47-55.1 55.1 S10 swap Gypsum

[joedoh]

slow slow slow progress! i did get the front end mounted and the hood lined up. its been unusually cold in the 4seasongarage™.



around christmas i bought a compressor, my old coleman powermate has been getting louder and really I have been asking a bunch of it with the almost non stop sun up to sun down plasma cutting I have been doing. it was an IR T30, and the guy said it was a 3ph motor wired 230 single phase and it had a black white red cord on it, the guillotine switch was missing. some 3ph motors can be wired this way, so i bought it.



unfortunately he was mistaken, the motor was a 3ph and couldnt be wired single phase, the single phase colored wires were a red herring, someone had just use whatever they had on hand. it was also missing the contactors and perssure/unloader setup. a $300 t30 is a good deal when it doesnt need a $550 motor and $200 in ancillary parts.

but TODAY. I found a gal listing just stuff after stuff on FBMP and saw a 10 minute old ad for a 17 gal compressor with a motor that fit the bill exactly, 5hp (I needed 3-4), 1785 rpm (needed 1750) 230v single phase. and it had contactor and all the missing parts I needed. kudos to the gal for posting the motor deets on the ad! $100!!!



nothing could prepare me for the size of that motor though!




I had to improvise getting it out, when I loaded the guy was helpful but at my house my wife and daughter were home so i just did it by myself.



of course it works great, so now i am thinking of just connecting it to my 80 gal tank and using it as a 97 gal setup. my wife will love it because when i forget the switch at night the coleman sounds like a helicopter landing in the basement.

more to come I promise!

[OutlawDrifter]

Turning lemons into lemonade!

[Rickysnickers]

Nice job Russ. Maybe I should have you start looking for a compressor for me

[Advanced Design]

Yeah, that was a nice score. Good find!

[joedoh]

the only thing i dont like about the control system is that it is a constant run, which is nice if you have 10 nailers plugged in running 8 hours. the way it works is it has an unloader valve that just unloads the head pressure and keeps spinning the pump, blowing air out the intakes. the on/off contactors have an unloader too but it pushes up the contacts to turn the motor off. the constant run just freewheels the pump till the pressure drops and turns the compressor heads back on.

so on one hand its less wear on the start windings and cools the heads down with the fan/flywheel spinning, but on the other i dont need it running all the time.

today i put the regulated output to the 80 gal tank on my coleman and that thing filled 97 gal in about 4 minutes! didnt even sweat. I dont know if i want to take apart a perfectly working machine so i think this is the way i will work it now and just take the t30 to the storage.

[dsraven]

i was gonna suggest to use thetank from the old compressor as extra storage and resell the 3 phase unit to help pay for a new pressure switch.

[dsraven]

you could lose some of the compressor noise by plumbing the air intake to the outside of the building. I have mine plumbed into the attic of my shop so most of the pump noise isn't in the same area as I am working. it makes quite a difference in noise (IR 80 gal 2 stage, 5 hp). you can hear it when outside but it is muffled by the enclosed area, attic insulation and the roof vents. i used, like, 3" or 4" pvc pipe with an s10 air box and filter on the end. it also keeps all the ambient sanding dust or grinding dust etc out of the compressor air pick up and allows cold air from the attic (in the winter, we have more winter than summer here) to help cool the compressor head and also cooler air has less moisture than the warm shop ai r so less moisture to drop out in the compressor tank. I have an electric auto drain connected to the shop lights so if the lights are on the auto drin is working. if the lights are off I'm not in the shop and the compressor is off anyway.
anyway, just a thought. how much air does your plasma use, typically?

[joedoh]

I think.... what i am going to do is make it needlessly complicated haha. i think what i am going to do is build a timer circuit that uses a pressure switch input so it will stay running freewheel for a minute or two after reaching the set pressure. it will cool the heads and stay running in case I am running the table non stop and it switches on again.


it was a gorgeous day in the 50s in the fourseasongarage® so i worked more on the front end. this is literally 9 pieces that had never been assembled together before, and some pats were bent like the grille. *LE SIGH*

there was a gap under the hood on the drivers side, I took care of that first



the passenger fender was all out of shape on the front edge though, and once i got it straight the bends in the grill didnt let me line up the corner. i used the kansas frame machine© to pull things around.



there we go.


one more push


annnnnnnnd zip zop zoobity bop




I didnt have all the speed nuts for the 54 grille, so some were bolt and nut and some were nothing, because without the speed nuts some were just impossible to reach. its all together though, ready for the bed maybe tomorrow.

