Twinkie Hotel Improvements

[LeeRevell]

FM, that is a very neat solution for the door!  Turning the original slider into a front-hinge door is excellent!  

 

[flying kurbmaster]

so I may have missed the reason somewhere earlier in this thread but why would you choose to switch from slider to opener
you are doing a nice job but I wonder why you would do that, one of the things I enjoy about my Kurbmaster is driving with the front doors pulled open in hot weather. What is your thinking behind this??

 

[Fabber McGee]

I have no issue with a door that slides. The door slides into a pocket.... an aluminum pocket, the pocket is the problem. The lower part was in the way of my fuel tanks and the top part would make it very difficult to see through the big picture window that will go there.

Also, there is only one side door to have open and it's about 7 feet away from me, so no big air and freedom of the road to enjoy there. Would need a fence to keep the dogs from just jumping out to chase whatever cat or squirrel that shows up. Plus, I'll probably not ever be in extremely hot weather. Summers here and a few months of the middle of winter in warmer climates.

Bottom line is I don't mind the slider, but it's not anything I'm at all attached to and it is causing me a lot of problems. It was in the way and now it's not.

Oh yeah, it was noisy too.

 

[TMG51]

You're doing a lot of impressive stuff, keep up the good work.

 

[Fabber McGee]

Karl, I'm just using an RV door latch, 30 bucks on ebay.


The door originally left a couple inches inside the pocket when it was closed. As a swinger, it needed to be 4 inches shorter to fit in the frame. With the door shortened and temporarily reassembled using machine screws and nuts (rivets will come later) I laid out the hole for the latch and cut a hole in the door. No changing your mind here.


Then I needed a strike plate spacer. When you need a vertical milling machine and all you have is a big table saw and an old (but low time) Sears drill press, guess what you do.... you (at least I) use the saw and the drill press. First I drilled as much of the waste away as possible, then chucked up a nearly new, but short shank 1/2" end mill and with very light cuts made a pocket for the door strike.


Left the shop at 2:30 AM and would have had a lot more done if not for the interruptions. Some friends stopped by early in the afternoon to view my hotel progress and I lost an hour there. Then, being that it was New Years Eve and I had some big T-bones in the freezer that needed to be used before I leave here for a couple months, I slapped together a frame for a pair of cast iron grills that followed me home from the dumpsters and invited my good friends and excellent upstairs tenants down for supper. Who doesn't grill steaks in their fireplace during the winter months?


I figured a couple hours out of my work day for this little diversion and wound up out of the shop for 4 1/2 hours. I recon it was worth it though.

Happy New Years.

 

[highdesertranger]

as usual, nice work. what type of wheel is on the angle grinder? almost looks like a diamond wheel. highdesertranger

 

[Patrick46]

Yeah, I too was wondering about losing the sliding door...but you've answered that.

Great workmanship, and a phenomenal build!!! I like it!!

 

[Fabber McGee]

Ranger, that's a little Ingersol Rand air grinder with a carbide saw blade in it. Would be too dangerous in an electrical tool, but that little grinder has very little rotating mass to act as a flywheel and not a lot of power. So, no matter how fast it's spinning, if you let go of the trigger and touch anything it stops right now. I always wear gloves and hold it with both hands when using it, if it bumps into a cotton glove with my finger off the trigger, it stops. Used it that way for 25 years now and no accidents to report. It does a lot of little cuts that would be very difficult with any most other tool. Will cut all the way to an inside corner, but the big advantage is seeing exactly where the blade is.

 

[Fabber McGee]

Okay, here's a quick little progress report. On New Years day I managed to get the side door pretty much finished. All it's lacking now is a bottom seal that I  now think will be salvaged from the top of the old roll up door that we removed from the back of the truck today. Somehow I neglected to get pictures of that.

I've been emailing progress reports to more than 60 friends and family and apparently a few of my buddies got tired of hearing me gripe about how much time I'm spending and how far behind schedule I am, so 3 of them showed up today to help. Guess I neglected to mention how much fun I'm having doing all this work to the old truck. Anyway, with all this help, I decided to drop all the little nit-pickey jobs I had going and work on the back door. 2 of them ripped out the horribly worn old roll up door and it's horizontal track parts, while the other sand blasted some Army truck door hinges and I put away tools and started laying out the door structure. One of the guys had to leave a little early, but by 6 when the other 2 left we had the big chunks of the door structure fit up and tacked together. When I left at 1 AM the door structure was all fitted and welded up, plus the weatherstrip frame was fitted to the opening and waiting to be welded.


I might get this operation on the road one of these days after all. Ha,ha.

 

[LeeRevell]

Looking good!  You need to treat your buddies to a "Bropreciation Lunch". 

