CK5
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Zeus

I'm trying to drink enough coffee and smoke enough doobies :smokin2: to motivate myself to go out there and gargle grinding dust in 95° heat all day again. I wish I had an air compressor here. I reaaallly miss using the plasma cutter for work like this. Makes things go by soooo much faster and easier. My poor grinder is takin it in the ass during this project. I am doing EVERYTHING with just my welder and a 4.5" Dewalt grinder- no torch, chop saw, air compressor, or bandsaw.. Flap discs, cutoff wheels and grinding wheels for dayz. Sometimes the grinder gets so hot that I can't hold onto it, even with gloves on, and I have hands used to a life time of heat and welding abuse.. :O

DeWalt (metal gear housing models only) and Metabo grinders are about the only ones worth spending money on. I would call DeWalt the Toyota truck of 4.5 grinders and Metabo the Land Rovers.

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So, thats my hand after doing this for a week+, with the grinder only. 'Sustained fire' from sparks off a cutt-off or grinding wheel, in one spot, will burn a hole through mechanix gloves with a quickness. :O So then you have a hole in your glove, and a heat blister on your knuckle. Then, when your laying on your back, under the truck, leaning on the drive shaft, one hand on the ground for support, the other stuffed up in the frame, trying to tack a part that you can't even twist my neck around to see....and a spark/bit of slag hits that open hole, and just kicks it there...sizzle popping the blister 'cause you cant extract your hand fast enough.....ahhh! Obnoxious.

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Yep, I cut that out with a 4.5" cutt off wheel.
 
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Ha!...I guess I just saw the office part, I had called ahead and they put my parts on the will call shelf....I didnt know there was a 'grocery store' part...dammit. I would have liked to see that. Although...I prolly would have spent grocery money on shock tabs or some other such nonsense. :eek1::haha::haha:


yes outside the office are a bunch or racks full of goodies. I would bet you would come home with some "cool tabs" at the very least :D



I'm trying to drink enough coffee and smoke enough doobies :smokin2: to motivate myself to go out there and gargle grinding dust in 95° heat all day again.

I spent 10 hours yesterday welding and grinding in that heat too. Just plain stupid but I had to get a job finished.

PS- Get some new gloves :flipoff7:
 
As I sit here here behind the wheel just staring at stuff and thinking, another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. The instrument cluster, a.c./heater controls, radio etc from an 03-04ish Silverado, mounted into the current dash, along with some sheet metal work, upholstered panels and a few other cool ideas, and I have a custom dash. I learned quite a bit working on the interior of the ultra4 car...the dooder I was working with was a goddamn wizard with sheet metal. I might be able to conjure up somethin pretty badass if I think about it long enough.
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I keep liking this build more and more, interested to see how you integrate the dash controls. [emoji122]
 
Sweet idea.

Theres a picture somewhere on this form of a guy that got most of a 96 interior into his.

Although, I like the custom idea, and just getting the gauge pod to integrate into a classic looking dash.

Excited to see where you go with this.
 
This cluster is in a k5 on a duramax chassis. The owner goes by "durachase1" on Instagram. I don't know how I feel about its execution yet.

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Maybe this will spark some ideas
 
Hmmm...Interesting idea on that duramax thing, but ugly as ball sack. :eek1:

There will be none of the old dash in whatever I create. It will be all me, from pillar to pillar. I folded the old dash in about 4 pieces trying to get it out, (it mad me mad..so I hulk smashed it) and I've had some idea's whirling around in the back of my head since seeing DIY4x's dash, so this is a good a time as any to get down on some sheet metal. I want to make it resemble the old school dash, but it certainly won't be made of anything but steel (frame) and aluminum (skins/panels), plus whatever sort of padding/upholstery/covering I go with.

I hope to achieve a mix 'look' of the stock '90 interior, 03-04 Silverado interior and a bit of MRAP interior.

This is very much a themed build. It will become more obvious later. ;)
 
Interior sounds cool man.

I feel your pain on the grinder thing and totally agree on the grinder choices. Big time. I have killed lesser grinders in a day. Blows my mind guys with HF grinders that last more than a day. I guess I'm hard on grinders.

Pretty had ass though to show what one can do without all sorts of fancy tools
 
Cooked up a engine cross-member today as well. 2x2x.250 wall cause I had about 10' of it. The bottom piece is 2x3x.250'. As shown in pictures, it's about 75% done. Can't finish it 100% till I pull the motor again, so I can reach the rest of it to weld and add braces/gussets etc. Also going to notch the crossmember just a bit, directly under the pan, for a bit more clearance and to even the gap from front to back.

You can also see that the engine sits low on the passenger side. :angry1: I only discovered that when I was laying underneath it on a creeper this morning, staring at stuff under there. It took me forever to figure out wtf was going on. Long story short, one of the body mounts on the cab is in pretty sorry shape, making that corner sag a bit. I was using body lines etc to sight off of and take angle measurements from. It was almost impossible to see from the front, without the engine cross-member there too.

Two lessons...never trust your body mounts and always trust in the value of rolling around under your truck on a creeper, just staring and looking and thinking. I purposefully left the important parts of the mount tacked together, in case something like this happened. Just have to cut 4 tacks and raise it up 1/2" or so.

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Whatever butthole at GM that cooked up the plans for this POS, needs tasered in the gooch.
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The good stuff- 8.1/400/205 :woot:
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Get yourself one of these, I have found they are much more accurate than the little needles protractors and are still pretty cheap...

Angle Cube

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I got one and love that little sucker .

can set your own zero point then use as regular .

so even if floor / work area is unlevel . zero it to that plane and use as normal .
 
Neat little tool for sure. Setting your own zero point is a cool feature. Craftsman has a few interesting digital levels/angel finders too. I used to have one that had a laser pointer in it too, that was pretty handy.

Although, I already have a normal dial/needle angle finder that works just fine...if you pull angles from the right places. :doah:

Get yourself one of these, I have found they are much more accurate than the little needles protractors and are still pretty cheap...

Angle Cube

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I got one and love that little sucker .

can set your own zero point then use as regular .

so even if floor / work area is unlevel . zero it to that plane and use as normal .
 
Also...I love my lincoln welder. I'll never, ever own a miller product. Years of using both and I prefer the lincoln machines, by a mile.

Except for the godamn gun they put on my powermig 200. I hate THAT thing with a passion. Big ole fat, heavy, huge, long, impossible to maneuver in tight space, impossible to see around poor design...like something that should be on a 300amp+ machine, not a 200amp one. Feels like I'm holding onto a sledge hammer handle. One day when I get rich, I'm going to get one of the super bling Bernard mig guns with a swiveling neck.

http://www.bernardwelds.com/
 
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