wills and ways

A day about the letter "t"... Tuesday, Terry, Trunnions

Today Terry came up to help me replace trunnion bolts. Now, if you don't know what trunnions are, well, you're in good company. The trunnion is the probably the most important part of an entire dump truck. It is a steel rod as thick as your ankle and it supports the entire business end of the truck: all the weight the rig labors to carry is transfered thru the trunnion to the back wheels--all 8 of them.

Holding the trunnion to the truck is the trunnion cap which is, in turn, secured by 8 bolts--grade 8, 7/8's thick times 4" long.

First getting the old ones out. No way to unbolts them. They've been permanently rusted, fused, and frozen together for many years. They've gotta come off with the oxyacetylene torch. Problem is it's very cramped quarters down there in trunnion territory and when you've got a torch going and sparks are flying it's guaranteed that they're going to find away to the place you don't want them. In my case today it was my nostril and my neck and my ear and up my shirt sleeve. Not all at once, mind you--separate events. Separate sets of cursing and trying to wriggle myself out fast from under the truck to get at what's on fire and burning against skin.

Got the bolts off, Terry shows up and we get to work. The replacement bolts, shiny and new in the box, are supposed to be torqued to 1200 ft lbs. So guess how you put 1200 pounds of force on a bolt wriggling around under a truck axle. The pro's have an expensive 1" drive air wrench (that's not me). We did it with a 10 ft piece of pipe and some easy Math. 120 pounds of force 10 ft out on the end of a wrench extension equals 1200 ft pounds.

Tomorrow I'll fabricate the frame rail reinforcement and bolt it up. Then Dr. Brown will be ready to go to town. Or go down the road to haul the Sea Mule section back down to the bottom.

fixing Dr. Brown

So, those who know me have most likely heard the story about me doing a wheelie in the Mack dump truck trying to carry a Sea Mule hull section up my mtn. road. That was last autumn and now it's time to fix the damage I did to this truck, named Dr. Brown.

I cracked the frame rail. All the way top to bottom and stretched out the trunnion cap bolts (one even popped off). It's a miracle the truck kept his rear end under him at all.

After bringing the truck over to the shop, I stripped everything off the frame that was in harm's way. Then tacked up a bit of weld just to hold the frame crack tight together. Cautiously raising the dump bed, I put some daylight on things. Hmmn, I think I can fix this.

Ground out the crack, preheated the area with the torch and did some vertical welding with 7018 rod. Not pretty, but a sound weld. I ground it flat and next will be bolting a reinforcing plate 1/4" x 9" x 20" and 10 flanged grade 8 1/2"bolts.

Last fall, when this happened one could have observed me standing with my mouth open making low groaning sounds. I thought I had ruined the truck for sure. Now the sound you'd hear is me whistling. Two different sides of looking at the same event and two different sounds.

there when you need it

Budd nuts. Too much wise crack potential to even go there. But, really, budd nuts, budd lug nuts. These are the specialized nuts that hold on dual truck tires on, say, a dump truck. For a truck mechanic, this is as easy as buttering toast and is done as often. To me, it's new stuff.

I'm starting my fixing-the-Mack-frame project by first taking off the tires on one side. Easy. Sure. I stare at the wheel...how do I get those big nuts off there? Big and deeply recessed.

I begin searching and experimenting with tools. Some won't reach, and those that do, well, they don't have near the beefiness needed to get those lug nuts to budge.

I get a breaker bar, a long six footer that I got from some where. It's got a unusual end on it, but it aughta do some damage. Then I see that I need an extension on the socket. Hmmn, there's this funny extension that I got from somewhere and threw in the scrap iron bin.

Retrieving it, I come back and begin staring at the two pieces in my hand. Then I realize the odd breaker bar end goes perfectly in the extension. Then I see that the extension isn't just an extension--the end of it is exactly sized for the lug nuts. I'm in business.

Slipping a 4 ft pipe over the 6 ft breaker bar, climbing up on the dump truck side and jumping up and down on the cheater bar (10 ft out and 150 lbs of me = 1500 ft lbs of torque on the lug nuts) and they squeal in protesting movement.

Without this special tool there would have been absolutely no way I could have gotten the wheels off. And then I remembered where I got that special tool: in the old garage of the house we bought in Walla Walla, Washington. I had kept this tool, even though I had no idea what it was for. About ten years I've had it, and tripped over it, and moved it around when it was in the way. Not knowing what it was for, but just that it must have been for something therefore I was going to keep it.

