The Poet Creek Express - Foamie Hybrid

[KCStudly]

On top of all of those ideas we could write the whole thing off as an unreimbursed training expense. I wonder how Mike would feel about becoming accredited.

[KCStudly]

The brown truck cometh.


Suspension hanger hardware and a gallon of 3M Fastbond 30NF Green water based contact adhesive.


Grade 8 hardware.


30NF


Well I managed to get 2 out of 3 tax forms complete and with the Fed holiday on Monday I had no problem getting away for the day to thrash. With the shop to myself for the weekend I jumped right in with a little warm up welding on the tongue box mounting clips. First I did the flat bar clamp up thing.





Tack 4 corners.


And weld 3 sides.


Wash, rinse, repeat.



Looking down the frame side rail you can see the warping that has occurred due to welding on the tongue and spring hangers so far.

It's going to happen.

In order to try and minimize this I clamped on a piece of angle as a strong back, about 4 ft long, onto the frame spanning the hanger areas to be welded.



Breakfast of Champions.

Gotta stay nourished.

Welded the outside of the street side shackle hanger.

That ain't coming off.

I had two pieces of angle and kept hopscotching them around so I could leave one on until it cooled fully while still moving on to the next location. Here is the curb side shackle hanger with strong back in place.


And here is the curb side shackle hanger outside weld.

That ain't coming off either.

It was a beautiful day at the shop,

and I was running low on 3/32 welding rod.

Karl had said that he had plenty of welding rod in inventory, but I didn't know where it was and needed an excuse to get out into the sunshine, so I made a run to here,


for another pound of rod and some new gloves.


Stopped at a do drop in for a bacon cheese burger on the way back.
The Brown Derby

The Zamboni de-icer job is going to use a lot of pipe which was sitting on a couple of the shop saw horses.


So I had been using just the remaining two heavy horses clamped along the front and rear xmbr's. When I went to reposition the frame to avoid out of position welding, I had to shift the horses to one side first. Easy enough to hang one side off of the hoist, pick up one corner and the next to reposition the horses to one side.


Then hoist it up and clamp it back down on the horses.

Sure is nice not having to plan out my flips too carefully. Miss a weld or screw up the sequence and it's not hardly any trouble to lift it up and flip it again. It's not too bad to handle with two people, but it is almost effortless with the hoist.

Here's the street side shackle hanger inside with strong back in place prior to welding.


While welding this joint I think I must have lifted off a little and got a small bit of porosity. Out with the grinder and safety gear. Safety first: safety glasses with side shields, hearing protection, full face shield and gloves.


Took care of that no problem and here is the finished weld.


While that weld was cooling I cut four gusset blanks from some 1/4 x 1 flat bar scrap.

If you look closely you can see the scribe line on the one that is clamped over the side of the bench.

And here is a posed photo with the cutoff wheel after nipping off the corner.


And here are the four after nipping the inside corner (to clear the hanger-to-frame weld), rounding the outside corners a bit and breaking the edges on the Bader belt sander.


Before moving on to the front spring hangers I repositioned the strong back to straddle the area to be welded. Most of the frame warping was located around the front hanger where I had previously welded it at the front and rear "undersides". So I clamped the strong back on to the rear first and measured the gap at the other end.

5/16 inch out over approx. a 25 inch spread.

This strong back was a little thinner stock than the other one so when I clamped it the rest of the way it pulled to the frame instead of the other way around.

Well at least it was pulling back some in the right direction.

Inside street side front spring hanger prior to welding.


And here I am afterward enjoying a "welding Zen moment".


Using a little scrap of box tube to square and clamp up the first hanger gusset.


And here it is fully welded.


The little black spot is just a speck of soot or something, not a flaw.

Wash, rinse, repeat for the 2nd gusset.



Here's the inside of the street side rock slider and tongue to main frame joint prior to and after welding. Note the strong back is still in place.



After it cooled I popped the front clamps back off of the strong back and the measurement was down to 3/16 inch over 25. Better. Will probably try to bend it back to straight after all welding is done. Will consult with Karl. Probably stick one end under the fork truck counterweight, block up the middle where
the bend is, and weight down the opposite end until it springs back true.

Reposition the frame again, now right side up.

A little cattywampus on the odd horses, but it'll do.

Welded the tops of the tongue box mounting clips.




Switched to the heavy strong back and moved it to straddle the tongue rail to front xmbr joint.


Welded the tongue rail to the front xmbr curb side front and rear, including wrapping the corners closed.

This side was relatively easy because I am right handed; had to climb into the middle of the front of the frame to get the back.

Added another heavy strong back to the other side.


