You know those random projects? The ones you did when the earth was still cooling, and you were hiding in a cave to keep from getting picked off by a pterodactyl. Or, a project where all the photos were lost but you just can’t let it go. Or the time you started something, with full intentions of completing it, but then… Well you get the idea.
This would be the home for all those disjointed, dysfunctional and disregarded, but in my head still relevant projects.
We’ll start this story at the peak of the grunge era. Back when the General Motors EV1 was just a concept car, I was in high school. Apparently, I impressed someone enough to be put in the school’s robotics class... Yes, I know this has nothing to do with robotics but stick with me.
So anyhow, for the second semester, we were allowed to pick our own project. With 25 bucks to work with and a donated nonrunning electric forklift, I was determined to build an electric car. How hard could it be?
Pretty fancy looking? I know, don’t get jealous just yet.
I found out quickly that the donor forklift was put out of commission because one of the motor bearings failed and severely damaged the commutator.
Step one: Figure out how to rebuild the motor. This actually came in pretty handy, as I spent two summers during college working for a motor shop where we rebuilt motors up to 10,000 hp.
Step two: Attach axle assembly to custom frame and figure out how to mount car tires to the forklift hub.
Step three: Go to the library and try to figure out how to design and build an electronic motor controller. This may have been a slightly ambitious task. I dug through the electronics shop for a while and found a bunch of donated transistors and some other pretty but useless components, and I went for it. After a few weeks of trying to pretend that I had a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering, I soldered a bunch of components together. I wired everything up and was ready to go for a cruise. I hit the gas pedal; the car moved forward about half an inch and the magic smoke had its day.
So maybe this wasn’t the most successful project ever, however I did decide to move on and get a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue University. After that, I did work for the General Motors electric car division for a few years. I’m still trying to patch it together, but I’m going to say there is some correlation here. If not, I learned something about forklifts.
This is the first vehicle I purchased when I was 16. I had to cut a lot of yards to bring this bad boy home. When I purchased it, it was an ugly burnt red color. It had 127,000 miles on it and was in prime condition for me to take on the hobby of automobile repair. While in reasonable shape, the northern Indiana winters had left the body in anything but pristine condition. This is where I cut my teeth on the wide world of auto body repair and painting.
My dad, having an old Binks spray gun from the 70s, I figured I’d give it a try. Bondo in hand, and me having no idea what I was getting myself into, a ground out all the rust and cleaned it up pretty well. Initially, I painted the whole truck a deep metallic red, and I was pretty satisfied. I got board about a year later.
Years before the revitalization of the hot rod movement of the early 2000’s, I decided to be a weirdo and paint flames on my truck. I went to the auto body paint store and asked how to do it. They gave me a weird look, and pointed me to a wall where they had some eighth inch wide masking tape. I really had no idea what I was attempting, but I figured out pretty quickly, that I wasn’t too bad at the freehand flame thing. Being the mid-90s, and the Internet not really much of a thing yet, I had no reference photos to go by.
I found a deep forest green paint to use for the flames, and used a touchup gun to fade them into black. I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing for fear that someone would try to talk some common sense into me. I just told my dad I had to do some touchup painting. A couple days into the project it became apparent what I was attempting, and I think both my parents were pretty surprised that I actually pulled it off. After a coat of clear coat, and a couple days of buffing out the overspray that is so prevalent when you paint a vehicle in a garage, I was actually pretty happy with the end result.
Not the most noteworthy of my projects, but it was nonetheless useful. Luckily, I never had to do a whole lot of mechanical work on this truck, but it was pretty ugly when I got it. It was white with company graphics from a swimming pool company painted on it.
I Rebuilt the roof rack and coated it all with urethane bedliner. I did some bodywork and painted the truck black.
I custom fabricated a canopy and some custom fold-down steps. It got a new coat of paint, which is actually a leftover gallon I had from my first truck, and a liberal amount of aluminum diamond plate was added.
The attachment point was about a foot too high, so I cut off the pintle ring and use some box steel to space down the bracket for the new trailer coupler.
The air brakes are hydraulically activated, so after removing the air over hydraulic system, I was able to retrofit a surge bake tongue to the trailer.
I rebuilt the front suspension which was off of a 1980s Camaro, and I built the rear leaf spring setup which was pretty much missing. I boxed in the frame and did some bodywork. Everything after that gets a bit fuzzy.
The guy sold this to me with the understanding that everything worked but it needed a fuel filter. I committed the major fallacy of believing him. Unfortunately, I got busy and the vehicle sat. In the meantime, I drew up sketches of what the final project would look like, complete with schematics for pyrotechnics.
