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How are you at hand forming aluminum? When I hit the lottery next week (maybe the week after...I haven't decided yet) I want to build a street legal replica of the old Watson Indy Roadster...you could use your aircraft skills to make the body. I'll let you know as soon as I win

Installed suspension lockouts and did some more trimming for better clearance as well as a smooth bottom, cause who doesn't love a smooth bottom?







Then I attacked the turning radius.

Trimmed where circled to get a little more throw


To get this


Which left me with this for steering throw.

Not good enough!

So I attacked the drive cups with an angle grinder and a deburring rosebud to get this



Which gave me this

Better

sidewinder wrote:How are you at hand forming aluminum? When I hit the lottery next week (maybe the week after...I haven't decided yet) I want to build a street legal replica of the old Watson Indy Roadster...you could use your aircraft skills to make the body. I'll let you know as soon as I win

Ummm, thanks for the offer I think. I could definitely do it, so let me know when you win. ( I hope it's soon. )

I only knew about that plate on the tube because I had to make one, but mine is only styrene. In my case, without it the driveshaft wouldn't hold mesh. Looks MUCH better than my styrene stack.

The suspension lockout is clean! And the skid looks great smooth, does it still feel strong enough?

Ooooh that steering angle is pretty! I think my Tatra is gonna need that mod done. Hmmm, gotta check if I have round burrs or if I need to hit HarborFreight.

----Thread Hijack
Hey rusty, so you're a Sheetmetal A&P mechanic? I'm Avionics. I'd try to see if my job (Indiana) has any openings, but they're currently laying off contractors so I really doubt it. I haven't heard much going on in FL, have you checked all the job boards?

Skid should be good, all my other ones were the same way.

I did mine with 100 degree rosebud. Doesn't need to be round but that might work too.

I worked for Northrop Grumman for the past 7 years as a sheetmetal mechanic. I don't have my A&P license mainly because I never did anything with power plants, so I'm kind of limited to military aircraft. I've been checking Aviation Employment.com as well as the Grumman boards. So far I have a possible contracting job for Sikorsky in CT. I'll need to purchase some more tools as they don't supply them and Grumman did. If you hear anything through the grapevine let me know as far as jobs or if anyone wants to unload some tools. Thanks.

If a sheetmetal guy says the skid should be able to transfer stresses well enough, that sounds good to me.

Can you throw a micrometer on the knuckle shafts? So we can know how much to take off.

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Have you checked with Piper, about 6 months ago a friend of mine went there, and they're in FL. Any idea if you've got any GA airports that have businesses that do airplane refits?

For tools, check out Craigslist, hit up some pawnshops...
Talk to an A&P School, with that experience you might be able to test out for your "A" license, then just do your O&Ps and written.

Just grind the knuckle till you remove the stock chamfer then re-chamfer it, you should be fine. You may get away with more but mine are as yet untested on the rocks so you may want to wait if you don't have spares to swap back in if it starts throwing dogbones. I don't have a micrometer to measure them unfortunately.

As far as the skid goes I think the pics are misleading as to how much material I removed. It's nowhere near flush, just ground, rounded and smoothed all the edges to slide over rocks better. The only place that used to worry me doing it this way was where the knuckles mount ( where your trunnion bearings would be ) but I've had 0 failures at that point in years of use.

Thanks for the ideas I'll def. check into them. Tomorrow's my last day WOOHOO!

Ah, that's cool. *poke poke* Test your steering on the rocks already.

I lost my bookmarks when my box died, here are some suggestions from memory, try throwing them at a search engine.
Planetechs, jsfirm, avjobs, STS

No testing yet. I'm still building.

I've been messing with a lithium ion batt. out of a bluetooth. Need to charge it and see if it's still good. Not sure if it's the best idea though because it's around 4 volts, I think. I don't really want to fry any electronics.
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Off topic-

Had kind of a weird day today. I was up till almost 1:00 last night sending out some last minute resumes for possible transfer positions in the company. I had already sent them out about 2 weeks ago but I wanted to give it one more shot before I was out the door for good. I woke up tired and really didn't give a fuck about getting to work on time this morning so I slept in and showed up about 2 1/2 hrs. after start time. Hung around doing some work just to keep from getting bored while basically waiting for my exit interview at 4:00 pm. About 10:00am my boss comes out to tell me I need to be In Jacksonville ( over an hour away ) for an interview at 2:00 to contract out to Boeing so he needs to see if he can bump up my exit interview to give me time to get there.

Caught me off guard but I made it there and gave a pretty good interview considering I had to recite my resume from memory since they still didn't have it for whatever reason, and I was totally unprepared and rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off to get there in time. I hope I get the job but at the same time I hope it takes a few days so I can get my severance pay, otherwise since I'll still technically be working for Grumman they'll consider it a transfer and I'll get screwed for 3500.00 and the time I wasn't working today plus I still need to buy some tools. So it may be good news/bad news.

Anyway, thanks for the ref. Frizzen. I'll check those as well.

redrustbucket wrote:I hope I get the job but at the same time I hope it takes a few days so I can get my severance pay, otherwise since I'll still technically be working for Grumman they'll consider it a transfer and I'll get screwed for 3500.00 and the time I wasn't working today plus I still need to buy some tools. So it may be good news/bad news.

Which option do you think Grumman will choose? I'd be surprised if they looked out for your best interests.
At any rate, I wish you all the best - you seem like a smart guy and I bet it'd be a shame for them to pass by you or make you a disgruntled smart guy.
Good luck!

Did I mention that was my favorite Stomper body when I was a kid? I had a blue one with grey graphics.

CaboWabo wrote: Which option do you think Grumman will choose? I'd be surprised if they looked out for your best interests.
At any rate, I wish you all the best - you seem like a smart guy and I bet it'd be a shame for them to pass by you or make you a disgruntled smart guy.
Good luck!

Disgruntled smart guy, I like the sound of that. I should send follow up letters to companies that don't hire me and sign them that way.

Dear Sirs,

Thanks for nothing.
Sincerely, Disgruntled Smart Guy


I'm sure I won't get the money if I get the job, but I'd rather have the job for sure. Just a little frustrating the way things are handled. They could have put the transfer through weeks ago and saved me a lot of b.s. I'd like to blame it on corporate America but it's just kind of the way things work when you have that many people involved. I am thankful I have a shot at a job regardless. I will stop ranting now.

Thanks for the good words Cabo

crazydave wrote:Did I mention that was my favorite Stomper body when I was a kid? I had a blue one with grey graphics.

Also my favorite. I had a few of this body style in different colors. Man, now that I think about it, I had a lot of stompers. I also had the pulling sled which was AWESOME. My brother tracked part of the sled down at a garage sale a while back along with a few stompers. This body style wasn't one of them so I had to get it off of ebay. It was tough to find one that wasn't mint and going for 25.00.

I can't decide whether I should paint it or not. I want to dovetail the rear and keep just the TOY on the tail gate and I really dig the silver graphics for their old school flavor. Maybe I can print some decals. It would make it a lot easier. If not, I'm sure I'll be asking for some painting tips.

Stompers had a pulling sled? How well do they work with ZZ-M?

Yes they did!
http://www.stomper4x4.com/pulls/index.htm
They're actually pulling 2 with some modified stompers. The red sleds are the original stomper pulling sleds.
It also came with a weight box which mounted to the front of the trucks and I think flags for start and full pull lines.