Welded street side front and rear. Note the wrap visible in the 2nd pic.


Had to squeeze into the tongue area to gain position on this one. Back of the chair was outside and I was perched on the edge of it so that I could fit down to where I could see the puddle.


Reposition the frame again. This time I'll be welding on the "top" (curb side side), so I set it down on the floor. Needed to weld near where the rigging strap was so it had to come off, lest it melt. Made sure to clamp the frame well to the horses.



In this position the weld was right about at my eye level, and it would be very difficult, if not impossible to operate that TIG foot pedal while standing on my tippy toes. Hmmm, small step ladder? No not enough of a base; not going to stand on a ladder on one foot. How about these drop cuts from some heavy planks? Perfect!


And here is the curb side slider outside weld that resulted.


This took me to about 4:15pm so it was time to split so I could get home and watch the drag race qualifying. Once you get a whiff of nitromethane you are hooked for life!

[KCStudly]

Ordered the Monroe 555002 Gas-Magnum RV Shock Absorbers from Amazon tonight. Add $58 to the budget.

I will figure out the mounting once I get them in hand and have the axle hung. Will probably need to simulate the anticipated ride height or build in some adjustment.

If I do a thru frame bolting, like the Monroe RB511 kit (Monroe RV Shock Mounting Kits), I will weld in anti-crush sleeves, but I will most likely use these, Speedway Motors Shock Mount Stud. The Monroe kit comes with spring U-bolt plates for 1-3/4 wide springs, and I don't need those.

Perhaps I can make an upper mount that has a couple of different mounting holes. Will have to see what works best for the space available and the heights involved.

So is it 1/3 of travel for rebound and 2/3 compression, or...???

[parnold]

I appreciate your attention to detail, and your great documentation. If I ever decide to fabricate my own frame, this thread will be a valuable resource for ideas and tecnique!

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the kind words, Paul. I've been enjoying your new build, too, and see that you have made big progress today.

I'm looking forward to the point where I'm actually making saw dust!

Thanks for looking in.

[KCStudly]

Cuyeda PM'd me this question and I hope he doesn't mind me posting it and my reply here.

Hello,
Viewed your welding photos, and looks like you are a pro! Beautiful beads! Since I am a backyard wannabe, I have a question. How do you keep the frame from racking, or keeping it square? I noticed you have it supported on stands most of the time.



Is it the clamping that you rely on to keep the 90 degree angles square? Do you level the stand supports before welding? Ok that's more than one question.

Cliff

And my reply:
"First, I was very careful with all of my cut lengths to make them all the same and square.

Started by tacking the main perimeter on the outside vertical seams in the middle of the joint, then above and below this, essentially forming hinges on the outside corners. Then checked diagonals, making them the same. Then tack welded these 3/4 round bar temp braces in two opposite diagonal corners.

Kind of hard to see because it just happened to be right over the saw horse.

Then I went around and welded the inside corners, outsides, and bottoms of the joints (building upside down). Later after flipping I did the tops.

After welding the rear stabilizer jack plates in the rear corners it pulled it out of square. Had to pull it square again using a big cargo ratchet strap before welding the tongue on to lock it down.

This image is actually from the first initial squaring up before the temp braces were added, but the technique was the same.

In yesterday's post and the one I will post later this evening you can see that the frame side rails have warped down around the suspension mount and tongue/rock slider welds. The angle iron strong backs probably did little to stop this. Stay tuned, I will be using ingenuity and brute force (or weight, or our friend the screw mechanism) to jack them back somewhere near straight.

Others have had this problem, too. It's impossible to avoid with a welded frame. Some just bolt the box down to the bent frame and wrench it in and live with the "induced stress."

Well I guess I didn't answer all of Cliff's questions. For the initial frame weld up I used four equal height saw horses that were very stable and the concrete floor in the shop is pretty good. The welding tables aren't quite as wide as the frame so it worked better this way. In the flat plane of the trailer there is not as much that you can do to keep it flat because it is much weaker this way, but that being said, it is also easier to straighten. The perimeter shape is much more critical because the tongue more or less locks it down thru triangulation, so if you don't get that right it would be very difficult to change afterward and you will have to deal with it throughout the build.

[Wolffarmer]

I have a question. When do you find time to weld? And how do you weld while holding a camera in one hand? Must be tricky as you are using TIG. I can do it as I use a buz box and flux coated rod.



Just razzing you. Looks fantastic.

Randy

[KCStudly]

Hey Randy. It was plenty warm here today, into the 70's, so I stopped to take off my welding gear and take pics often.

Let's see, where did we leave off yesterday? That's right, we were welding stuff onto the frame.

