Posted: 11/12/2021 7:56:41 PM EDT
 I'm just putting the finishing touches on this project. A little background: We have been plowing snow at our family business with a 1st gen Tacoma for about 10 years. It fits places I couldn't put a full-size truck (sidewalks, loading docks, cleanup between buildings, etc.) and it's more useful for us than a side-by-side ATV. We got our first Tacoma (a purple '99) from a guy in Minneapolis - it came with a 6.5 ft Meyer plow on a shitty homemade mount. I built some wings, lifted it a little, unfucked the previous owner's wiring, etc. It worked pretty well for us after that, but the frame was beginning to rust pretty badly. The truck had a salvage title, so it wasn't eligible for the rust warranty (which, I understand was a buyback for the 1st gen trucks.) I pulled the box off a couple times over the years to repair and reinforce the frame rails behind the cab, but I noticed some pretty severe rust and cracks forming behind the front suspension crossmember about two years ago. In late 2019, I found a cheap Tacoma in Salt Lake City - a 1997 5-speed/4x4 with a bad 3.4L V6. I don't really know the history of the truck, aside from the fact that it came from the southeast and had a Jasper reman engine in it. The seller told me he moved out there from Georgia, and the Jasper engine blew up before the first Utah winter (later, I pulled the intake manifold and found that it had swallowed a valve.) My '99 had a rough body and a rusty frame but a strong 3.4 and a good automatic transmission, so I figured I'd just lift the entire drivetrain and wiring harness from that truck and use all the sheet metal and the frame from the southern truck. Instead of flying out to Vegas for the SEMA show in 2019, I drove my F-650 and scooped up the Tacoma with my wheel lift on the way home. We had taken the insurance coverage off the '99 and let the registration lapse and didn't drive it off the farm in 2019-2020, and I tried to be gentle while plowing snow. It blew a head gasket during that season, so I pulled the engine out and resealed everything and installed a new timing belt in a few days between blizzards. Felt like a waste of time, since I knew I'd be pulling the drivetrain out again shortly thereafter. Cylinder walls still had good crosshatching and compression was good after reassembly, despite the engine having 255k miles on it. The Utah truck sat behind my shop for all of 2020 while I tried to get caught up on other projects and filled in for employees who had left (we're still shorthanded.) This spring, I pulled it inside and stripped the truck down to its bare frame, marked and palletized all the parts I had removed, then sandblasted the frame, reinforced the rear rails with 3/16 plate, built a nice sturdy plow mount, built a front bumper to hold the Meyer plow hydraulic pump, and built a tower to hold my amber light bar. We keep vehicles forever, so I wanted to take whatever steps were required to prevent the Tacoma's frame rust achilles heel from reemerging. I had seen Land Rover guys galvanize their frames, and I had previously built flatbeds for an Isuzu and my F-650 and had them galvanized, so I knew that was the route I wanted to go with the Tacoma frame. I sent along the frame, crossmembers, trailer hitch, plow mount, fuel tank skidplate and hanger straps, exhaust hangers, rack & pinion mounting clamps, you name it... anything I thought could be dipped into 850° molten zinc without warping. (I did not dip the front bumper because I designed it by the seat of my pants and had no way to analyze the stresses I was putting into it with the plow. If it cracks and needs to be repaired in the future, I'd rather not weld through zinc.) AZZ Galvanizing in Winsted, MN did the deed. I think they charge about 45¢/lb, but they don't even begin charging by weight until you get over 700 lbs. All my parts totaled less than that, so they charged me their minimum fee of $309 out the door. I took the cab and bed off the rusty '99 in early September, and then started swapping parts - I took the differentials and suspension first, then swapped the engine & trans once I had a roller. I had to drill and tap zinc out of every threaded hole on the new frame. I discovered a bunch of differences between the 1997 and 1999 Tacomas, including leaf spring length and differences in steering rack and column splines. I had to cut out a piece of the