And, now it redeemed itself. I'm thinking about all the other things, and experiences, that, at the time, meant little to nothing but now were the keystone for something else. You never know. A smile, a rain storm, a chosen other way, a tool and it makes all the difference...as Frost pointed out much better than I.

I wonder what events and things in my here-and-now will be key for later chapter in my life. I try to keep my eyes and heart open wider not to miss it.

not not only tires get changed

Good news; bad news. Fortunately, that's usually the case. I picked up my neighbors tire...big slit in the side wall (didn't notice this until I had muscled it all the way up into the truck). Then I went to my friend's ranch to retrieve his tire and the same thing. Hmmn, Martin, do ya think there might be a reason 500 dollar tires are lying out in a field? So two for two on the tires.

But then the good news. I went on to the tire store and they had found 2 used (50% tread) tires for $125 a piece. I bought them.

simply changing a tire

I need to get my road graded so that I can drag the back hull section from where it lays on the road side (If you are not familiar with why part of my boat would be laying on the side of the road, see blog entry about popping a wheelie).

Problem is I have one tire that is flat and 1 tire that is in such bad shape I cannot fathom how it even holds air. Time to change the tire.

I call up Les Schwab and find out that a new tire is going to cost me 510 dollars. One tire. New rubber all the way around my grader would be 3 thousand bucks. I think I'll scrounge around for what I can find. For starters, my neighbor has a tire he'll give me. It's a 14.9 x 24 instead of my 13 .00 x 24, but beggars can't be choosers as gramma used to say, so I'll use it as it's really only 2 inches bigger in cross section. The first number is a measurement of the circumference and the cross section of the tire and the second number refers to the diameter of the wheel rim.

I get the grader jacked up and on blocks, persuade the wheel nuts to loosen up and, with a big Kung Fu kick, get the wheel off the grader. But, watch out! This wheel is so heavy that if it tips over, I won't be able to get it back up. I carefully roll it away. Not sure how I'll get the wheel up into the pick up for the ride to the tire store.

open to the light of day

I decided that I wasn't going to take the tank to Chuck, the welder, on the trailer. No title, no license plate, no brake lights. Besides, I wanted to cut the tank open, see what was inside, and clean it up with a wire brush.

I rolled out the cutting torch, scribed a cut line all the way around the tank with white chalk. Even though I knew that this was only a water tank, it still always makes me nervous when I apply the torch to the tank sides. There's that moment of apprehension when the torch melts through and the shower of sparks fills the dark tank interior. Round the tank I went--12 ft in all--saving the last 2 inches at the top so I could be out of harm's way when one 1000 lb hunk of metal became two halves.

Ugh. Looking inside, I found a bottom covered in muck and a dead rat. I climbed in armed with a garden hose and cleaned things up and out. I'll wire brush the rust and paint off and then figure out how to load the tank halves in my truck to take to Chuck's.

fuel tanks

Today I drug home a 1200 gallon tank. Using a chain winch, I was able to pull it up top of a 20 ft. trailer pretty easily. The trailer is an ugly looking thing that I picked up for a hundred bucks. In a former life it was a camper trailer--who knows where all it traveled to--but then spent lots of years sitting in an orchard as cheap housing for migrant workers over by Cashmere. A front-end loader crushed the camper and I got the trailer frame.

It worked great hauling the tank home despite the 1,000 lbs or so load. Some day I'll have to sandblast and paint the frame, wire it for lights and get a vehicle license for it.

So what I'll do is cut three feet off each end of the tank, put the finished end down (like a cup) weld baffles inside so the fuel doesn't slosh around and then weld a top on (like a lid). The factory seams will be down, where any leaks would be, and our new welds will be on the top, where leaking would be less likely. Still, even with this safe guard, I'm going to have someone else do the welding. I've got a friend, Chuck, who's been welding all his life, who said he'd be glad to help. He also has both a MIG welder as well as a plasma cutter.

The tank is perfect for this: it never had fuel in it, so explosions when cutting won't be an issue, and it is very heavy gauge at 3/16th of an inch.

Three feet of tank at 45" in dia. comes out to about 250 gallons. Minus 10% for air space and that makes it very close to the original Sea Mule tank size of 220 gallons. And, that's two tanks at 220 gallons, by the way, as there is one tank in each hull for each of the two engines.
I'm trying not to think about what it will cost to fuel up....