It's also knocks down a lot of the northern winds that blew carp into my wife's garden.
1712408216333.png
 
Last edited:
True Bruce, I try keep a tidy and organized shop. But, it is by no means a house or museum. It is all about working conditions, functionality, and efficiency. My point is that sometimes people get carried away with hiding electrical and plumbing just to house their hoard. And yes, I suppose I can be classified as a neat freak by some. :encourage:
Hey, once it's organized it's soo much nicer to work in! I hope to get to your level some day! I unfortunately ran my shop wiring behind the walls. In retrospect, conduit on the outside would be my preference. As you said, it's a shop, not a house. Adding more stuff has lead me to crawling in the attic pulling wire. On top of that, I used an air nailer to put up my walls (7/16" OSB). Such a pain to pull a sheet to get behind the wall; wish I'd have used screws. If I need any more runs, it'll be in conduit on the outside of the walls. I used to have this for storage:

So where did my (insert ANYTHING here) go? It's there someplace. . .
20160319_105902.jpg

It took some time, but I made this and am now somewhat organized. Soo nice to walk up to a drawer and pull a "whatever" when I need it instead of spending a half-hour trying to find it!

20200508_163411.jpg
20200508_163910.jpg
 
Hey, once it's organized it's soo much nicer to work in! I hope to get to your level some day! I unfortunately ran my shop wiring behind the walls. In retrospect, conduit on the outside would be my preference. As you said, it's a shop, not a house. Adding more stuff has lead me to crawling in the attic pulling wire. On top of that, I used an air nailer to put up my walls (7/16" OSB). Such a pain to pull a sheet to get behind the wall; wish I'd have used screws. If I need any more runs, it'll be in conduit on the outside of the walls. I used to have this for storage:

So where did my (insert ANYTHING here) go? It's there someplace. . .

It took some time, but I made this and am now somewhat organized. Soo nice to walk up to a drawer and pull a "whatever" when I need it instead of spending a half-hour trying to find it!

Ahhh, another convert. Looking good Bruce. Keep up the good work.

Funny thing is, unlike most people, I actually enjoy the organizational projects (particularly more now that I am retired and have more time).
 
@BGHansen

Thank you for taking the time to add the details. I don't think they are boring at all. IMHO, that is a very big project so every aspect is significant in scale.
Good luck with the F600 project. You've gotta do it, LOL. Diesel or gas?
 
Another POTD that'll end up being a multi-year endeavor. My wife and I have a nice place in MI on 64 acres. She's wanted a pond for years; we finally got it started. I'm not making too much fun of her, but she originally thought that I'd dig the pond with our Case 580 backhoe and it's whopping 3/4-yard bucket. Her pond plan was for a 1-acre pond which I calculated out at roughly 15,000 yards of dirt or ~20,000 scoops with the Case. I'm 64 and wouldn't live long enough for that to happen. So, go to someone who does this for a living. We went with Schlicht Ponds (https://www.pondperfection.com/). They did a nice job for us.


Our place in Central lower MI
View attachment 485558

Pond planned location; ~150' x 300' x 15' deep. Incline is 1 to 3 for (hopefully) minimal erosion
View attachment 485563

This is the guy who did the heavy lifting; CAT 336 excavator with 3-yard bucket. Seven days of digging.
View attachment 485564

Looking back at the house
View attachment 485565

View attachment 485566

12' tall dirt piles currently obstructing most of the view. Should be leveled out by the end of the summer.
View attachment 485567

The pond is about 4' from being filled which shouldn't (fingers crossed) be a problem. I dug a test hole 9' deep with the Case adjacent to the pond around 20 years ago and it stays filled year round. Our South border is the Thornapple River; the pond level matches the river. The level is currently going up about 6" per day as the "spoils" (new one on me, that's what they call the dirt dug out of the hole) are still draining (he was digging in water). Plus, the water is seeping in through the ground. I didn't hit any clay with my test hole at 9', just sand & gravel. They hit clay at about 10' though most of the footprint is still sand & gravel.

Next step is to wait about a month or more for the spoils to dry out, then get it moved. My part of the project (photos to follow) will be moving around 300 yards with the Case and F600 dump truck to level out the front area of our yard as our house was built on a hill. Then it'll be some landscaping, followed by more landscaping, followed by . . .

Bruce
We have a small pond in our yard now too.

IMG_4543.jpeg

Sold our place in Michigan last summer and have been working on a small addition to our Santa Cruz home.

IMG_4542.jpeg

We’re on the opposite end from you property wise with a 4000 sqft lot….

John
 
@BGHansen

Thank you for taking the time to add the details. I don't think they are boring at all. IMHO, that is a very big project so every aspect is significant in scale.
Good luck with the F600 project. You've gotta do it, LOL. Diesel or gas?
Gas, I was told a 402 when I bought the truck in around 1997 for $1000. Here's a picture under the hood. Any Blue Oval guys out there recognize it or what I need to look at to know the engine size?

1712426940389.png

This crowd usually looks hard at the background for details. You notice at the firewall that the master cylinder doesn't have a booster. What the heck?!?! 5 ton load in a 3 ton truck and expect manual brakes to stop it?!? You'll also notice just one hydraulic line. That runs down to under the driver's seat where the vacuum booster and "real" master cylinder set. The one on the firewall is just a slave that pushes fluid to move the real one.