floor from the automatic '99 cab and bond it into the floor of the manual '97 cab. Lots of piddly stuff. Redid all my plow wiring again, too (I got a lot better at my craft in the last ~5 years.) As of today, the truck is roadworthy - I just picked it up from the alignment shop a couple hours ago. Still need to do a couple minor things in the coming week, like paint the front bumper and light tower, reinstall the corner lights, and fix a leaky hydraulic coupler on the plow. I've been picking away at it since mid-August, but probably only managed to give it a few hours of focused, dedicated labor per week. This year has been a blur... I've been running delivery routes four days/week for a driver who left us in January, spent a couple weeks mid-summer upfitting a new refrigerated box truck, currently racing to prep everything for winter, plus I've got a contractor building a 50x120 shop right off the back of my existing 40x60, so there's been a lot of foot traffic and interruptions when I'm in the shop. Lots of excuses to explain why it took me 3 months to bolt together a stupid little truck. I'm going to jizz Fluid Film all over the bottom of this buggy and hope it lasts us another 20 years.   Found it on the zuckbook.  The rusty '99 circa march 2019.  Somewhere in Wyoming on the way home.  Cab and box removed from clean frame.  Drivetrain removed from the rolling chassis.  Frame sandblasted and reinforcement plates installed.  My shitty squirtgun action.  Palletized, ready to drop off at the galvanizer.  Back from the galvanizer.  Galvanized frame crossmembers.  Piddly junk I had galvanized.  Robust plow mount I built, tying the front crossmember to the frame horns.  Rusty '99 teardown begins.  Trimmed the rusty frame for easier maneuvering in the shop.  '99 axles, engine, and trans bolted into '97 frame  Cab reinstallation.  Upgraded my phone at this point, so the photos are clearer. Truck still has dents and a missing flare... if I made it too nice, I'd be afraid to use it.   Headed to the alignment shop this morning.  Front bumper detail. That's about it. |
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It took 20 years to get that bad? Here's a 2006 Chevy Colorado I scrapped at work the other day. I didn't cut it in half, it fell apart when I picked it up with the forklift. Fuck salt. Attached File |
| Boss definitely makes a good product. The center section of my plow mount is removable so I'm not married to the Meyer, but their plows have been treating us fine for 30 years and I've got a stash of spare parts and experience maintaining them. It's admittedly an outdated design, but I'm just plowing one property. |
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I feel your pain. This is what the floor pans from a 2001 Jeep TJ in Wisconsin looks like. Frame was already repaired 5 years ago. And really nice work on the plow truck. Attached File |
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Thanks! Took a little time this evening to clean and abrade the bumper and light tower, hang them up, and spray them with epoxy primer. I'm waiting for the first coat of UPOL Raptor to flash off before I add a second, and then I'm going to let them cure until tomorrow night before I topcoat them with a single-stage beige/gold urethane that should kinda-sorta match the truck's accent color. I hope. First work I've done in the new shop, and I already got bedliner overspray on my slab! We just got the radiant heat powered up last night. As soon as I wrap up the Tacoma and undercoat the last of my box trucks, I'm going to begin the long process of outfitting the shop.   
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Got those parts topcoated last night and reinstalled them today. U-POL Raptor bedliner with some gold Nason Ful-thane single stage urethane over the top. Had to guess on the color since the truck was two-toned by the dealership's ride pimping department. I also replaced the ISO 5675 hydraulic connectors with leak-free flat-face couplers and wrapped up the wiring for the amber light bar. I found an unoccupied switch blank and installed an OEM hazard light switch from my spare cab to activate the circuit, so it's stealthy and clean. That's about it for this truck, just needs to be undercoated with Fluid Film before it goes out on any salty public roads. If we get a blizzard tonight, the truck is ready. All systems go.   