 

[highdesertranger]

very nice work and good buddies. highdesertranger

 

[rvpopeye]

You're building your dream and your friends care enough to come over and pitch in to help you get there. Keepers !!!

BTW The rig is lookin' good ....

 

[Fabber McGee]

Got the big door hung and the man door set on it's hinges so I could have a look. Good enough for me. Ran out of stainless rivets, so the big door still has about 30 screws holding the skin on. Man door just has a screw in each corner of the skin. Lots to do still, but hope to be in good shape on the rear doors by stopping time tomorrow night. Got both doors up and decided to stop early tonight... only 10 hours. ha,ha. Still need to get the weatherstrips on, latches and finish the rivets.

 

[Fabber McGee]

Couple more.

 

[Fabber McGee]

Got the back doors finished, fixed some clearance lights and remounted the rear view camera. Then as long as it was backed in I decided to clean out all the stuff in back that I hauled home from America last trip and put in some new. Mostly tools and hardware to continue the improvements while I’m on the road.


I took it outside to turn it around and add some fuel to my new tanks. No fuel on the ground, that’s a good thing. Did a little troubleshooting on my air system after adding 4 isolation valves and finally found the leak. The drain valve on the storage tank was leaking. Changed that and it’s good to go. Then moved on to wiring. I started building an accessory electrical panel last spring before the cancer treatments got in my way, now I need to get it finished enough to put it to use. I got it ready to install before I came to the house tonight (about a 1/4 til 2 AM), so tomorrow I’ll bolt it in and build a quickie temporary gauge panel for all my new systems. Then finish the side door and I should be ready for a test drive. Ha,ha, already.

 

[rvpopeye]

Excellent work on that breaker panel !
Another talent surfaces....

 

[Patrick46]

Lookin' good brother!!!

I LOVE how you made the rear cover panel swing out so you can still get full use of the entire interior space, but still maintain a simple man door! Well done!

 

[Fabber McGee]

Geez, I'm glad I don't have to pay myself wages to build this thing, I'd have been in bankruptcy court long ago. Another long day gone and I'm still wiring. The switch panel is permanent, but I decided to do a quickie temporary on the instrument panel. I can decide better on layout as I drive it for a year or two. The gauges are snugged in place, but need a few wires and lights and air tubing. The tach needs to be calibrated before it gets final installation. I have a strobe tach from China (ebay, 20 bucks) to get an accurate RPM reading at idle and against the governor, then I'll set the dash tach to match. There will eventually be more switches in that panel, but these are the four I need right now. Fuel transfer, air compressor, driving lights and tire chains. There will also be four single pole, double throw momentary switches for the air bag controls and an assortment of others. I discovered that I needed a longer terminal strip, so I dug around in my junk and came up with one.

The gauges are, left to right, turbo boost, tach, saddle tanks fuel level, dual air gauge (2 needles in one gauge) for front air bags, system air pressure, dual air gauge for rear bags and application air pressure for the tire chains. They don't match very closely, but I paid 45 for the tach, 14 each for the dual air gauges and the rest were free, so they suit me just fine for now.


Also a picture of the finished rear door... finished enough for now. I need to get done working on this thing and get on the road.

 

[Fabber McGee]

2 AM just left the shop. another 14 hour day. Made a test run first thing today. The engine ran horribly for a mile or so, then cleaned up and works fine. Tach wouldn't register anything but 1000 RPM when the engine was running. After a couple miles I glanced at it again and it was working. Tire chains worked fine. Auxiliary transmission shifts fine when I have the RPM's right. Will need some practice there. Whines in overdrive, but that's just because it's an old time truck transmission. Not a concern, I'll love hearing it after a few days, I'm sure. Not loud enough to be heard with the stereo on.

Finished the side door by installing a bottom seal.... was the old top seal from the roll up door, then insulating and installing the interior panel. Had to cut the interior panel 4 inches narrower to match the narrower door. Then a thousand little things needed to be finished. Welded tabs to the arms of the fold down visor to add a tinted plastic folding visor from an old school bus. Looking forward to trying that. Made a cover for the new gauge panel, installed 2 pairs of ciggy outlets to plug in chargers, etc. put the front bumper back on that I had removed for more room to get around when my homebuilt forks/loader was inside out of the cold. Installed a tow hook on the passenger side (so a wrecker will be pulling me toward the road surface, not just forward), Tightened the seat bolts that I had out several times when I was running wires and air hoses through the firewall. Everywhere I looked was something that still needed to be finished. Oh yeah, I even washed the windshield and the mirrors.

I think it's pretty much ready for the road. A couple hours of loading up tomorrow and I can get the Hell out of Dodge. Finally.

 

[TMG51]

I think it's pretty much ready for the road. A couple hours of loading up tomorrow and I can get the Hell out of Dodge. Finally.

Hey, you've still got time to hightail it to Quartzsite.