Keeping Larry out of the XBOX

[buckeyetrailfire]

great job guys. if this true then our first big snow is just around the corner I hope


Mark

[JDT]

Everyone should have a fire extingisher close at hand in their shop or garage.

I have have two incidents in the past.

Best $40 you ever invested.

[nick80lf]

As usual progress is really slow, but here's the latest.

Santa was very good to Larry this year. I only wish he would bring me sled parts for Christmas . My wife was in charge of taking the photos Christmas morning, and for some reason she normally takes a few hundred. This year there were about 15......go figure.

Evidently Santa and John's Upholstery must have some sort of working relationship. Larry had a nice seat cover under the tree, so that was this weeks project.

Here's a few photos of the bottom side of original seat.





So Larry started by carefully cutting as much of the old cover off as he could. Then he finally got to try out the new heat gun. We have to thank JDT for mentioning the deal at Menards. Fortunately my sister-in-law loves doing the black Friday thing so we had her pick this up.



The heat gun made quick work of removing the old vinyl that was glued to the seat. Now if I could only find out exactly what glue they used. 3M Super 77 doesn't seem to hold well for me. The last "sport seat" I recovered I actually resorted to contact cement for Formica, which was better but still has a tendency to come loose when it's warm.

I didn't do a very good job myself of taking photos while we worked on the seat. Larry started by cutting new plywood (it was his first time using the jig saw). He then drilled the holes for the new stainless T nuts and drove them home. The next day we steamed the foam. I was a little concerned, the old cover had shrunk so much that the foam was about 1-1/2" away from the tank with the old cover removed. I really wish I would have taken a video of this process. Larry was amazed how much the front of the seat foam expanded when we steamed it (I was also). After letting the foam dry over night we installed the seat cover with monel staples.

Anyway here's the finished seat.



We had to take it out and test fit it to the sled once complete. I think it turned out pretty good for a bunch of rookies (well this is the third seat cover I've installed).

[Packers29]

Looks great tell Larry to keep up the great work!!


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[sledhead16]

Tell Larry He better keep this thing until hes old like his dad!

[nick80lf]

It's been way too long since I've updated this.

Progress on Larry's SnowFire has not been very good at all. Most of the summer was consumed by Larry's professional baseball career and a few employer sponsored international "vacations" (as my wife calls it) for me.

We originally intended to spend the holiday weekend re-grading the yard around the shop and prepping to plant grass. As luck would have it Friday night we received about 2.5" of rain not to mention the 2" we had earlier in the week. All of the rain has pretty much ended the thought of tackling that project for a while. So we worked on the Snowfire most of the day today. I haven't been doing a good job taking photos but here a quick recap since the last update.

Back in early June as Larry's baseball career was starting to come to an end I started to gear up to start working on this project again. I recall spending one day of a rainy weekend removing parts so we could take them to the neighbor that does sandblasting. We had a small issue to repair. The tube the starter rope passes through was no longer attached. A few minutes with the welder and this was fixed and ready for blasting.


IMAG0435 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

This was the first time that I've ever taken parts to someone else to have them sandblasted but I didn't want to spend the rest of the summer using my little piss-whipper. I was a little worried that everything was going to be warped when I got them back but it turned out OK. The edges of the belt guard were a little warped but it was an easy fix. I don't recall why, but Larry had something going on the day after we got the parts back from sandblasting so I primed them without him just to keep them from rusting. From there we moved on to getting the rear suspension back in order. Here's photos of Larry greasing one of the suspension shafts and the finished suspension (minus the shock).


IMAG0497 by nick 80lf, on Flickr


IMAG0553 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

That pretty much brings us to today when we removed the drive shaft, track, and bumper. I don't know about everyone else but I'd rather have wisdom teeth pulled than work on track drivers. This one fought us most of the day. The biggest issue was removing the woodruff key, go figure. We just weren't able to find the right angle to pop it out. It was stuck in good enough that Kroil and the side cutter trick didn't work. Eventually I had success by cussing it out while using a hammer and long steel rod. Now that the track was out we looked it over pretty good. We knew that one of the bars on the track was bad. After closer inspection there are a total of three that we probably should replace. Two are actually bent where they ride on the sliders.

The next project was de-greasing the tunnel and cleaning the fuel tank. There's nothing magical about this but I did get a few photos. Got to love Larry's fashion sense.....LOL.


IMAG0587 by nick 80lf, on Flickr


IMAG0588 by nick 80lf, on Flickr


2015-09-06_09-51-07 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

Remember this wasn't the originally planned activity for the weekend so I didn't have enough de-greaser on hand but it's a good start, just needs a little more cleaning. I might make a run to Wally-World tomorrow so we can finish cleaning it up. Since it was getting late in the day we moved everything back into the shop and worked on straightening the bumper that was slightly horked. As you can see in the photo below.


