Ladies and Gentlemen,

Well, alot of us have a long weekend. Here in sunny New Mexico the weather has been fantastic and I've made good progress.

After my recent success with fabricating the rear bed sill on installing the stake pockets on my truck I decided to see what could be done with the tailgaite. The top and lower rails of my tailgate are pretty well hammered, the middles section isn't too bad so I decided I'd cut the center out, fabricate a new frame for it and weld it all back together.

So far, so good. I hope to have some pics to post of the finished tailgate by the first of the week, andyes, in keeping to my tightwad roots I don't have alot of cash invested in this.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! and I hope that everyone else has similar successes with whatever the task at hand is.

Bobby

 

Fab-Tastic
Piece-by-piece, it comes together.

 

Gotta love a long weekend with good weather.

 

Heck, up here it's been a balmy high 40's, and I'm taking big advantage of it by cleaning out my garage and putting up the rest of my OSB. Slowly making room for the project.

 

Tue, Wed, Thurs we had a N'Easter blast the coast and that brought cold, heavy winds and rain here. It cleared up yesterday afternoon about the time we sat down for dinner. Today the sun came out and warmed everything up to the low 70s. We decided to go test drive a new Solstice since it has risen to the top of our car to race next season but we hadn't actually sat in one to see if it had sufficient room for me and my helmet and to see what Donna thought about how it handled. We want to get a GXP, but settled on driving a base model. The dealer had just gotten in a GXP, but they didn't want to put any miles on it.
When we got back this afternoon we moved Gracie into her new home!!!! That move went pretty smoothly considering we had to tow and push her in since all her wiring has been removed, and not yet completely replaced. I wasted no time in starting in on her as soon as she was settled in. The next two days will be spent bonding, both figuratively and with the MIG since I cut out one of the rear door hinge pockets to repair it. Evidently the pass side rear door was sprung some time in her past which ripped and distorted the hinge mounts in the door post,. Someone tried to repair it but just made it worse, so I am cutting out the damaged areas and replacing it with new straight metal. After that I will need to cut open the center inside of the door to be able to straighten the outside skin and align the doors with even gaps all around.
One semi catastrophy tho. Sometime during Tues-Wed storm a 2" diameter limb fell out of the tree next to where Gracie was parked, not quite missing her. It missed the body and all, but just caught the pass side taillight breaking the housing and smashing one of my glass bluedots. Now I need to find another taillight and lens.

 

AX, Finally got her indoors huh? That is awesome news!!! God for you. Bummer about the tailight. Aren't lens hard to come by? Blue dots are easy to find.
I don't know if you've ever looked for panel lens here but you might give it a shot;
http://www.taillightking.com/

I continued on my tailgate fabrication. I had a set-back. I had welded the bottom rail on last night. Well, today I noticed that I didn't have it in the right place...ugh. I was able to cut almost all the way through the welds and tweak it to where it needed to be and reweld it. That's about when I noticed that I was almost out of shiled gas...ugh.

I shifted gears and decided that I would work on fabricating a pair of spring pin latches (similar to the 3rd item down in this link) http://www.wow-products.com/Merchant...gory_Code=TGLS
Natuarlly I'm too tight to pay $90 for a pair of these. I'm making my own. I got one completely assembled. Tommorrow I will fab the other one and install them in the top rail and hopefully attach the top rail to the tailgate (if I can swipe my brother-in-laws shield gas)

I've been taking pics. Hopefully I can get them all uploaded on Monday.

Life is good!
Bobby

 

Was going to just repair the hinge pocket in the door post. After fabbing the repair piece I decided to bite the bullet and replace the entire support structure, so I drilled out the spot welds removed what was left and fabbed a new piece. That gave me access to the entire inside of the door post. I found a PO decided to insulate the entire body with foil backed stuff that looks like felt rug padding. That wasn't bad, but he decided to toss his small scraps in under the taillight where they soaked water and plugged the drain holes causing the only rust I've found so far. I cleaned out the smelly moldy sh**, wire brushed all the surface rust and gave it a coat of rust converter. Tomorrow I'll hit it with some paint before plug welding in the new support and covering it all over. Should have some pics to post of the work then.

 

Well, today I was able to swipe my brother-in-laws bottle of shield gas and continue welding on my tailgate. I made some pretty good progress until late this afternoon when I got sloppy and managed to grind the tip of a knuckle off. Thats a sure sign to clean up and call it a day.

I only managed to fabricate one of my spring latch pins. Its going to work pretty good. Maybe this week I can get the other one fabbed and be able to install them next weekend.

I should be able to share some pics in the next day or two also

Bobby

 

You're moving right along, Bobby. Dunno about you, but up here mid-week is due to turn NASTY. Guess we got spoiled with the mild Fall, eh?

 

Booby,

..."when I got sloppy and managed to grind the tip of a knuckle off. Thats a sure sign to clean up and call it a day"....

I feel your pain.....actually that's my pain...I did pretty much the same thing today....hit the tip of one of my fingers with the grinder - the edge of it. Took a nice gouge out...then hit the very same darned spot a minute later later. That's the one that got the blood flowing...

(Point of this reply? - Misery loves company)

 

it's been great weather here in tn,got all the leaves out of the yard,that took two day's(big yard ).also got the new roof on the old part of my building.

 

I got in three good days of beautiful weather working on the front sheet metal. It's supposed to rain tomorrow.

I am nursing a rosy "smile" on my wrist where the angle grinder got me.

I didn't clean anything up. Just closed the door.

What a club we got going here!

 

That's a good way to do it...just leave peacefully.
I usually throw a fit and want to break something.

 

Maybe its a conspiracy or something...
..."when good angle grinder go bad" or something along those lines.

I feel better knowing I'm not the only one

Bobby

 

Nice weather here in OK. Rolled my cab outside on the drive way on my home made dolly and started removing the paint with a angle grinder and wire wheel works real good but sure is noisey. Got lots of nosey neighbors though. but they sure like my truck.