Summer time

This has been a very interesting week... Eric W. (Owner of the business) fired the operations manager and the other mechanic on Tuesday. I am now in charge of all the maintenance and repairs in our fleet working on ways to streamline the operation now as I am now expected to accomplish in a 40 hour week what used to take two mechanics a full 80-90 hours total. I'm setting up a maintenance schedule and parts inventory list right now as well as deciding on the best way to track service costs. Also decided I need to buy some better torx bits... I broke every T-40 we had in the shop by 10:00 this morning (The 24" breaker bar may or may not have had something to do with this).

Week: 48
Total: 306.5

Summer 2013

More work on the flatbed project... Built a new carrier bearing mount, got the air solenoid for the dump gate plumbed in along with splicing the wiring harness into a junction box. Just waiting on parts now so I can put the wet kit on.

Also learning about all the "interesting" things that Case engineers did on a 580B Construction King... You have to pull off the loader frame, backhoe, and cab to access the last bolt holding the brake housings on!

Week: 51

Total: 258.5

Maybe it'll work now...

Tried posting this before but went back and checked and it was no where to be seen... Stupid computers anyway. This week I rebuilt the purge valve on a Wabco air dryer. Seemed like there must be a simpler way to make it work (Less moving parts would be good I think). Also picked up a side job mounting a flatbed on one of Knutzen Farm's trucks. Smiley's quoted around $40,000 to build a flatbed so they bought a truck with a flatbed on it for $10,000 and I'm doing the fab/mods to make it work on the new truck. Got the hinge laid out and welded in after deciding that plasma cutters work WAY better for cutting through doubled frames than a torch. Rust had started between the doubler and original frame on the donor truck and buckled the frame all the way up to the cab (I'll take pics next week) so I used the torch to cut the hinge out... Not doing that again. Moved a cross member a few inches to clear the hoist cylinders and I need to build a new bracket for the carrier bearing. I should be putting the wet kit on the truck next week.

Weeks hours: 54.5
Total: 207.5

Summer 2013

Learning how to deal with office staff this week... 4:00 yesterday, "yeah we need that truck at 7am." Well thanks for the heads up!

60 hours for the week
153 total

Summer 2013

Learning about how an ABS trailer brake valve is "not" supposed to work... Took it apart hoping it was just stuck but the cup seal is hardened up causing it to leak by and dump air pressure.

Also did some welding on a cross member mount after doing an inspection.

Weeks hours: 41.75
Total: 134.75

Summer 2013

This week I learned that sometimes it's not always leaking because the gasket it bad (See picture of isolators).

Workin' on getting my class B CDL and I am a new fan of a super 10 transmission.

Hours for week: 43

Total: 93

Summer 2013

Alright, so what is the "correct" way to install s-cam seals? Given square cut o-ring (Quad ring) and a traditional cup seal I'm putting the cup seal on the hub side with the o-ring on the inboard side (Towards the slack adjuster) so that it will purge the grease where you can see it. According to Danny the cup seal goes on the inboard side but reversed so that it will still purge grease correctly. Seems like it would work either way just fine to me? Every reference I've found has 2 cup seals with both installed towards the inboard but none reference the o-ring?

Also did some welding on a Ford L8000 12 yd dump truck. The box frame was breaking near the hinges so I air-arced out the cracks and welded front and back with 6011 and fabricated some stiffeners so that it will not break again. Had to weld up some cracks in the box floor too and learned how to weld on light gauge steel with 1/8" welding rod. With amperage around set around 50 you can feed a filler rod (With the flux scraped off) while you're welding (Similar to TIG welding).

Week: 50 hours
Quarter: 50