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Fuck it, let's get into it. I don't really feel like the shop is my accomplishment to celebrate yet, honestly. We've just been cutting checks and the GC and all his subcontractors have been knocking it out of the park. They're slated to complete the building this coming week; all that really remains is to seal the slab, caulk a few seams, and finish some tin on the roof of the little transition hallway between the front (old) shop and the back (new) shop. Once they're out of here, I have to restore and hang my crane, build an office, run water lines back there, build another rotary phase converter, etc. So my work hasn't really begun yet, aside from sitting in meetings with the builder. I don't know how you white-collar guys do it; these meetings have been torturous. Our family business is agriculture; we grow oyster and shiitake mushrooms and distribute other specialty mushrooms to wholesalers in the twin cities area, as well as ship dried mushrooms all over North America. We run three refrigerated trucks and have drivers in Minneapolis/St. Paul four days per week. I'm second generation and have a lot of mechanical skills that my father is lacking (he's the founder of the business,) so I have carved out a position where I build, maintain, and repair the farm's vehicles and equipment. That could be anything from rebuilding a Stihl chainsaw (after an employee runs straight 87-octane through it,) to engine-swapping a Bobcat or a box truck, to cleaning boiler orifices, to fabricating a new squirrel-cage blower assembly for our oyster growing room, to galvanizing a Tacoma frame. The front shop is 40x60 wood frame on a floating slab, built in 1990. My father built it for farm maintenance and as a contingency plan in case the agriculture business fell on hard times; he had this notion that he could rent the space to a mechanic. Not being a mechanic himself, some of the construction choices and amenities were a little screwy. It had two 12ft doors, so we couldn't fit a 12'6" box truck inside. It had a lift, but it was a four-post with no center jacks so it was really only good for oil changes and exhaust repairs. It had an air compressor and piping around the perimeter, but it was all perfectly horizontal black iron pipe with no dryer or drains. I've been taking an active role in upgrading the shop for about ten years now: We blew out the top of the south overhead door framing and raised it by a foot, then replaced one 24" panel with two 18" panels, so it's now 13' tall and I can fit a box truck inside. I found a used 7k Rotary 2-post lift and installed it in front of the 4-post, at an angle that allows a box truck to clear it when it's pulled into the south bay. I coordinated with a directional boring company who came out and drilled a water line 10ft underground from another building, then I plumbed the shop and installed a sink and hose reel. I installed a 10hp rotary phase converter and ran EMT to a bunch of outlets around the shop. I retrofitted the shop (and the rest of the farm) to LED lighting. I rebuilt the whole air system in the shop. Etc, etc, etc. During this same time, I had begun collecting a bunch of machines and equipment. I'm kind of a slave to this family business, and since I've forfeited the opportunity to go out and forge my own path in life, I felt like I needed to invest in my passion (metalworking and fab) to keep myself sane (and help me better perform the job I had created for myself.) Unfortunately, there's only so much room inside a 40x60 shop and it was already pretty tight before I started filling it with mills, a lathe, radial drill, press brake, bandsaws, pedestal grinders, tube bender, plasma cutters and welders, paint shakers, etc. I have a big vibratory tumbler, slip roll, and a 5x10 plasma table sitting in cold storage in the back of the pole barn currently, because the shop is completely filled with shit. For the last couple of years, I'd have to spend 20-30 minutes shuffling machines around with my forklift if I needed to get a truck inside. Not really a big deal for a quick oil change & chassis lube on a refrigerated truck, but I have some longer-term big truck projects that were really clogging up the shop. Upfitting a class-7 truck with a dump body, for example. I'm always running around the farm trying to stomp out fires, so if I had a spare hour or an afternoon I could devote to a big project, half of my time would be wasted just reconfiguring the shop before I could begin to work. We're in Minnesota, so working outdoors in the winter is pretty much off the table, and working on anything outdoors in the summer is miserable due to humidity, especially if it's a fab project with any bare steel. Enter: big shop. We knew right from the beginning, not only was this filling the present need for a larger truck shop, but this building should to be seen as a future diversification strategy for the business. All the planning took place while we were already in the thick of the COVID-19 bullshit, and the early restaurant shutdowns really sent a panic through the foodservice industry. We came out of it alright, but it did highlight the fragility of our industry (given government interventions.) I want to be able to make a living doing fabrication or manufacturing out of this facility in the future, if need be. I work on big stuff and I generally work alone, so my criteria for the shop was essentially: lots of square footage, pretty high ceiling, and an overhead crane. I found a good deal and purchased an old 6-ton underslung bridge crane with a 45 ft span, removed from Pittsburgh Steel in Wheeling, WV. Dragged that home and set it on dunnage. Now we had something to engineer a structure around. I paced around in the mucky, wooded area behind the old shop and figured the terrain would allow for a building with a ~50x120 ft footprint. I drew a 50x120 ft rectangle in a rudimentary CAD program, drew some overhead doors openings in it, and fired off an email containing the PDF to a precast concrete building manufacturer, asking for a rough ballpark pricepoint. We've never built anything like this and had no idea if we could even afford precast. We knew we couldn't hang a bridge crane from a pole barn, and with steel prices skyrocketing during the pandemic, concrete seemed like an option worth exploring. We got an estimate and it seemed high, but feasible. I didn't know at the time, but my dad had apparently been dreaming for years about building a new growing house out of precast panels. The current oyster growing room is inside an old brick hog farrowing barn, and we've had some issues with mold and cracking brick over the years due to the extremely high humidity inside the barn. Given his interest, he was receptive to building a precast shop to familiarize ourselves with that mode of construction. A friend of mine suggested I talk to his father, who's a senior project manager at a construction company that handles a lot of commercial jobs. I got in touch with him, he took my CAD drawing, and he came back with detailed engineering drawings and a quote for a finished building. We signed a contract, started having meeting after meeting after meeting, and now we have a shop that's pretty much exactly what I pulled out of my ass and sketched in CAD.  This is the bridge crane the day I dragged it home (4/30/2020.) That's parked right where the new shop would go, prior to removing any trees or doing soil correction to remove the "highly plastic clay" and replace it with granular fill from our sand pit.  This was March 9, 2021 after I had begun to cut down trees and clear brush in preparation for dirtwork. Off to the left, you can kind of see the horse riding arena my dad built for my mom right before their divorce. He slaved away for several weeks and I think she used it once. I was storing a bunch of trucks, trailers, and parts cars in there before construction began, and then I had to rip it all down and relocate my junkyard.  Biting off more than I could chew on March 7, 2021. That brush pile burned for days.  Excavator working on the great soil correction operation on July 20, 2021. Core samples indicated that we needed to remove almost 6 ft of topsoil and 'highly plastic clay' from the site and replace it with granular fill. Fortunately, the soil here was all mixed up by glaciers during prehistoric times, so we had a nice productive vein of sand under my firing range about 100 yards away. The excavator dug out the sand, then hauled all the clay and black dirt to the site where the sand had originated and he backfilled the hole. (You can see a Tacoma axle sitting in front of the shop in this photo.)  The soil correction finished, August 4, 2021. The excavators compacted the backfill continually as they built up the site, passing an engineer's soil compaction testing throughout the process.  After the compacted soil had rested for a couple weeks, trenches were excavated for the footings on August 14, 2021. Groundwater continued to be a concern, so they put a base layer of rock below the footings and we ran pumps continually. Later, we installed drain tile along the north and west walls of the building and the water level remains below the frost line.  Footings being poured on August 19, 2021.  Footings cured for over a month. Boom lifts appeared on September 25, 2021 and I got up there and snapped some photos. I got some cool panoramic photos, too, but the attachment thing won't let me upload them.  First panels went up on September 28, 2021.  The 300-ton Demag Absolute Unit (9/27/21.) The crane operator forbade me from working inside the old shop that week, because he was swinging the precast panels up and over the roof of the building. I had the purple Tacoma cab inside the pole barn, and I was working on stripping the body wiring harness and interior out of it. Really made me appreciate my air-conditioned shop.  My beat up iPhone 6S was not exactly the paragon of image clarity.  October 1st, all the walls were up, the inverted double-T roof panels were set in place, and the crane departed. I got a new iPhone, too, so the images got a bit crisper.  October 9th, prior to roofing, caulking, backfill, slab, etc.  October 17, drain plumbing roughed in for toilet, sinks, and trench drain. We're just going with holding tanks for now, rather than installing a mound system.  