[joedoh]

on the compressor I got it working better, but i think the pilot valve spring is worn out, it only drops 2-3psi before coming back on. I followed the youtube procedure to reset the on psi and set it to 90, which should shut off at 120. but it turns on at 117 and off at 120.

i wanted the running boards on before setting the bed height. if you get the running board in the right position, it will show the exact right height of the bed, no constant fiddling or adjusting. I had short board but only long 54 aprons, i thought maybe I could put them on since I didnt have the fenders on yet, but it hit the tire.




so choppy choppy. I will make it nice later.



marked for the bed height and will mount the bed tomorrow.

[joedoh]

beds on, got distracted with all the scrap yesterday so nothing else done. bed has a whomp in the drivers top rail so its twisted pretty good. the dr rear corner looks high from the rear and low from the front, really wacky!

please be like everyone i sent the picture to and mention the bondo in the fender because its clearly the most important thing. probably 30 year old bondo haha. and then look at how centered the rear wheel is, i like these ext cabs that shorten up to 116.5.

[dsraven]

what is that yelloe thing in the middle of all that pinky stuff? is that....bondo?
nice wheel placement. maybe you have a little work ahead of you with the box rail, but I am confident you will get'er done.

[burger]

Someone has an advanced degree in bend-geneering!

[joedoh]

haha i am sorta-fit certified!

[oldman3]

Russ, moving right along and looking good...Jim

[Advanced Design]

Originally Posted by joedoh

please be like everyone i sent the picture to and mention the bondo in the fender because its clearly the most important thing. probably 30 year old bondo haha. and then look at how centered the rear wheel is, i like these ext cabs that shorten up to 116.5.

Your comment about the bonds is the best chuckle I’ve had today!

Wheel is centered up very nicely.

[joedoh]

haha I sent the picture to firends

oh man thats a lot of bondo

are you going to grind out all that bondo?

if the fender has that much bondo imagine what the rest of the truck looks like!

heh heh heh look at that bondo!

and so on. i refrained from personal attacks in responses but it took the will of the warrior! the other fender is worse! the bondo has already cracked and started falling out! imagine the comments if i sent that picture.

[dsraven]

you just have to send tyhem a response that says

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[joedoh]

yeah its a point of contention among people who have never touched a grinder what you should do with that much bondo. I think I will just go take a picture of their projects with all the boxes of crap stacked on them, and next time just reply with that.

fixed the long apron by subtraction of this piece



new welder learner on sheetmetal. it may not have a low enough setting.




fits well though



switched gears for the brakes and column. sun going down so only a few things like scraping the insulation and schmutz off the firewall.




started modifying the brake pedal bracket



more in second post

[joedoh]

this is a 54 but you still have to modify the right side of the bracket for how the dash slopes down around the key area




test it, and when it fits flat against the firewall and up against the bottom of the dash you mark it with a marker through the booster holes.





once you have your marks, measure UP one inch and make your marks again. this is because the 5 degree booster plate will rotate the mount up the firewall about that much. I guess I didnt take a pic of that yet, I will tomorrow. the sun was going down.