Here is the outside of the curb side spring hanger with temporary angle iron strong back installed.


A better look at the strong back.


Here's a better look at how the anti-rotation tab works with the front spring hanger bolt.


And the weld.


Repositioned the frame to get the inside. Here's the inside spring hanger joint.


Didn't want to put too much heat in all at once, so while that was cooling I set up a strong back on the curb side shackle hanger.


Here's the shackle hanger before welding.


Back to the spring hanger, welded and a close up.



And back to the shackle hanger, now welded.

Not going to come off, least not easily.


Clamping the first curb side spring hanger gusset.


And welded.



Repeat.



Only welded one leg of the second gusset because I was about to stand the frame up again and that would give me a better angle on this, too (looks flat in this pic due to camera angle... it wasn't).

You can't tell by this pic, but I had the frame resting on the horses on one side rail and hung higher up on the hoist on the other side so that I could weld down in the trough between the tongue side rail and the inside of the main rail.


Getting that sharp inside corner wrapped was tricky.

Then I stood the frame up again (clamped it to the horses) and did the other welds in the flat.



Curb side rock slider to frame inside.


What's that burning smell? Oh, it's just my glove.

When the fingers of the gloves get too hot they shrink up. Eventually it's like those droopy pants and the crotch of the fingers are down around your second knuckle.

Completed the gusset.



This is looking down the street side frame rail. See the bows where it has warped at the tongue anchor point and front spring hanger? I don't think the strong backs did much.


Did the 'stand-on-the-planks' thing to get the outside (top) street side rock slider.



Moving on to the outside of the street side front spring hanger.


After repositioning the frame again.


Note the large blocks of 6x used to keep the low side from resting on the spring hangers.

The hangers are plenty stout and probably would not have bent, but I didn't want the frame to pivot off of them or do anything unbalanced. Also, in the previous pic, note the C-Clamps holding the frame from sliding off of the saw horses. Probably unnecessary, but I would hate for it to slide off and fall on me while I was under the welding hood and couldn't see it coming.

Here's the weld. Note the stool with wood plank used as an elbow prop to steady my welding.



Set the frame back upright on the horses and clamped the tongue jack plate into position.



Good time to break for lunch. Do drop in.


For $1 tacos.


Back to the shop to weld up the jack plate.




And that completes all of the major welding on the frame. I still need to make some eyelets and weld them on for the safety chains, and the upper shock mounts still need to be figured out. Also, I might weld on some studs (unplated hex bolts) to use as wire way attachment points, but that is pretty much it for the welding.

So I had hoped to get the chassis all welded and up on wheels rolling this weekend, but that was looking like it wasn't going to happen. Was running out of time. Anyway, I decided to at least mock up the springs and axle for a photo op, when I found that the spring bushings for the rear spring eyes needed to be smaller (1-1/4 OD) than the ones I had bought that fit the shackle hanger (1-1/2 OD).

Now for those of you that think I do everything the right way the first time, you may want to avert your eyes now (actually it turned out pretty good, so you are safe). Rather than reorder more bushings and waste time and money, I decided to attempt to turn the rubber (poly?) bushings down. (Hack Alert.) How to chuck it? Hmm. Well I made a mandrel by slipping the bushing on to its sleeve, then I wrapped the end of the sleeve that was sticking out with a couple of wraps of do-nut cardboard box material (butch, I know), then that slipped snuggly into a short piece of 1/2 nom pipe. That made it long enough to use one of the spring bolts to clamp it together and chuck it with out pinching the nut in the jaws of the lathe. The first one cut a little rough on slow speed.


But I was able to true it up and finish it nicely with a good snug fit by hitting it with some emery cloth.


Here's a better pic of the mandrel set-up.


And the fit was good.


Here's a pic of it running in the lathe. Higher speed gave a nicer finish. Small cuts were not very effective just making dust, but deeper cuts peeled back a nice flap that I was able to trim off here and there. You can see the cutter burying itself under the flap here. A little further along and the flap would invert like a turtle neck sweater and I would stop the lathe and trim it off by cutting with diagonal cutters and peeling it off. Couple passes like this, a little plunge cut to square up the flange, some sanding to get the final fit and finish, wash rinse repeat, and all is good.


Here are some of the shreds of rubber that peeled off.


The shackles came laser cut with 1/2 inch clearance holes so I had to drill them out to 9/16 clearance. Used the mill and the digital readouts to bang thru all four of them.


And then a milestone moment, if only just in mock-up.




So the shackles are pointing forward a tad, but that is completely unloaded, so they should settle back when I get some more weight on it (at least that's the plan).

