2015.04.15 - UPDATE! - ANOTHER SNOW DAY...!!!!
Wow... No matter how hard I try to shake the winter blues this year, mother nature keeps putting the smack down. Freezing rain and snow fell last night but I was determined not to quit.
I went out in the garage and fired up the heater and made a small amount of "symbolic progress"... and it made me feel better.
Step 1: Clean the space...
It's been a long break since mid-January, and the shop was a mess with boxes, sloppy snow and salt piles and everything just getting left all over the place. I spent a couple of hours just getting into that "zen space" of carefully cleaning and putting tools away properly and removing all non-essential items out of my workspace.
Even the workbench got cleaned off!
The rear back-half project was just about finished up after Christmas, but there were still a few vertical fish-plates that had never been fit-up and welded, so I decided to just knock that one out first.
....as you can see, I'm still standing in a few random water puddles from the crummy weather, but this is the overall "scene" I was performing in last night!
Got the frames done, and now I can start getting them into final position on the truck and burn them in on both sides. From there I can reinstall the rear axle and links and get back to the ORIGINAL project..... which was fitting up the rear ORIs and trying to get 16" of travel without hitting the frame!!

BONUS MATERIAL:
My buddy invited me back to his machine shop last week to play with the lathe again, and we started to work on the outrigger pieces that will ultimately "seat" into those tapered slugs I've shown you before.
Here's how it is starting to look...
And assembled:
Lather......Rinse......Repeat........ 9 more times and we'll be done!
Just to set the record straight, the weather forecast for this weekend is supposed to be EPIC.... sunny and mid-60s on both Saturday and Sunday. I've already campaigned (successfully I might add!) to work on "Honey Do's" on Saturday in exchange for a full-day in the workshop on Sunday!!!
It's been a LONG time since I've been able to roll-up both garage doors and enjoy the sunshine while I work.... the positive psychological effect this will have on my motivation can not be overstated. I am REALLY looking forward to it.
-G