Posted by Fatjay on December 04, 2016 at 18:44:45 from (209.95.50.95):
In the summer my kubota b8200 will be a lawn mowing machine, and in the winter it will be a snow blowing machine. One of those two I'll need some protection from the elements.
Rolled into home depot to look at a new toilet, an hour later I rolled out with $173 in steel and a die hard determination to build a steel cab on the new tractor. What can I say, I'm easily distracted. You don't want to hear what my wife had to say about it when I showed up back home without a toilet, but rather with a bunch of steel.
Since I hadn't measured anything at all, I went off memory. I bought materials to build a 4'x4'x6' box, and figured I'd scale down if necessary.
After endless frustration with my stupid harbor freight stick welder, I decided to just pick up some ï½¼" bolts and bits, so back to the depot. I own a crappy harbor freight stick welder because I only have a single 15a 110v service in my garage. Getting 220v over there would require trenching around my house and digging up my driveway, or busting up the concrete foundation of the house. There's a design flaw in there somewhere.
Did you know that home depot sells quality lincoln wire feed welders? So in addition to $10 in bolts I walked out with a new $450 welder. Also thank you Home Depot for your military and veterans discounts, $45 off was very nice.
Back in the day the stick welders scoffed at the wire guys, took more skill, and could weld much heavier stuff. Having never done flux core wire welding before, I followed the basic assembly instructions, filed the instructional video in one of the tool drawers to be reviewed shortly after **** freezes over, and got to it.
I must say, my first welds were horrible. Also I was doing multiple 90 degree joints coming to a corner, so that was rough. Within the hour, though, I had the voltage and wire speed dialed in, and was getting pretty good welds. For a 110v machine, it did extremely well. I even ran a little hot in some cases and burned holes that I needed to go back and patch up.
Anyway, I'm out of materials and nothing is open until tomorrow, so no more fun until then. I need 2 more u bars for the front supports, a couple more 6' sections of ï½½" angle iron, flat steel, and a great deal of plexiglass. That should cover construction, plus hinges for the doors, latches, and then start thinking about electrical. 4 way flashers, front and rear mount flood lights, stereo, cup holder, and possibly a heater are on the list.
Once it's complete, I'll take it off the tractor, paint it, sand down and paint the tractor itself, and it should be looking like new. Will post updated pictures as I go, but for now here's how far I got. So far it's been slow because I've still been trying to figure out what I want to do. Now that I have it figured out, just need to get the materials and hopefully it'll move more quickly.
Started with the top, up side down. The worst welds are here, but once it's painted this will be pretty much impossible to tell.
Enter the new welder. Man this thing flies, and makes the work amazingly easy.
These are my favorite pieces. I made two, need two more. I think they'll really came out well. They support the front while going around the break and clutch pedals.
Front is to high, Have to chop the supports and bring it down about two inches and re-weld.
Back away until tomorrow.
Still no new toilet for the downstairs powder room.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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