This is the site of the transition link, which allows foot traffic between the old and new shops. A couple years ago, my mother converted her detached garage into a spa with an infinity pool (got that divorce money, I guess) so I went over to her place and removed a 10x7 garage door. When we were designing this shop, I remembered I had that door so I had them frame an opening that size for the transition hallway. This way I'll be able to secure the passage from the inside of the back shop. I can't drive my forklift through a 7ft door, but we also opted not to remove the low-overhead mezzanine inside the back of the existing shop.  They poured a 6-inch slab on October 20th, and I tried to keep it wet for several days afterwards to increase the strength as it cured. The test samples are around 5700 psi.  October 29th, more than a week passed and the subcontractors were able to drive their scissor lifts on the new slab. We had HVAC guys installing radiant heat and mini splits, electricians got my lights and outlets up, and the precast concrete builders finally finished caulking all the seams in the walls and roof panels. We had to use those expensive-ass roll-up doors because a paneled overhead door would interfere with my crane ways, which will hang from the double-T roof panels. If you look closely, you might be able to see the rectangular steel plates embedded into the end walls - that's where the crane ways will anchor to prevent swaying. We should have 16ft under the hook when the cable is fully retracted. For scale, those gray doors are 12Wx14H, and the white door on the end is 20Wx16H.  First snowfall, November 13th. I didn't really photograph that little transition hallway, but you can see it there. Wood framed, tinned inside and out, nothing too special.  Today (11/20/21.)  Today (11/20/21.)  I picked up two 20ft shipping containers on October 6th down at the railyard in Minneapolis. Forgot to take a photo after the second one was on there, it looked hilarious... two 20s on a 32ft trailer.    Here's kinda what I envision for the office I want to build inside the new shop. I suck at SketchUp, so I haven't figured out how to cut door and window openings yet. Half of the first-floor conex box will be a bathroom, with the other half being storage. Cantilevered rack faces toward the middle of the shop, so I can easily pick material with the crane. The top will be my office, and the area under the overhang can accommodate six Vidmar cabinets for small parts. The deck outside the office would be pretty pimp if it had a railing, a picnic table, and a pergola with some edison bulbs. I'll probably place all my machines in the area around the office, and try to keep the south end of the shop open (between all the overhead doors.) I don't want to anchor anything in that end of the shop, and I plan on getting a set of column lifts rather than anchoring a big 4-post or 2-post lift to the slab. Anyway... like I said, I'll probably throw some more photos up here once the crane restoration and office build get underway. |
| Yup! It was wild as hell to watch a building pop up that fast. Major respect for all the tradesmen and laborers who came together to make it happen. I've been working 7 days/week all year, there's no way I could've gotten anywhere on the project without delegating the construction to a competent general contractor. |
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Hell yeah. 40x60 is a really nice size for a home shop. If I didn't need to upfit and rebuild box trucks, I could probably find a clever way to fit all my machines into the old 40x60 shop. This morning, one of the laborers from the GC's firm came out and sprayed the whole slab with sealer. Once that dries, I can start to move stuff into the shop. I have to get a Kenworth inside within the next day or two and treat the frame with Fluid Film. Then I'm heading out to Vegas for a few days with my girlfriend to celebrate her birthday, and then I can start working on the shop. I think one of the first things I want to do is cut the floor out of one of my containers, set it in place, plumb water to it, and install a toilet and sink. After that, I need to get started on the bridge crane. The engineer drew some hangers... nothing particularly clever, just a shitload of 4x4x1/4 angle and 3/8x5 flat. The crane way rails will be 42.9lb/ft 15 inch S-beam, and they're capped with 8 inch 11.5lb channel. The steel costs are going to be astronomical if we buy 240ft of rail right now, and I'm not confident we'll see prices come down any time soon. I have a 35-ton Di-Acro press brake, which should have no trouble bending that 3/8x5 plate for the double-T roof hangers as long as I use a wide enough V-opening bottom die. I don't have anything wider than 1 inch, so I drew the side profile of a 3-inch V-opening die and I'm having a guy across town cut out a bunch of them from a plate of 1 inch mild steel. I'm going to square them up and run a bead down the sides to create a laminated die. I'm going to have to create the hangers in two pieces and weld them down the middle, since they're so deep they would contact the press brake if I attempted to do them out of a single piece. So that's where I'm at presently. More to come.   