[joedoh]

i guess i didnt take as many pictures as I thought but once you have the underdash bracket trimmed and set at the bottom of the dash, i use a pair of self tapping screws to hold it there and bolt the booster plate to the bracket, this will hold it in the correct position and you can tack the booster plate in place on the firewall.

next is the steering column, I used to cut the original lower closeout off the column and make something new to close up the hole but i found that the original closeout could be rotated to fit the firewall correctly. just grind the closeout at the weld until its free, then spin it up the column a bit after grinding the weld off.




then I move the column in about an inch, it doesnt sound like a lot but it makes a big difference, i drill new holes and put some 7/16" bolts in. I dont have a picture of it, I really remember taking one, but i will get one. the angle of the column is shallower (more horizontal) which is nice because that helps hide all the wiring and schmutz that hangs around on the original columns. it means you need a new hole though, i use a 3" hole saw and it helps to open the original column hole too if you have a shifter column. this picture is before screwing the lower closeout down.






more to come. the sun was really beating on the fourseasongarage™ today so i will get an early start tomorrow. the morning has been like most mornings lately, with kit stuff. Its harder and harder to keep things in stock but my welder (the guy and the new welder both) has really been kicking ass, I think he is down to 55min on kit welding. It takes me 2 hrs to do one! one more thing about the pedal. I get a lot of comments that its too high, in my experience its exactly right, the pedal falls right on the ball of my foot. one thing that makes it look high is there is no carpet or underlayment.

[joedoh]

spring has sprunk, i need to get drunk. ~11 acres to mow every other week. luckily i picked up this BMF (big mower fun what did you think I meant?)



best thing beside diesel is the no-jack sharpening.





it tamed the almost 4 acre property in FORTY MINUTES including the cities portion. last year this took two hours on my hustler.




the combination of almost 2 more feet of mower deck width and at least 5mph faster. i say at least because it has a suspension seat with at least 7 inches of travel, so where last year my 8mph hustler was relegated to 2-3mph because of the rough ground, this just breezed along at 10mph no matter the bumps. I had an overheating problem the first time i used it, the engine didnt overheat just the pto shut off with a special switch it has for coolant temp. but the radiator was full of mud dauber nests so i washed it and blew through it and added 15oz of diesel water wetter and it ran 3 hours today and no hiccups in 8 acres. I did the acre here with my hustler after servicing it.

more truck work soon i promise

[OutlawDrifter]

Russ, back in the day when I sold C&CE John Deere equipment, we would have called that a WAM (if it had wings) (Wide Area Mower). Good work my friend, cutting down mowing time is always a good thing! I mow 3 acres with an X724 all-wheel-steer with a 62" deck. My previous zero turn turned out a similar mow time with a 54" deck and much more uncomfortable ride.

[8man]

Haha, a man has to have his entertainment!

[28TudorAZ]

Looking great. That bondo needs a nice coat of brown over it.

[joedoh]

Originally Posted by 28TudorAZ

That bondo needs a nice coat of brown over it.

so one thing i didnt do when i made the kit adjustable was change the front bumper mount. the original brackets have a good range of adjustment by flipping over but i got the occasional questions that made me think i needed something different. my thumbnail requirements were to have full adjustment for all cab heights, support tucked or untucked applications, fit bent original stuff, and most importantly not change the cost or the packaging of the kit. the last one is a doozy, not so much the cost part because i am a rockstar on budgets, but the packaging part because I knew from my experience making bumper brackets that they were all longer than the 12" of the boxes i use.

I started by making a folding mount for the end of the frame, i dont like combining this mount with the front clip mount like every other kit maker because even though its easier to iinstall, it also locks the bumper parts to the front clip (other kits also reuse the bolts in the steering box!) and thats a recipe for disaster, if you hit something with the bumper like a parking block you can throw the alignment of your front end out of whack.




they reuse two (or three) existing bolt holes to mount solidly to the frame, of course i welded them though. the slotted holes allow the up/down for different cab heights.

next the legs, they are only 8" and 10.5" long so they fit in the box but there are two each, so you can get the needed 12-18" in length by bolting them together. this also provides the adjustment for in out, left right, and tilting for bent parts. dont mind my 4" long bolts haha they are made to use 1/2" long 1/2" carriage bolts to lock them in but I didnt have any on hand.



the slots in the frame mount are made for a 1/2 carriage bolt too. easy peasy, no wrench needed on the back side!



alles güt! well except the passenger leg, I ran out of bolts even 4" ones and it was raining in the fourseasongarage™



so tomorrow i will get the right bolts and weld up my bend solts and that is one more box checked on the old gypsum 54.