The FORD Lounge

[Dorsai]

Your son has excellent taste!  I am enjoying mine as well.

[Gary Lewis]

Nice car, Matthew!  Hard to beat the new features.  

[Nothing Special]

We bought a couple of "beach kayaks" for paddling around the lake at my folks cabin, so now we needed a rack to store them on.  Something close to the lake and easy to use, but that would keep the kayaks off the ground and out of the way.  After looking at some ready-made options I decided to make one myself.

I bought some 10' lengths of 1 1/2" conduit.  I was hoping to use 1 1/4" water pipe (thicker wall) but Menards didn't have any, so I went up to 1 1/2" on the conduit (about 1/16" wall).  I drove a couple of the pipes about 5' into the sand.  That was no picnic!  Swinging a 12 lb sledge while on a step ladder is a lot of Work Maynard!

Once I had the two verticals I notched 4 pipes to weld them on at a 20* angle.  I need about 75' of extension cord to get down to the shore, and my welder was only seeing 116V, so it would just shut down.  Fortunately it was happy to run off my $400 generator.

(I bought this thing when a storm hit us about 7 years ago and our power was out for a few days.  I used it again about 3 years ago when a storm hit the cabin and power was out for a while.  Other than that it's probably been started about 5 times in the seven years.  It started on the first pull.  I wish the $3700 Onan generator in my motorhome (that I've had about $2000 worth of service done on) started that well!)

Anyway, I notched the pipes by hand with a cutoff wheel and a flap disk in my angle grinder.  And welding by generator power worked great (I did take the galvanized coating off with a flap disk where I was going to weld).  A little silver paint on the welded joints and some pipe insulation to protect the kayaks and we have a kayak rack!

[Gary Lewis]

Looks great, Bob!  

Do you get much wind there?  Is there any need to tie them on to the racks?

As for the welder, I don't think mine would have like all the extension cords and low voltage either.  But I haven't tried it on the inverter on Big Blue.  In theory the current is enough, but the square wave might not work.  I need to try that as it would be a slick way to weld in the field.

[Nothing Special]

Do we get much wind?  Here are a couple pics I posted a few years ago:




Seriously, that's the only storm like that one that there's been in my life time.  And I don't know that there's any way to prepare for another like it.

As to whether the kayaks should be tied down, yes, they probably should.  They are well protected from the typical south and west winds we get there, but a strong north wind will definitely flip the top boat off the rack.  I'll get around to that eventually!

[Gary Lewis]

Yes, that was WIND!  Around here that’s not too unusual. In fact, in western OK they use a log chain on a pole instead of a wind sock.

[salans7]

Just had a NASTY microburst pass through over my town. I was on my way home and saw nothing but black skies ahead of me and knew we were in for a bad one. I made it home safe (lots of really bad drivers out there) and found my house in good shape with no noticeable damage. Unfortunately I found that both my F350 and my red Ranger were hammered by tree limbs. Both trucks now have a few more dents that weren't there before, but luckily no glass broken. I'm a little bummed, but it could have been worse and I'm thankful it wasn't.

[Gary Lewis]

Bummer!  Sorry.  But, as you said, it could have been worse.

[salans7]

[Gary Lewis]

Yikes!  It looks like the little guy took the brunt of it.  

[salans7]

Little guy only seems to have a dent in the driver's fender, which is small but more of a crease, so it won't come out easy.

The F350 has a new crease on the edge of the roof above the driver's side door, two dents towards the bottom of the bed on the driver's side, and a new dent towards the top of the bed on the passenger side. It already had dents, but I wasn't trying to give it more, especially on the roof.

I moved the trucks where they are because they're not under the trees for hurricane season. But today's storm was so bad that the winds carried the limbs all the way towards the house.

[grumpin]

Sorry to hear and see that Shaun!

[noclssgt]

salans7 wrote

I tried to drive a Miata once. When I went to close the door, It pushed my knee into the steering wheel and wouldn't close. I'm too tall for small cars.

I couldn't drive them either...at least with the roof on. That was with the seat all the way back and trying to recline the seat a little to make myself fit.

[noclssgt]

salans7 wrote

Little guy only seems to have a dent in the driver's fender, which is small but more of a crease, so it won't come out easy.

The F350 has a new crease on the edge of the roof above the driver's side door, two dents towards the bottom of the bed on the driver's side, and a new dent towards the top of the bed on the passenger side. It already had dents, but I wasn't trying to give it more, especially on the roof.

I moved the trucks where they are because they're not under the trees for hurricane season. But today's storm was so bad that the winds carried the limbs all the way towards the house.

Sorry to hear.
This hit out by my Dad's house (30 min away) from me in Goshen, Ohio on Wednesday:

[Dorsai]

Just out of curiosity, have any of you ever participated in 24 Hours of Lemons racing? Some of us at work keep kicking around the idea of entering a car, and it's starting to sound like we might actually go for it. I'd be interested in hearing about anyone's experience. It's probably too late for us to enter a car this year, so next year's Scrotium 500 would likely be our inaugural race.

[grumpin]

No, but interesting.

Grass Valley Oregon, not in the middle of nowhere, but pretty darn close! Used to drive through there several times a year.

[ratdude747]

No, but I follow ChrisFix on youtube who recently fielded a team. It's more expensive than you'd think... all the safety gear (and safety related required car mods) and supplies are $$$$ and if you cut corners you'll never pass tech. The $500 car limit is deceptive!

[Dorsai]

Yep...some quick research online showed that the required roll cage is going to run $2K+, then there's all the other uncapped safety-related items such as tires, brakes, etc.  $500 sounds cheap, but as you say that's far from the whole story.  I saw someone say that the actual get-to-the-starting-line cost is more like $5K, not counting the safety gear that goes on your body.

Still, $5K spread across 6-8 guys (we have some pretty cool gals in our office, but I don't think any of them are THAT cool) is entirely doable.  My boss just bought a house in a non-HOA area, so he's got the space to keep the vehicle.  I've got tools, some minimal mechanical know-how, and access to a tow vehicle/trailer combo, so there's that.  A couple of other guys who are interested have some background as shade-tree mechanics as well, so we could definitely pull this off.

We're going to need a cool team name, so I may start a thread here at some point looking for suggestions.  My current preference is for 'Florida Man Racing', which lends itself to all kinds of horrific decorating ideas for the car.  

[Gary Lewis]

And you have a logo already!  

Go for it!

[Dorsai]

And if we do, that logo will be on the car!