Here she is. Wow, same place I parked it in I think 2012. . .

1712427160931.png
1712427197111.png

She owes me nothing, I'm sure hoping it won't take much to get her up and running again. One thing I learned in retirement is that retiree's have A LOT of TWO things: Time and Stories. . .

Here's my frame repair from around 2002:

1712427322418.png

Back story is I was digging what became the test hole for our current in process pond. I was digging in water and pulling sand and gravel. I was coming back the next day and dumping it in the truck to spread on our driveway. I was right in front of our house when I heard a bad noise and was suddenly staring at the sky. The frame folded and went from its normal ~22" off the ground to so low I couldn't fit a floor jack under it. "Well, I wasn't going to dump the load here, but here it's going!". Drove to the side of our barn with my head out the window since I couldn't see over the hood.

A 2 1/4 ton floor jack wouldn't even budge it; it got lifted with a 12-ton bottle jack. I jacked one side up a few inches, slid in some 2 x 12's, lowered, and repeated on the other side. I had the front tires at least a foot in the air and let gravity do the rest. I ended up coming up about 1/4" short per my highly technical string-line check, close enough. I then grade-8 bolted, then welded "frame repair 3/8" thick steel" from Spartan Motors (firetruck chassis company in our town).

And going on and on like the retiree that I am, what the heck caused the frame to fold? Obvious answer is too much weight, but if the dump box is 6' x 8' x 2', wouldn't you think the frame should be able to take a full load?

The title on the truck shows it as a stake truck, not a dump truck. Looking at the chassis frame just ahead of my repair, you'll see what looks like a torched-off plate (that's because it was. . .). Apparently, Ford's process at the time was to bolt 1/8" plate steel lengths to the frame C-channel members depending on what the truck's loading would be. Makes sense to me, low-load truck, maybe 1 or 2 reinforcements. Heavy load, add more plates. There are 4 torched-off ends at the back of the cab.

You'll notice near the rear of my repair a piece of steel that has 2 bolts to my repair steel. This is a bracket for the dump box mount. I'm somewhat guessing here, but I believe a previous owner realized the dump box frame was narrower than the truck's frame and the laminated 1/8" plate bolted to it for added strength. They torched off 1/2" of steel plate leaving just 1/8" of steel "C" channel.

The loaded truck is basically a simply-supported beam with the supports being the tires. The bending moment ramps up, then down as you move from front to rear on the frame. The highest bending moment ends up being about 3'-4' rear of where the steel plates were torched off. I worked for GM, but I would hazard to guess that Ford Engineering would not have produced the truck this way.

Another quick incident is when I popped a 6' wheelie with the truck. The tailgate can be chained to the box so it's limited on how much the tailgate opens as the dump box lifts. I was again digging in wet sand and gravel and spreading it on our driveway. I limited the tailgate to about a 9" opening so I could dump while driving to spread the load. The truck doesn't have live PTO; the hydraulic pump only generates pressure while the clutch is released. My normal process was to release the tail gate, push in the clutch, engage the hydraulic pump, pop the clutch to start the pump, pull the dump box lever and feather the throttle to lift the box. Once the load starts dumping, I'd push in the clutch (which shuts off the pump), pop it in gear, release the clutch and putt along as the box continues to lift and the load slowly dumps as I putt along.

Problem was, that wet sand & gravel didn't flow so well. I'm driving along wondering when more is going to come out with the box continuing to lift when the load cut loose and hit the tailgate. Big center of gravity shift at that point which put the front end 6' in the air. The load hitting the tail gate put a 1' bend in the middle so the load made it out, and I bounced up and down a few feet when the front end came back down.

After changing my skivvies, I clamped a couple 2x4's to the ends of the gate, parked the truck up against a tree and whacked the gate in the middle with the Case backhoe to bend it back.

Yeah, do the math and failure mode analysis after the fact. Wet sand gravel weighs about 125 lbs. / cubic foot; I had a 12,000 lbs. load that smacked that poor tail gate with some velocity.

The poor truck is probably dreading me getting her out again! I'm now a lot older and hopefully a little wiser!
 
Having some experience with old gas in a vehicle, I've developed a process to clean out the system. First, drain the gas tank completely. This involves removing the drain plug and ensuring that the tank is positioned so all the gas can drain there. Second, add some fuel to the tank, then use a vacuum bleeder (I used a Mity-Vac in the old days, but now use a Harbor Freight air venturi vacuum "pump" with a Mason Jar reservoir) attached to the inlet tube to the carburetor to suck out the old gas from the lines and pump. Suck until you get clean, new fuel. Lastly, pull the top of the float bowl (often the whole top of the carburetor) to remove any remaining fuel and check that the float valve is functioning properly. At this point you can tell if the carburetor needs repairs.

On the lack of a brake booster: at that time Ford sometimes used a remote mounted vacuum booster. Follow the brake line from the master cylinder and see if there is anything inline before the brake wheel units. These units are not readily available, but there are places that rebuild your core.
 
Bruce, the engine is either a 279, 302, or 332 Y block based on the Lincoln engine if it is original to the truck. While it is very similar in looks to the Y block car engines It shares almost no internal parts. Definitely not a 402, but can do the job with the gearing they used. Some of those old rigs had a separate brake booster mounted on the frame under the cab. Mike
 
Back
Top