10/7/24

October 7, '24 - FINALLY AN UPDATE

 Yes, I am still alive! It has been months since my last update but I am slowly recovering from my back surgery in April and have started doing a few things to get the project back on track….

First light duty project I undertook was to clean up the sandblasting cabinet. The cabinet got flooded back when the sprinkler system froze and we just never got around to bringing it back on line. Dumped the old sand out and removed the LED lights so I could clean and remount them with Velcro to make them easier service in the future.

With the cabinet reassembled, I pulled apart the cyclone dust separator and mini shop vac so they could be cleaned up as well. Got them cleaned, reassembled and remounted only to find the on/off switch of the shop vac was stuck in the on position, so I pulled the motor housing apart to access and remove the old switch. With the switch out, I tried blowing it out, tried toggling it to try and get it to click over to the off position, knocking it about to dislodge whatever might be keeping it from changing state but nothing worked so I bit the bullet and bought a new one. Tried it again a few hours later and the friggen thing started working!!! 😡

Another little project I worked on was to create a dash radio opening repair plate. While my dash in fully intact, I know there have been several guys who’s Torinos have had the dash hacked up to allow a modern DIN style radio to be installed. I drew it up on the computer then printed out and stapled it to a piece of cardboard so I could cut it out and dry fit it to my dash to confirm it fit. I freehand trimmed it shape and dropped it onto my dash and it fit pretty well, so I’ll post the pattern for the repair plate onto the HOW-TO section for others to use as needed.










Sunday I went out to the garage to clean some stuff off the workbench and once I had most of the junk cleared away, I saw my Bernzomatic FirePoint torch kit on the shelf. 













I bought this tourch and some alumiweld solder to play around with to see how I can attach my reshaped aluminum fuel tank burp tube to the OEM tube steel mounting bracket and then the burp tube assembly into my new fuel tank. Initial test was sticking a couple pieces of the aluminum tubing I used together and it did a fairly nice (and strong) job. Will also try attaching the tube to a thin piece of sheetmetal. Fingers crossed!








Well feels good to again be doing something project related and hope things begin to move forward again!!!

MORE TO COME

ZEBRA 3 OUT