Dimmwatts truck

Maths

almost finished piece. Need to fill some holes.

Cab comes off tomorrow
 
Made a bracket for the evap canister today so that I could make a table...

My table...See it?


It looks like a flat bed. I decided to move on and knock this out so I have a place to work on the cab. Its either this or roll the frame outside into the elements. It will also serve as a temporary bed, as I will likely run out of time to make a proper one.
 
Good move. I am regretting having rolled my chassis out into the elements.

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Broken Wagon said:
Good move. I am regretting having rolled my chassis out into the elements.

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Click to expand...

I did it on my last build. It sucked coming back to a flash rusted frame. I ended up using rust converter and paint. The finish resulting was less than ideal.

I thought you were coming by last week?
 
Ended up going to Anza Borrego with the wife. Spent Thursday morning prepping and packing, left Thursday eve. Check my build for a couple pictures.

Will try for this week one afternoon to stop by. I want to see them floors.

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Feeling sick the last few days. This is all I got done yesterday. Cut the boards for the top of the bed and moved the cab. Its nice having the chain winch to lift the body. I was able to do this by myself. For some reason, the cab looks much shorter now that its on the bed of the truck.

 
Hi Casey. I hope you get well quick, it sucks being sick. Yeah, When I built Floyd, I had access to an overhead Hoist which made it so much easier to lift the cab off and on about 50 times! Pivnic
 
Being sick is tough. I'm almost all better, but tired. This weekend I did a shop upgrade that was necessary. When I moved the cab, I had to remove one of my florescent lights as it was too low. It was already a bit dark in the garage. I fixed that on the cheap.

I built 2, 10 foot LED bars. each has 750 leds in the 5050 size. Powered by modified computer power supplies. They are warm white. I probably should have gone with daylight 4k color. I'll likely balance these out with another few strips of bright white leds.

Power supplies are modded by disconnecting the fans to reduce noise, jumpering switch signal wire to ground so its always on, and deleting all the other power wires. These are 320 watt switching supplies. I haven't measured, but if I use the led specs, I'm probably only pulling 12-14 amps at 12 volts. That's 144-168 watts per ten footer. For anyone else nerding out on this, I noticed something else that I could improve on but probably wont... I supplied the strips in the middle... at the supply, the voltage is 12.22, at the end of the bar, 5 feet away, I get anywhere from 11.5-11.8 volts. Ideal would be 12.22...This tells me the internal wires in the strip are too small and a portion of my current load is going up in heat across these wires. I could fix it by running wires from the supply out to each end of the strip, evening the voltage, possibly increasing light output and efficiency all in one shot.

Total cost for the 20 foot of light is $20 for 2 power supplies, and $40 in LED's so $60

I also did some work on the cab. More on that later today I hope.



 
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Scramboleer and Brokenwagon both stopped by yesterday. Fun to see you guys!

Starting to fit the panels for the last time. Floors are fit and ready to weld., front boxes need a bit of work yet. After finding that they didn't fit quite as good as I remembered. I noticed a bow in the bar that was tacked in to maintain the spread in the cab. I added another 2x2 to hold it flat. After that the boxes fit better, but still need some loving.




 
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It was fun!

I did some trimming, bending welding. Got the left box fit better last night.





Finally, the specialty nut for the transfer case output yoke came in. Got the driveshaft installed



front sway bar links installed


 
Next time I am there I want to measure that sway bar. Way beefier than my Waggy chassis front.

Hope the warm weather chases the sick bug away.

Duane

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Okay. Going to throw mine in the van tonight so it's there next time I stop by I can compare and see what it would involve.

Is the rear one as beefy too? The wagons are so topsey just by design. I was surprised at how little body roll I felt in your wagon.

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I used a roll bar from an Isuzu rodeo on the rear in my wagon. It's much stronger than the tj bar. The rodeo has a dana 44 as well and uses the same mounts.

On the front of my wagon is a softer than stock tj bar that consists of a 1 inch 36" long torsion bar and long pitman arms from a circle track car.
 
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I have been sick since the 3rd of march running 101+ every day. This project won't be making deadline.

Some final welding was done in between puking.


This one went for interior!
 
Hope you have been to the doctor. Man that's too long to be sick. Get well.

Duane

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i've seen the doctor twice. First time loaded me up with antibiotics that seemed to do the trick, a few days later I was on a plane. I'm sure my weak immune system didn't like that. I got the Flu the second time around. more meds from doc haven't seemed to move the needle.... Yesterday I resorted to some eastern medicine. A buddy of mine is a practitioner. He set me up with southern ban lan gen chong ji herbal tea. it seems to be working. I'm running 99.5 today and feel great ish in comparison.

Update 3/30, Somewhere in there, I picked up Pneumonia, AND the drugs to fix it. Day 1 of antibiotics round 2.
 
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This is an incredibly cool build! I just read through the whole thing. Can't wait to see the finished product.
 
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