Let's Talk! About anything.

Eh, if any of you guys know me well enough, you know that I believe in a number of what have been dubbed conspiracy theories about our government. But to be honest, I don't think they're any evidence that shows that chemtrails are real, and it's not just a contrail affected by the weather.

For one thing, I'm near Ft. Hood, and they do maneuvers over my ranch on a weekly basis. In the summertime when it's over 100, contrails last a few seconds. Fall and wintertime when it's in the 30s or 40s, like now, they last much longer, sometimes for hours.

The other thing that leads me to not think that's real is crop dusting. It's a very similar thing to chemtrails, however, the pesticide disperses very quickly. I would assume that any substance the government would want to be spraying on us would do the same, and at the very least would not stay in one place for hours.

@Double W Cross Ranch wrote:

<snippity

I agree with you DWCR.  I don't usually give this info out, but I work on the military side of Boeing.  We support Tinker AFB and hundreds of military bases all over the country and the world.  If this was a thing, lets just say I would probably know it.  I agree with DWCR that if they were spraying, UV and other weather conditions would evaporate it before it would make the surface.

Hay People,
Been real busy lately, blew the trans in my truck. So everything else stopped so I can fix my truck.

Pulled out the trans, took a week or so. And figured I would just rebuild it myself. Way cheaper to do it myself. Went online and ordered a bunch of stuff. Alto master rebuilder kit with stage 2 hi performance red clutches and band. Transgo shift kit , monster sun gear, and got rid of those plastic pistons in it. Plus lost one of those bajesus clips in the valve body so a pack of those clips too, LOL.


So, to tear it down, I mounted it on a 3/4 ton 8 bolt Dodge rim that just happen to fit the tail. Worked real good for teardown.


The guts layed out on the table, LOL.


Used everything in the rebuild kit, even changed the bushings too with the press I made. So glad I made that, by the way. By the time I got done, it was a brand new trans inside a dirty case, just how I like it, LOL. I put the shift kit in the valve body. When tightening the valve body to the case, the bolts started stretching, so new valve body bolts curtesy of Home Depot. Put the trans back in with help of my nephew-in-law, this past weekend and bolted everything up except the driveshafts. Cleaned the rust off and painted them, LOL.



Up and running great since last night. Smooth, quick shifts. Very impressed with the shift kit but it's not like the old school shift kits from B&M. But still the trans works great and on the first try too. So happy now

Well anyways, I'll be returning to my projects in a week or so, LOL.

Welp, that’s a 4l60 for ya.

Speaking of things quitting out of nowhere, my nice Lincoln pro core 125 I just got quit on me tonight right as I was STARTING a project. Got the first tack done and the feed motor decided it was done. Put a multimeter on the leads to the motor, it’s getting voltage. It just up and quit.

So now I either have to buy a new motor or tear down one of my cordless drills and hope I can make it work

Loving the striped driveshafts! Haha.

Ended up using the tombstone arc welder for the whole exhaust. Actually turned out ok. I figured out how to use it pretty quickly. The thinner rods are much easier to work with than the big thick ones I was trying to use on the mk2 front suspension.

Arc welding is a bit of a lost art, hopefully I can teach myself quicker than I taught myself with the flux core

Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time I used the ol' 225 tombstone for exhaust work, haha. I used to use 5/64" rods at 60 or 75A for steel metal and exhaust stuff and it worked okay, but it was always pretty slow going.

That sucks about your 125 CQ, hopefully you'll get 'er working again soon.

The worst part about using thin rods with the stick welder is starting them. And there's a lot of starting and stopping to not burn through.

Stick welding is more common than you'd think. Lots of places it's preferred over mig.

I've just started playing around with smaller rods with my welder.  I turn down the amps and put it on the B side (lower amps) and still go to town.  Burning through can be an issue.  I've been trying different ways to "seal" the hole.  I've gotten fairly decent doing it.  LOL

My friend uses stick... Looks fairly easy. Not as complicated as mig. Not as dangerous as gas welders too. When I get a welder I'll probably go with stick.

I've been playing with mine for about 3 years now.  Some days I weld a nasty booger mess and the next I may lay a nice good looking bead.  I've come to the conclusion it has to do with the condition of the rods, weather (not sure exactly) and metals.  I can weld on the same piece of metal.  Lay 4 inches of beauty, about the 5th inch it go to boogers even though I am still going the same speed and motion.  Go figure.  Guess the metal gets too hot.  Or dealing with the welder's duty cycle. LOL

Possible, I hadn’t realized that arc welding was still used very widely. I know AK does, mighty, and occasionally rich, beyond you guys I’m not sure if anyone else does.

I remember there was an arc welding thread a while back, might have to dig it up and post my machine in a bit more detail

@CraftsmanQuad19 wrote:

I remember there was an arc welding thread a while back, might have to dig it up and post my machine in a bit more detail

Lemme help you with that...

https://www.atltf.com/t5018-arc-welders-anyone

Haha thanks mighty

@MightyRaze wrote:

Lemme help you with that...

https://www.atltf.com/t5018-arc-welders-anyone

Ah, back in the good ol' days. Hahaha.