Had to break the axle mock-up back down in case Karl needs to flip the frame out of his way; more steel coming into the shop tomorrow.

[DJT]

Looking really good, and thanks for the great documentation! I wish I had taken more time to get pics along the way during my build.

I'm jealous of Fab Mecca for sure, mouth waters to hear about all those machines...

Keep up the good work!

[KCStudly]

Thanks for the nice comments DJT. Details R Us. It's what I do. Plus the more I show the better the record of the quality that I am building in. I tend to take on hobbies and then move on to the next thing in a year or three. Not sure if the wife is going to come around to the idea of actually enjoying camping either, so resale attributes are on my mind a little bit.

Yeah, I just can't thank Karl enough for opening the doors to his shop for me to use. It would have taken me years to get this far in my own shop. Well maybe not years...I probably would have never started, or would be struggling much harder and cutting corners on details. There are other ways to get it done, just takes work and persistence.

I only have 14-15 weeks to get this campable, so having the shop has been a godsend.

[KCStudly]

When I arrived at the shop the frame was hanging (like a side of beef) out of Karl's way. Easy enough.


On to some of the smaller details. I got out the safety chain, which came as a single length with quick links on each end, found the center, clamped it to the bench, and cut the center link out with the cutoff wheel.


I wanted to form a loop or U-bend in some round bar to use as a welded mounting point for the safety chain. I didn't want to weld directly on the chain because (1) it is brite zinc plated, and (2) chain is usually a higher alloy than mild steel and you can get cracking issues when welded. Karl had recently added a bunch of tie down points to his single axle landscape/utility trailer, and we thought that this would be a good way to attach the safety chains, too. Here you can see the forming die set that Karl made for the press feature on the iron worker, and the 3/8 round bar just after the press has retracted.


Hold the rod in the die to a reference point, press to form, then match and mark the length of the stub end.


And here it is cut.


So with the frame moved over on to saw horses upside down, I decided I wanted them to stick down and out at a 45 deg angle off of the bottom edge of the tongue rail. Here's the first one welded on from the bottom.

Kept telling myself, "don't forget the chain, don't forget the chain...".


Here are both welded from the bottom.


Flipped the frame again and welded them on top.



Ready to install the bushings for the swivel coupling pintle shaft. Note the one on the left is the one that got the bigger chamfer to clear the radius on the pintle shoulder. It needs to go in front.


Double nutted the back end, put a little high pressure grease on the 5/8 threads, doubled up the big washers with a little grease in between both front and rear, and got the rear bushing all lined up.


The bushing wanted to cock out of alignment, so I took the puller set up back apart, and sanded a little chamfer on the bushing to lead it in. Also, I removed the double nut and instead sandwiched the rear washers with the nuts. This allowed me to wrap a little craft paper around the forward rear nut so that it would pilot the bushing to the center.

That did the trick. Cranked it right in.



Set up the front bushing (with the larger chamfer, check).


And cranked it right in.


Here's the front bushing with the puller removed.


And the rear.


And from the top.


So due to the interference fit of the bushing in the sleeve, the inside bore gets squished and needs to be reamed back out to the proper fit with the pintle shaft. Here you can see the shavings of brass being pushed ahead of the reamer.


And here's a sort of nothing shot of the reamer shank in the front.


So that seams easy enough...not. Doing this by hand was tedious. First you adjust the reamer by snugging the wedge bolt in the tip, then run the reamer in with a big wrench while pushing on the end of the shank, then you catch the reamer out the other end, set the reamer and wrench back on the bench, clean the chips out of the hole and reamer, check fit, lube reamer and repeat....over and over and over, until the pintle fits perfectly. Must have taken twenty passes to get it just so. Worked until 8:30pm.

But this next pic was worth it.


I'm very happy.

Thanks for looking.

[SteveW]

Just amazed watching your progress.

[KCStudly]

Thanks Steve.

Well I didn't' get much done this evening. The shocks haven't shipped yet and aren't due to be delivered until next week or later (funny how Amazon gives you all that time to decide if you want to spend more money to up the speed of your shipping).

I was thinking that I would weld some small bolts onto the insides of the frame rails to act as mounting studs for the electrical wires to hang from. I like this idea because it avoids a bunch of holes in the frame where water can get inside of the unprotected steel, and the heads of the bolts will keep the plastic Adel clamps ("P" shaped single hole clamps) or anchor style zip ties away from the frame a little, helping to prevent crud and moisture from collecting on top of the wire ways. However, I haven't planned out my electrical scheme much at all yet, and I have none of the components in hand.

In short, my building has caught up to my planning and material preparedness.