2015-09-06_09-49-50 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

Raniville's block of wood and BFH trick took care of that. We actually had the bumper bolted back on the chassis and set the hood back on but it never crossed my mind to take a photo.

[buckeyetrailfire]

you progress is looking good guys I cant wait to see the finished project


MARK

[sledhead16]

Nice Job Larry! Suspension looks great and everything else looks to be coming together swell. Those drivers were put on earth to be fussy. I'm convinced that they don't get easier with practice, you just seem to aquire more patience lol.

[heiner921]

its nice to see the progress being made. you dont see many father/son projects like this anymore. gold star award for you sir.

[nick80lf]

Thanks for the compliment. We have been working diligently over the holiday so an update will be coming very soon.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[afponiky]

Looking forward to seeing the next steps!

Great Post!

[crazzygunner]

Nice job nick and Larry neat project cool story.

[JDT]

Memories that will last the both of you a lifetime.

Priceless.

[nick80lf]

As promised here's a update of where we're at on this project.

Once we had all of the shmoo cleaned off of the chassis I had Larry polish the tunnel. Here he's just getting started wet sanding the second side of the tunnel. In the end I don't think it turned out too bad.
IMAG0597 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

IMAG0596 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

Once he had the tunnel shined up we moved to the track. If you'll remember this track had a broken cleat and 2 bent cleats. We were able to straighten the 2 bent cleats and replaced the one broken cleat. Here Larry is giving the track half of the patented Brock Weber treatment (we didn't remove all the cleats though).

2015-11-22_07-09-01 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

The first part to go back on the chassis was the steering bracket. We intended to work on the sled during the Thanksgiving holiday with the main task being to have a rolling chassis. As luck would have it we made an attempt to install the drive shaft the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Of course, we discovered Mrs Claus messed up last Christmas and one of the drive shaft bearings was incorrect. Normally I only use SKF bearings for drive shafts but I made an exception and stopped at the Deere dealer the day before Thanksgiving and picked up the correct one (with 30 minutes to spare before they closed). Once this was behind us we dropped the skid in. Well.......it was more like wrestle the skid in. It wasn't until we had all of the bolts started that I was able to snap a photo of Larry tightening the skid bolts with the cordless impact.

2015-11-27_03-58-40 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

Then we assembled both skis and installed them on the chassis. Which was where we left off after the Thanksgiving holiday.

2015-11-27_03-59-05 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

The next few weeks were pretty much wasted do to my stupidity. I found a really cheap source for stamped tie rod ends. Turns out many go cart suppliers carry these and they are about 75% cheaper than the power sport suppliers. Well you can also buy an entire tie rod kit. I thought sure why not........turns out these were back ordered (even though the place I ordered them from claimed they had them in stock) after about 4 weeks they showed up and........both ends of the tie rod were right hand thread........dohhhhhh. So we scrapped that idea and cleaned up the originals.

This is where we started at the beginning of the Christmas holiday. We did manage to install the carbide rods, snow flap, handle bars (with poly handwarmers) and fuel pump, while the stupidity of the tie rod saga was unfolding.

2015-12-24_08-20-09 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

After we had the tie rods sort of in we dropped the motor into place and then encountered everyone's worst nightmare.......the dreaded Kawasaki recoil. Up till this point I've been fortunate and never had one of these apart. Honestly I'd heard the stories of others and thought to myself "it's just a recoil....it can't be that bad". This recoil was in perfect working order the only thing was the cord was a little short and greasy. So I thought....we'll just pull the cord out all the way, I'll hold the pulley in place and he can replace the old cord with new.......wrong. We quickly learned we had to take the pawls out to get the old rope out. I'd love to meet the genius that said "hey let's put five springs under this little plate and laugh as they try to put it all back together". Eventually we got it but not without scuffing the paint job on the recoil so we had a little touch up to do.

2015-12-24_08-19-31 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

The following day we made a run to the hardware store to pick up new bolts for the outer tie rods so here's Larry tackling that project.

2015-12-26_02-07-47 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

Once that was complete the brake disk and caliper went on next.

2015-12-26_10-10-44 by nick 80lf, on Flickr

The tank and air box are just sitting on the sled in this photo so we could get an idea of the fuel line routing. Cleaning the fuel tank has been quite the project. In the past I've gotten away with rinsing them out with some type of water based de-greaser. The varnish on the upper part of this tank had dried out and become very hard. We eventually put a few gallons of kerosene in the tank with a bottle of Seafoam and a few handfuls of BB's and have been shaking it for the last few weeks. I think it's just about to the point where it could be rinsed out.

Hopefully we'll get the opportunity to work on this a little more on new years day.

[skoalmint]

Looks GREAT ! Love the time that you guys have spent together working on the old gal. Brock