So....  I have been looking into switching the site to HTTPS so the "not secure" would go away in some browsers.  I have looked into the Javascripts and CSS on the site.  I think we are fine there.  Where we are NOT fine to my knowledge is on posts like I posted above.  That link would instantly break once https is turned on.  Also some of our signatures would be broken.  Those who have links.  Also some links on the portal page would be broken.  Not sure it is worth the update.

@prancstaman wrote:

Hay People,
Been real busy lately, blew the trans in my truck. So everything else stopped so I can fix my truck.
.

That looks like fun. I have a BB 727 Id like to rebuild for my truck.
Hopefully, by the time Im done with the engine it will be making 475-500 ponies. Ive read these 727s can handle that without any trouble.

...then again, manual trans are cool. I have a parts truck with a nv4500. My brother said they used those behind the 5.7 Hemi for a while. Those Hemis made somewhere around 340hp?

@MightyRaze wrote:

I've been playing with mine for about 3 years now.  Some days I weld a nasty booger mess and the next I may lay a nice good looking bead.  I've come to the conclusion it has to do with the condition of the rods, weather (not sure exactly) and metals.  I can weld on the same piece of metal.  Lay 4 inches of beauty, about the 5th inch it go to boogers even though I am still going the same speed and motion.  Go figure.  Guess the metal gets too hot.  Or dealing with the welder's duty cycle. LOL

The electrodes might be partially moist. You hit that moist spot and you loose the shielding gas because of a contaminate in the flux covering the rod. Booger welds. How do you store the rods?

@TheBeal wrote:

@prancstaman wrote:

Hay People,
Been real busy lately, blew the trans in my truck. So everything else stopped so I can fix my truck.
.

That looks like fun. I have a BB 727 Id like to rebuild for my truck.
Hopefully, by the time Im done with the engine it will be making 475-500 ponies. Ive read these 727s can handle that without any trouble.

...then again, manual trans are cool. I have a parts truck with a nv4500. My brother said they used those behind the 5.7 Hemi for a while. Those Hemis made somewhere around 340hp?

The 727 torque flight is a great trans. Can handle a lot of power. I wouldn't use it in stock form though, needs a shift kit in it to up the pressure of the hydraulics. I got them in my Jeeps behind the 360's Ran it in the one Jeep for around 20 years with the shift kit in it, which is real simple to put in. It grab the gears and chirp the wheels going into second gear on a hard launch. It wouldn't chirp the wheels going into 3rd because I left the accumulator spring in it, LOL. Plus you can adjust the band on the outside of the trans for second gear which prolongs life of the trans. I never had one completely apart though but after doing the 4L60e will seem real simple to rebuild. I'll probably be rebuilding both of mine sometime soon. One is blown and one is good. If you know what to do and how to do it, you can add clutches to the clutch packs to handle more power too. I did that to my 350 turbo to make it a 375 turbo for my Buick.

Couldn't tell you about the 5 speeds. Everybody seems to like the 5 speeds though which seem to be a 4 speed with an overdrive mainly. I always run automatics because my wife can't drive stick, LOL. The 5.7 Hemi's were rated at 350 hp.

I hear they are easy to rebuild. I just need a good clean area to lay it all out and not loose parts.

Id like to think going from a 3 to 5 speed might increase my already lousy mpgs. Im sure a built up 440 would need all the help it could get. Then again, we dont drive 440s for their fuel economy.

@prancstaman wrote:

The electrodes might be partially moist. You hit that moist spot and you loose the shielding gas because of a contaminate in the flux covering the rod. Booger welds. How do you store the rods?

. They are on the shelf in the plastic container they come in. Personally, I'm certain it is just me. I'm pretty green at it. That and my ground is frayed and needs fixed I noticed the other day.

@TheBeal wrote:

I hear they are easy to rebuild. I just need a good clean area to lay it all out and not loose parts.

Id like to think going from a 3 to 5 speed might increase my already lousy mpgs. Im sure a built up 440 would need all the help it could get. Then again, we dont drive 440s for their fuel economy.

LOL, nope.
I used saw horses with a piece of plywood on it and out in my driveway but under a tent because of the rain. The one thing though that made a world of difference was bagging and tagging everything with a million pics on my phone on disassembly showing exactly how everything came apart. The pic of the parts, everything was in the gallon zip lock bags or trash bags, air tight. Taking pics helped whenever I wasn't sure about something, which happened quite a few times even if I had the book on it.

@MightyRaze wrote:

@prancstaman wrote:

The electrodes might be partially moist. You hit that moist spot and you loose the shielding gas because of a contaminate in the flux covering the rod. Booger welds. How do you store the rods?

. They are on the shelf in the plastic container they come in. Personally, I'm certain it is just me. I'm pretty green at it. That and my ground is frayed and needs fixed I noticed the other day.

Yup, frayed ground would do it. Come to think about it, my ground cable game loose a while ago and had same results welding on my MIG welder. Ever since that happened, I been wanting to take the welder apart and clean all electrical connections inside of box. After a while, carbon starts building up on all connections creating resistance. Pretty much a maintenance cleaning on it. Just haven't done it yet. I do this on the spot welder at my job and brings it to new condition with less time on welding which is a good thing. So I know it does help.

"Teacher says every time Mightyraze changes his profile picture, an angel gets its wings"

Haha, just kiddin' ya Mighty.

On another note, anyone else have snow yet??