With:
Rae Champoux
iZook Guru's Ultimate Project Build Off - Truck Two
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On the driver’s side of the truck, there needed to be a bracket welded to the frame rail in front of where upper spring perch was. That needed to be put in place so that the link has a mount on the driver’s side. I mention to my father in-law that I would love to learn how to weld, so that I can help out more in the garage. |
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With that being said, he was laying out a few scrap pieces
of angle iron and there started my lesson on how to weld. I am wearing one of
the two welding hoods in the garage, while Jim has on the other, I am wearing
Mitch’s welding gloves that are seriously three sizes too big for me, but I am
petrified to not have anything on my hands.
  After a few words on speed and
distance to keep the wire from what I am trying to weld, I am off, and all I can
hear is popping and snapping, and Jim telling me I am too far away from what I
am welding. I stop, flip up the welding hood and take a look, there are little
splats of welding stuff all over the angle iron. I keep holding my breath,
thinking that will calm my shaking hands, but it doesn’t. Plus I am all weirded
out because I just had safety training at work that talked about argon gas and
how it can work as an asphyxiate , it displaces oxygen and can cause headaches,
drowsiness, vomiting, unconsciousness and death. So those thoughts being fresh
in my mind had me a bit freaked out. I take a big big breath and start again
on the angle iron, and that line turned out good, it looked decent and
penetrated really well. So, Jim and Mitch ask if I think I would like to weld
this bracket onto to frame rail, I am all about welding at that point so I say
yes! We work on getting the bracket lined up so it won’t interfere with the
coil and I used a C-clamp to hold it in place, Mitch tacked in a few spots for
me and then it was my turn. I have to say that it isn’t the cleanest welds I
have ever seen, but considering that I had only welded for a few minutes before
working on that bracket I think that it looks great! |
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  So with that bracket in place we were able to put the stock
ugly tires on the axles and get the frame off of the jack stands. Now we have
to order a body mount kit and figure out what we are going to do about the
engine that needs to be rebuilt that we have. Not to mention painting the frame,
painting the body, getting the truck over to Wisconsin for 4X Fabrication to
work out the exo-cage and some other goodies. Its February already and I feel
like we are going to run out of time! Cross your fingers for me, and stay tuned
for next month. |
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The
list of obstacles were long, three holidays, colds, mandatory overtime for Mitch
at work, a surgery for my mother in-law… thank goodness we have all made it into
the New Year That’s right folks it was a long hard road to get here but the
coils were finished this weekend. Put a fork in it, DONE! This was by far the
hardest thing we have ever tackled in the garage. Taking the body off made the
task so much easier by allowing us the ability to tackle things from above and
below the frame. When we made the choice to make the tin top into a project
truck we started to compile a list of things we wanted to do, and as the list
grew, we figured that removing the body would help, not to mention make taking
photos a lot easier. It has paid off, big time I think. But as the days tick by
and the list of things seems to grow instead of shrink, we are just hopin’ we
can pull this off.
02/03/2006 23:59
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