The Road Ranger. 1997 SEMI

[Rick W]

I used the metal working tools to flatten out the dents on the rear fenders caused from my misalignment of the linkage in the trailer tongue when I turned. I beat the metal about as flat as it’s going to be, and I put the first thin layer of Bondo,

 

[Rick W]

Oh, and I started cleaning up the aluminum decking on the trailer. I want to get the sheets as straight as I can, then I’m going to remove them, touch up the wiring I did the day before the nationals last year, put down the plate properly and then maybe some accents.

 

[sgtsandman]

Oh, and I started cleaning up the aluminum decking on the trailer. I want to get the sheets as straight as I can, then I’m going to remove them, touch up the wiring I did the day before the nationals last year, put down the plate properly and then maybe some accents.

What kind of accent are you shooting for? Southern? Spanish? German? Australian?

 

[Rick W]

What kind of accent are you shooting for? Southern? Spanish? German? Australian?

Riczhard Casimir Woroniecki?

And you have to ask?

 

[Blmpkn]

Riczhard Casimir Woroniecki?

And you have to ask?

View attachment 113569

Man.. I love me some peirogies..

 

[Rick W]

Man.. I love me some peirogies..

I can’t eat them anymore because of the carbs, but my family has made their own for generations. Potato and sauerkraut.

 

[Rick W]

I sanded and skimmed the fenders and a couple other spots. Boy that’s always clean fun work especially when it’s mid nineties. Tomorrow should be last details before paint touch up.

I also installed the safety chain and safety support under the upper deck of the trailer. Chain to keep from damaging the hinges so it won’t flop over too far, and support (stick) to hold it up at the same time so the wind doesn’t blow it down when I’m working underneath.

Got 3 more things done and crossed one off the list.

 

[Rick W]

Safety chain & stick:

Yes, that’s a U bolt from a conduit/beam clamp, bent in granddaddy’s vice.

Body work is done & painted. I’m sure there will be several rounds of final touchup on the silver, the black, and the red.

Trailer is all wired for the brakes with a positive and a negative hanging just above the axle on each side. If the brake hubs come in in the next couple days, it’ll get done, if not…

Of course, in the middle, the key fell out of the bandsaw drive. So I had to make a key, tap it in and cut it off.

Low intensity, strobes on the trailer are fixed. What was driving me crazy was that I could get them to work, and they would work for a day or a week or a month, and then the amber strobes would go out. I wired them with speaker wire, which I have done with LEDs many times. I like it because it’s inexpensive and it comes in a four color common cord. There are two circuits, a positive and a negative each, one for the Amber, and one for the white lights. It turns out that if you don’t wire the reverse light positive into the amber ground circuit for the strobes, they work better. When the power went to the reverse lights, the speaker wire I was using for the strobes was like one giant fuse link. I broke down and replaced some of it with copper until I found the cross wiring. I think there are 27 different lights on the back of the trailer, and some are double circuit, like the brake/turn. The amazing thing is that I only cross wired one of them.

I painted every corner I could reach on the tongue of the trailer underneath the upper deck. Satin black rustoleum looks much better than scrapyard surface rust.

Baby steps. I think reinstalling the deck and tricking that out is the last big thing if the brakes don’t come in. Then there’s still a half a dozen little things, but most are wish list items, not necessities.

Oh, and some idiot put a big black handprint next to the garage door.

 

[Rick W]

Fire extinguisher and cover panel done. I still have to get it filled or replace it.

And I made caps for all the open tubing.

Edit: did you notice my extraordinary photographer skills? That I caught the reflection of old glory on the bottom of the truck in that little diamond plate insert?

 

[Rick W]

Walmart has/had brandy new galvanized tri-fold ramps like my $15 find on sale for $66. Lowest I’ve seen have been $129. Probably silly of me, but I bought a pair. Mine had a bad spot on one hinge I had to splice and weld up, and of course my trademark Rustoleum. I bet I get $50 for the old ones!

& I made up a guide/legend for all the switches in the console over the CB over the mirror. While I sort of did it the same layout as I’ve done on other trucks, this one has more switches and my old brain is getting soft. I’m going to laminate it and put it on the top side of the visor, with a copy in the glove box.