So I decided to run up to TS and see about getting a breakaway kit so I could figure out how to mount that, but no luck, they where out. Well I didn't want to waste a trip, so I picked up a 7 pin plug/whip, a 7 pin socket to upgrade the Jeep, and a 7 to 4 pin adapter so that I can still connect my 4 flat boat trailer. {The Jeep blew a brake light fuse last week and now has a turn signal lamp out. My suspicion is on the existing trailer wire (installed prior to our ownership) shorting out, so having this on hand for when I get a chance to sort it out is probably a good idea.} Anyway, I headed back to the shop via Wally world and they didn't have breakaway kits either (not surprised).

During the ride I questioned if I really wanted to weld the bolts on, since I half thought I might put the running lights up on the cabin walls a bit to get them a little further away from any rocks, so by the time I got to the shop it was almost 6pm and I didn't know what I could work on . Need to finish up the welding on the frame before straightening and paint. Makes more sense to assemble the axle components once it is hanging on the trailer, rather than chasing it around on the bench and making it more heavy and difficult to put in place. The draw bar half of the coupler is on hold until I get closer to my final ride height. Karl encouraged me to do a little material planning, so I jotted a few things down on a list. Then while we were talking and discussing the build I grabbed a piece of 100 grit (or so) emery cloth and went around and scrubbed on all of the top facing corners of the tubing where the Time Saver didn't remove the mill scale. Hey, progress is progress, even if that is all I got done. Drooled on the swivel pintle and safety chain install a bit more, Karl called a wood working buddy of his and asked for recommendations for plywood suppliers, and called it a night around 7:45pm.

This weekend I'll be assisting with the pickup truck bed conversion of the range rover owned by the guy with the CNC router in exchange for tool time. Karl hopes that we can get that done in a weekend or two. I don't think I can afford anymore time than that. Even if the CNC saves my time, it might take more time making the arrangements and running around transporting material than I can afford to loose. We'll see.

I think I'm going to have to spend less time browsing around on here so that I can focus on the build.

[KCStudly]

Sorry, no pictures this evening, but I did notice that I am credited with 734 images, so if your need a fix check my gallery.

After work, and prying myself away from the forum (and GPW's RC links in the big Thrifty thread), I went in and created a copy of TPCE computer model and started picking off the pieces of foam, taking a head count. If I had set up a 'family' (or iPart factory) for each material, I might have been able to get the computer to spit out a cut list, but my method was to just build each component in it's 3D form. So for example if I wanted the computer to add up all of the foam for me I would have had to make the foam into a sheet metal style so that it could be formed into curved shapes and the computer would still be able to figure out what the flat dimensions were. I would have had to do the same thing for the plywood, and use the sheet metal feature for that, too. I didn't do that. I just modeled each piece as a 'part' in the form that it will be in the finished product.

Also, it is not a good idea to label or 'name' parts by their dimensions because when you make revisions the file names are not easy to change. If I do that for steel shapes, tubing and lumber I will just remodel/replace a part and give the new one a new name, rather than try to edit all of the files (Inventor uses a nested file arrangement for everything, and the file name can be overwritten on the 'browser' w/o actually changing the file name...it's complex). There are tools to measure line lengths, angles, and loops, but I am not a master at all aspects of the software, so measuring arc lengths, and just generally getting it to do exactly what you want can be more trouble than it's worth. That meant that I had to actually go in and calculate the arc lengths and jot a bunch of dimensions down. (I suppose, if I had a complete set of drawings (different format from the model) I could have done it differently, but...

Anyway, once I had all of the flat shapes of foam figured out I was able to create a cut schedule layout in 2D to optimize my material usage and figure out how many sheets I need to buy. Looks like 7 sheets of 1-1/2 thk 4 x 8; 1 sheet of 1-1/2 thk 2 x 8; and 1 sheet of 3/4 thk 4 x 8. I'm going to go back and look at the drops to see if I can eliminate the 2 x 8 sheet. However I may want to use it just to have the nice true factory edges since this piece cut in half is what I will add to the ends of 2 of the 4 x 8's to get my 4 x 10 footers for the side walls.

Spent a minute or two using Tempest to search for local Craiggies Listings (CL) of surplus foam sheets, and found a couple of potential sources.

Next I will do the same thing for all of my plywood. As I picked off the foam parts from the model I 'suppressed' them (turned them off) and boy, it sure looks like there is a lot of wood there. I did say that this was a hybrid build and not a pure Foamie, so there!

[GPW]

Hybrid is the best compromise .... pick your wood carefully .... especially the ply ... Wouldn’t want to put a “lesser quality" cabin on such an outstanding trailer eh ...???