Ive been busy lately, almost too busy to post. Home for good now, as i quit my job due to safety reasons and dont plan on working out of town anymore. Hypothetically me and the misses thought it was doable, and although shes still tolerable with it and we both could do it, i dont know if i want to leave her here and if anything was to go wrong, i dont think i could live with myself not being here. That being said its time to go to "school" again and learn some skills that i can make money from here in the shop.
I finally got around to putting the JD squared tubing bender together. Since the heated floors mean i cant drill into them without an xray, which is worth it for a hoist but not for this at the moment, led me to start building a bracketed design that would use the 8X8 posts in the shop as main anchors... after humming and hawing about multiple ideas, i read out to rene knowing he had used one and owns one. Through some solid advice he said hydraulic is the way to go since it can then be mounted on a rolling stand, save me all the fabricating of a mounting system, and have way more variety im terms of tubing length that could be bent. I cannot fork out the cash for the JD conversion in which the 10 ton ram and mount alone, are 8-900$...
I know a cylinder would be the easiest to find as brand new they arent so expensive.. but the hydraulic system can get pricey. I found a Parker brand hydraulic pump used thats variable speed, and goes up to 3000PSI. Im sure it will be enough and im going to go take a look at it in the next day or two. My thoughts are mounting a lovejoy jaw coupling or maybe a pulley n belt if i need to dial the rpm in to a tighter range. Either way i have a couple electric motors laying around so why not try.
I gotta say, thing these BEEF. Its nice knowing i probably wont ever need another one, regardless of what i try and bend.. And heres the hydraulic pump im going to look at, and the coupler style i was thinking of using. He only wants a couple hundred bucks for it, and a reservoir shouldnt be too hard to make or buy. I did order the hydraulic adapter from JD and when that comes in i can go find a ram that will work with the coupler from them.
With my other free time right now ive been messing with the Tig welder quite a bit. Practicing on flat steel got easier and easier and i quickly had a ton of clutter hanging around the little fab table i have, and figured id make a wall rack with some 3/4 tube laying around. I watched some videos on how to fit tube without a notcher, and some good rules of thumb in term of determining throat size ect.. The amount of things you can learn some making a small shelf.. i tell ya! haha
I also managed to finally get the transmission pump in and finished of the case portion of the rebuild. Cleaned the station and layed out everything for the valve body. I ended up making some dowels out of some small round stock that i had laying around, and it worked well. The last little bit of the pump needed some taps around with the deadblow but seems to have seated well. The rebuild kit came with came with new washers for the 7 pump bolts, changed those out and got it stabbed at 18 ft lbs. Also got my ck5 hoodie and sticker in the mail.