I also found a great almost close CB shop to check out my radios and then tune up the ones I’ll keep, then sell most of the rest.


Pin stripes are all fixed after the body work, and door Steps are painted.

Big red truck balloons came in. I think I have some TRS stickers we can put on the side.

Bad health day today, hot as hell, humid as the tropics, and then thunderstorms, so not much more got done.

Eagles greatest hits 2 came in for the ride up.

Pieces are falling into place..

I’m hoping to get the deck in place tomorrow, and screw it down properly, for the first time, along with adding some accent stripes

Good or bad weather I’m going to attack polishing the bullet hole wheels.

And finally for the trip, but actually forevermore, I want to figure out how I want to pack the big toolbox and the little toolbox and what can be clamped on the truck, etc. so everything I want to travel with has a place and it’s easily accessible. I’m not sure that’s going to happen before I go.

 

[Rick W]

The devil is in the details, huh?

I’m thinking of writing a technical paper for TRS on the 87 different ways to clean and polish and buff diamond plate, while still getting totally crappy results. I still have about half of the trailer to go, so I’ll wait and see if I come up with another 10 or 15 different ways, maybe hit 100.

I have made a little progress. It’s the “20 foot” type of progress.

I think you can see the difference in the upper deck, and the first sheet on the lower the closest to it.

Those dark, almost black discolorations are where some of the sack of concrete sitting on top of the stack of sheets seeped in between the sheets.

I spent a ton of time on the upper deck. Might be hard to see, but there are several independent sheets of diamond plate up there. There’s one big sheet that’s about 60% on the right hand side, and then four smaller plates make up the left-hand side (because that’s where my access panel is for the main electrical). I didn’t do anything to the sheet on right and it still needs a little cleaning. I did all kinds of stuff to the sheets on the left. No matter what I cleaned it with or how I cleaned it, it wouldn’t remove that black staining. I could clean it up, and even make it shiny, but it was that kind of whitish shiny. The original sheets have a mirror finish, and in comparison, actually have a touch of a blue/gold tone.

To get the black corrosion off, I used a very fine wire wheel brush in a drill. I very lightly ran it over the black corrosion in one direction of the diamonds, and then I ran it 90° to that, going back-and-forth until the dark corrosion was gone. I did it very lightly so I didn’t gouge The Aluminum.

When I put the acid stuff on it to clean it before I buffed it, I had to be careful because it would immediately start to tarnish the raw Aluminum again. I wiped it off quickly, and immediately put on the paste. That’s where the second headache came in.

I have every buffer known to man, and I even got creative with different things to try to buff it. The most successful was using a buffing wheel like would go on a bench grinder. I opened up the hole a little bit in the middle, and I put it on an angle grinder. That high-speed did an OK job, but no home run.

When I did the first sheet on the lower deck, closest to the front, I just wire wheeled the dark spots as described, cleaned the sheet very quickly with a nylon scrub brush and a little muriatic acid, rinsed it with a mild vinegar solution, and then I used the polishing paste. The results certainly don’t match the original diamond plate, but it’s fairly quick, and from 15 feet away you can’t tell. If you’re looking straight down on the sheets, you can see it very clearly.

But hey, at the end of the day, it’s a work truck…

 

[maddyn]

Zep-A-Lume is your friend, it will get a majority of the corrosion and discoloration out and make it a little easier to polish. spray it on, maybe hit it with a stiff truck brush and hose it off

 

[Rick W]

Zep-A-Lume is your friend, it will get a majority of the corrosion and discoloration out and make it a little easier to polish. spray it on, maybe hit it with a stiff truck brush and hose it off

thanks, I’ll look it up

 

[bobbywalter]

that is entirely too much effort for the diamond plate.... i would be thinking cerakote at this point.... but it sure is a bad arse rig Rick. its so many levels of da kewlzzez

 

[Rick W]

that is entirely too much effort for the diamond plate.... i would be thinking cerakote at this point.... but it sure is a bad arse rig Rick. its so many levels of da kewlzzez

Thank you.

always remember it’s physical therapy for me coming out of my injuries, and it’s mental therapy (which keeps me out of the bus stations in my underwear).