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Quoted: Hell of a project, thanks for the write up! Have no idea galvanizing was so reasonable. It's by far the easiest way to deal with steel - as long as you are detail disassembling. You need to be careful with with some assemblies - bulkheads have a tendency to rack. Attached File Attached File Great truck OP |
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Nice Rover! You need to be conscious of dissimilar thicknesses of metal in a single assembly, and certain asymmetrical stock (like diamond tread plate.) Thin sheet will absorb the heat of the molten zinc much faster than a thicker framing member that may surround the sheet, so the sheet may bulge outward and develop a permanent wrinkle. I put a lot of thought into expansion and contraction when I built the flatbed for my F-650. The uniform material thickness and bolted-in wheel tubs and toolboxes allowed the side skirts to expand and contract unencumbered, and the body didn't experience any warpage. You also need to keep in mind that air needs to vent out the top of the part and zinc needs to drain out the bottom, and holes need to be drilled or punched in sealed assemblies to prevent voids and puddles.  
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Quoted: Nice Rover! You need to be conscious of dissimilar thicknesses of metal in a single assembly, and certain asymmetrical stock (like diamond tread plate.) Thin sheet will absorb the heat of the molten zinc much faster than a thicker framing member that may surround the sheet, so the sheet may bulge outward and develop a permanent wrinkle. I put a lot of thought into expansion and contraction when I built the flatbed for my F-650. The uniform material thickness and bolted-in wheel tubs and toolboxes allowed the side skirts to expand and contract unencumbered, and the body didn't experience any warpage. You also need to keep in mind that air needs to vent out the top of the part and zinc needs to drain out the bottom, and holes need to be drilled or punched in sealed assemblies to prevent voids and puddles. https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/149770/FE1FA824-117A-4349-AE4F-3D73300D6401-2181142.jpg https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/149770/67CE8FE1-CAD0-4BEE-8D23-BBC745480C1B-2181143.jpg Yep - lot easier to get fully stripped with Rovers tho - the panels are Al, but easy with the right prep. All of mine save ones been sent to the tanks. Long term just makes sense but I like spangling anyway. |
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I managed to get that Kenworth and the Tacoma undercoated on Friday morning before I flew out to Vegas, so I can start working on the shop when I get home. I took some time on Thanksgiving day to rip the plywood out of the container floor and plasma cut the crossmembers out of it. I have to do some cleanup when I get home, and then I'm going to cut a door in the side of the container and fab a wall to create two ~8x10ft rooms, one of which will become the shop's bathroom. Then it will get positioned over the stubbed-out plumbing and anchored to the slab. After that, I'll have to position the second container atop the first and build a staircase. Gathering some intel at the container park on Fremont Street right now.    
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Got back from Vegas last Friday. Ended up cancelling our flight home when we liberated a pristine 04 Subaru Forester and road tripped home, lallygagging at hot springs in Utah and a haunted hotel in Colorado. Engine is dismantled currently for head gasket replacement.  The Toyota has been earning its keep. Carved out a little time for my container fort today.    Well-behaved certified forklift operators rarely make history.    I'll either keep this thread updated or updates will be so infrequent this thread will be archived. Definitely one of those two. |
   Found some time over the last couple evenings to get started on the legs for my office. Strippit turret punch has been getting a workout. I'm using carriage bolts to achieve the old timey bridge beam aesthetic because I'm not set up to squeeze solid rivets at this time. Tie-in plates, feet, additional bracing etc next. "Cars & Bikes" 
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