We made some good progress over the weekend. We've kind of taken a young man in that spent time living out of his car, and is now living in a one room place in another town. I got him a job locally so he stays with us some nights out of the week so he's not burning gas driving an hour back and forth. A good guy, knows tools, is used to working with his hands and he's been helping all weekend so far.
Lastnight, before it got dark we determined that the propane cabinet that's supposed to hold 2 40lb bottles is beyond repair. There's not enough good metal there left to weld to, plus one of the corners was bent enough that it can't be easily straightened. The door attaches to it, so the door would never close properly again. At that point we decided to discard that cabinet and just mount a pair of the 100lbs bottles on a platform we'd build on the tongue.
Then I came inside got a shower and came up with a better idea. The trailer as it is now is just a little heavy on the tongue. We decided to mount the two 100lb bottles on the rear, thus shifting 360lbs to the rear instead of the front, and we'll put the generator on the tongue instead. That should offset some of the weight in the front and make it a little better balanced.
Today we cut off about 100lbs of steel that was left over from the original trailer's tongue and smoothed it out so it can be covered. While he was working on that, I dug into the compressor cabinet which is where most of the damage happened. I got the badly damaged louvered aluminum panel off and got the inside panel off as well as a badly rusted tube that forms the frame. I came up with a plan to reassemble it that should work, but there's still a lot that needs to be straightened.
Yesterday we drove upstate to picked up two 4x8x1/2" sheets of polypropylene to use as counter top. 6 hours total driving for that trip. Why go that far? The one sheet is fire resistant, and retails for $1200, the other one is just blue and retails for $680. We bought both for $145, plus a half a tank, 16 gallons, of gas. I don't know what I'm going to use the fire resistant stuff for, but at least I have it for when I need it and don't have to drive 6 hours again.
I have someone interested in buying a tool that's listed on CL for $1000, hopefully it goes through, that would go towards buying some expanded steel, a full sheet of 18gauge mild steel and some diamond plate. I haven't done metal work like this since shop class in 8th grade, hopefully I still remember some of it.
. Congratulations it looks good love the black color. It's perfect it will be a successful then later you can make another one and have a fleet.
