Yep, easily built, but I'd need thick wall square tubing which I don't have enough of. Also if one makes the head interchangable (with bolts), one can remove the 8" wheel and mount and replace it with a pneumatic impact chisel gun thing with a homemade foot for a planishing hammer. Been looking at those DIY designs too.
I get injured from staring at machinery so not worried about a few blood blisters my friend
You can pick up LED lights for that module I mentioned on Ebay.
Item number: 190098818188 is for a blue one but you can get white and other colors also. The little 194 bulbs that some clearance lights use are also available at the parts store or ebay.
My application for that part is emergency lights for the basement and shop. I have a commercial 12V E-light unit that I can just run some 18AWG bell wire from (fused) to power a bunch of those fixtures with LEDs in them at strategic locations. I hate it when the lights go out and that power tool is still spinning...
Remember electronic voltage regulators have to be derated by a factor of a 3 to 10 depending on how good your heatsink is if you do not have an "infinite heatsink" for them. Otherwise called a circulating oil bath....
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"Beam me up Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here..."
Made the hinged bed floor. With the lock installed (not show in the picture) I can keep my son's fingers away from the hot motor, the chain and the batteries, and still have access without having to remove the body.
Three coats of grey rustoleum primer out of opened quarts lying around. MDF absorbs so much paint I decided to waste primer lying around rather than have it absorb the new can of hammerfinish paint I just bought. In this picture you can see the grey hammer finish paint drying in the sun, hence the brush strokes. They go away once it's dry which is about 30-40 minutes tops.
Now, you're probably wondering why I put a top coat on top of the hammer-finish coat. The answer is simple... the hammer coat is incredibly tough to damage, and if the top coat is sprayed on top of the hammer coat while it's almost dry, but just wet enough that you can scratch it with your fingernail but not leave a fingerprint, the topcoat will also be fairly indestructable. I discovered this on another project and decided to apply the concept here. This blue wasn't my first choice but my son wouldn't let go of the two spray cans so it is what it is.
After I sprayed the two coats and they dried, and my son came back outside he was jumping in a circle chanting "Blue baby truck" repeatedly for about 5-6 minutes. He seems pleased.
Next is the lighting, installation of the new wiring harness, and installation of the bed floor, seat, and various other things. Getting there slowly.
A scrap sheet of aluminum, cut out for grill (give it a 68 look) plus doors for the headlights. Hit it with a palm sander for a custom finish look, mount with countersink screws. This way you have a 3-D look vs just painted on, hell your this far don't cut corners.
Some more prgress was made yesterday. I disassembled the entire car, and painted the chassis with rustoleum's hammer finish paint, grey, just because I had more than enough lying around. The paint is excellent for surfaces (particularly metal) where there are surface imperfections - welding beads that aren't ground too much, minor seams and stuff, a couple of mig balls stuck... etc.
Before I can make a grill, I had to decide what lights to use. We had discussions on this thread for several different choices, but I never got around to ordering anything for no reason other than I didn't get to it. Last week the "emergency light" I had installed in the basement finally died - circuit board failure - which is not suprising considering I plucked it off the curb many years ago - so I scavanged the light housings and chucked the rest. I made a simple metal support for the lights, like so:
And viola, instant headlights. I'm going to pick up 12V bulbs today to replace the 6V bulbs that are in there now and wire them in series, attaching them to the body harness connector with the throttle. Then all I need to buy are batteries.
Oh, and I had forgotten to paint the bottom of the MDF body so I did that last night as well, using the same grey hammer finish paint since I had the brush in my hand and the can open.
So today I will reassemble the car and order the batteries if I can get to it. Going to use sealed lead acid batteries designed for wheelchairs, since the ones I picked out fit into the allotted space and also they are deep discharge, so they won't permanently die by being run down to near zero.
here is a pic of the grill emblem for johns truck Fred.
it is 7 inches long and 2 3/4 inches high, with 3 mounting studs on the back.
i think it is a pickup grill emblem, cause it is about 1/2 the size of the heavy duty truck grill emblem i have on my truck. http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e261/tjctransport/emblem.jpg
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owner of way too many fords.
Last edited by tjc transport; 04-29-2007 at 07:17 PM.
Very cool, thank you! If it's overwhelming on the front of the truck because of the size of the headlights, I'll put it on the tailgate since there aren't any lights there yet, and I'll probably be doing something smaller back there eventually.
BTW, if those are the measurements, it's off a van grill which are larger than the pickup grill emblems. Not that it matters
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