Howdy Fellers,
What a day Saturday was. Talked about a mix! Some really good bits mixed with some really bad points. Here's the story. Sorry if I get a little long.
Wilber the '57 half ton finally came home Saturday. Wish I could say that all went well, but it didn't.
It all started when I had to get Preston the '51 Hamilton built half ton off of the car hauling trailer. He had to get towed home from work after I accidentally ran him out of gas thanks to a malfunctioning gas gage. Just under a half a tank isn't a half a tank it's an empty tank. IT only took a couple hours to figure out that the tank was empty... After dumping a couple gallons in the tank, and a few cranks, fuel was flowing again. But Preston refused to start. Fuel started to hemorrhaging out of the carb now. I figured this was not good, so swapped carbs. After that, no matter what I did, the most I could get out of him was a weak cough. It made absolutely no difference at all what I did. Pour gas down the carb, cough. Don't pour gas down the carb, cough Always just enough to cause the starter to disengage. After half a day of nothing but coughs, I gave up, rounded up some friends and we got him up on the car hauling trailer.
I live on something of a busy street so decided that rather than blocking the street with the trailer and tow vehicle while we unloaded Preston, we would unload him a bit out into the street but parallel to the curb and push him into possession when the rear bumper of the 02 Ford sport trac. Things were progressing well when suddenly I heard a "scrunch". The sport track's left rear quarter panel/wheel well became entangled with Preston's bumper. Extricating the Ford resulted in about a 3 inch rip in the ford's fiberglass and quite a bit of Preston's paint now residing on the Ford. GGGUURR!!!!!!!
Another try and Preston was finally resting comfortable in the driveway with his nose pointing toward the garage all ready for his upcoming engine change pre-op.
Now it was time to go get Wilbur the '57 Transtar out of another friend's (Don) yard where he has resided for over a year. (don't ask... Why Wilbur had to live there is another LLLOOONNNGG story and not pleasant) So my bud Jason (who is restoring a '52 2R-5) and I set out to get Wilbur. We arrived just fine with the empty trailer and got things lined up so we could roll Wilbur out from behind garage, make a quarter turn to the right and roll him up on the trailer. Now understand that Wilbur doesn't run, so he has to be pushed and pulled around.
We were able to pull Wilbur out from behind the garage with no problem using Don's Chevy van and a tow strap. How Wilbur's rear tires sank into the ground about an inch while his fronts stayed right on top is a mystery to me... We got him lined up with the trailer and using Don's own personal fork lift, we commenced to push Wilbur onto the trailer. Everything was going GREAT! Perhaps that should have been my first warning that something was about to go wrong...
I was in the cab while he was being pushed onto the trailer to come home. I felt the rear wheels clear the ramp and mashed on the brake to stop his forward progress. Nothing! In fact, he was picking on speed as the trailer was actually sitting nose down now. I tried to yank him into gear but remembered that I had disconnected the linkage as it is so far out of adjustment, I couldn't get him out of gear with the linkage attached. Let out on the clutch... Nothing. He was set to be in neutral by moving the "ears" from underneath so he could be moved around. Yanked on the parking break. He slowed a bit; actually it was more like he just didn't pick up any more speed. Then I felt a thud as his front wheels jumped over the edge of the trailer and the frame settled on to the front of the trailer. I also herd a rather sickening crunch sound as Wilbur's drivers side fender smacked into the tailgate of my 02 Ford Explorer. To make a long story short, an hour later and thanks to the help of Don's fork lift, Wilbur was back on the trailer and cinched down.
After all the trouble outlined about, Wilber came home riding the trailer just fine and now sits atop the trailer in front of my house in all his sad, faded glory for all the world to see.
I don't want to talk about the condition of what used to be the sport track's tailgate. Suffice it to say that what is there is not pretty. There's a lesson here. If you are loading up a vehicle that can't be stopped, be real sure to have a plan "B" in place to get it stopped.
Sunday was a bit better as I dug through my stash of parts, selected the 4 best fenders (yes, I picked one for each corner. LOL) to replace the ones on Wilbur and went over to Don's house to weld up the stress cracks that they had in them. Now Don has a little buzz box MIG machine (20% duty cycle). This was the first time I've ever MIGed sheet metal, All my sheet metal welding was done while in the Air Force using either oxy-acet for support equipment or TIG for aircraft parts. All my MIG experience was in welding heavy rail road car parts. So, this was to be my first experience in MIGing thin, rusty stuff. I actually made some pretty good welds over all. Guess it's like they say, once you have it down, you never really loose it. then again, maybe 10+ years of being a weldor helped even if I never MIGed sheet metal before.
Glenn