Here is the first load of powder coating stuff to go to Cool Concepts. I thought I had enough solid rivets to do the tunnel. I forgot I gave the rest of mine to a buddy to put his extension on and work on his stuff. I am waiting on a new batch from Fabcraft so I can connect the tunnel to the bulkhead.
I am also stoked that Brian from Tricked Toys got me hooked up right proper for some bling.
I am getting 9" double-5 spoke rear wheels reverse powder coated blue, 4 bogey wheels to match. A billet brake res cover, brake lever and choke lever. I am also getting a gas cap. All of these will be reverse powder coated blue.
These aren't the actual wheels yet, they are pictures from his site. Saaaweet!
I dropped the stuff in the previous pictures at Cool Concepts this afternoon.
When I got home, I started to work on the tunnel pieces. I got the edges perfectly straight with a long file, and the curves smoothed out and everything is ready to rivet to the bulkhead. I may take a day, or afternoon off this week and get it ready to go to the powder coaters.
Here are the pieces ready to be assembled:
I got the rest of the pieces of the sled ready for powder coating this afternoon, too. These are the rest of the pieces:
I almost forgot that I picked up a set of XP handlebars. I still have to order the Sea Doo risers and get those fitted up. That should be the last of the modifying, though. That is simple compared to what has already been done.
Well. I was hoping to get my cooler back this week, but not with a letter and a COD that said they do not do any prep work. It needed to be completely clean and the steel center rivets needed to be removed. It would have been nice to know that before I sent it. Oh, well. No biggie.....it's only money, right?
Since I didn't get any shots of the cooler before it went. Here it is completely cleaned, the rivets removed, the ends welded up, the elbows welded one and ready to head back for anodizing.
I am taking a half-day off work tomorrow to attach the bulkhead to the tunnel. I am hoping to that done up and ready to be shipped to the powder coater.
I have set a deadline to have the sled done. June 12, 2010. I want to show it at the Cedar Rapids Corvette Club car show. I showed Madness there and got second place in the alternative vehicles. (I got beat by a T-bucket with a Ford motor. He should not have been in the class).
I didn't get anything I wanted to get done, done today. I took off work at 2:30p. I was going to get started on riveting the tunnel to the bulkhead.
Anyway, I ran to the Ski-Doo dealer to pick up my R footwell support that was backordered, I can't get the tunnel finished without it.
Yesterday, the home computer took a dump. The surge protector is protecting from surges any longer. I guess they wear out over time too. I did not know that. Leason learned. I took the old unit to Jeff at Midwest Computer Brokers, the guy is a wizard with a computer and cheap. Geak Squad wanted $129 to come out and just look at it.
It ended up having several capacitors blown on the mother board. Jeff hooked me up with another Dell unit like my old one, took both hard drives out and exchanged them and cleaned up the system for $107.00...that includes the cost of the new CPU.
I got home, then got a call from Rick at Cool Concepts. My first batch of powder coating was done.
So here it is 7:47pm and I just got home and got the stuff unloaded and pictures taken. I won't be starting it this evening. But this weekend is going to rock on it.
Here are some shots of the stuff I got back tonight. I REALLY like this Candy Blue:
I tried to get a couple of shots so you could see how the candy makes it really pop. I don't know how well it shows up on the computer, though:
I got the rear skid put together today. It isn't completely finished. It required some 'massaging' of the powder coat to get everything to fit, that and I forgot to tell them to tape off the wheel mounts so I had to sand/file those down as well.
Tomorrow is all day on the tunnel and bulkhead. I had to run to Dubuque this afternoon to pick up some shocks, so I took today to work on the skid. I should have the tunnel and bulkhead in one piece tomorrow.
I also found that I have to left footwells that go under the running board. Talk about "2 left feet", eh?
I have to wait to get the cooler back from anodizing to completely get the rear portion riveted in place. I am hoping to have everyting back and ready for the powder coaters by next Sunday.
I also have to wait for Terry to get me the finished Snow Eliminators so I can get the running boards cut before it goes for powder coating. I spoke with him Friday, they are done and ready to ship so I should have those this week.
Brian with Tricked Toys said the wheels are all done up, and heading to powder coating, too.
Once the tunnle gets back from powder coating.....it starts going back together. BONZAI!!!
I got the tunnel connected to the bulkhead, and they are perfectly in line with one another. I am going to wait until I get the cooler back before I finish putting the rest of the rivets in place.
I have it lined up so they match and are parallel from the sides, but I want to have the cooler in place and clamped down before I square up the side to side.
I also have to wait for the other side running board support. That support has the mount for the front arm of the rear suspension so I want to get those drilled out and in place before I rivet them into place.
Here is the bulkhead and tunnel as one.....as it should be:
I also got ahold of bigwormskidoo05. He is going to do the oil pump modification to both my sleds. I just have to get the trail sled one off to get to him. Don't know if that will happen today, but it may still. It is only 1pm, so I may be able to get off today. We'll see.
Here is the fix for the oil pump I was talking about. This is the fix that bigwormskidoo05 came up with. It is a permanent solution to the issue. This will fix the issue without spending $225 on a new pump.
bigwormskidoo05 does this fix for $75 shipped back to you.
Here is the shaft that goes into the pump notice the top one that is how it come and bottom is the machined one with bearing.
Here is the bore machined bigger for the bearing and bearing installed
Here is the shaft installed.
The action of the lever is way smoother i believe this will eliminate the sticking problem
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I just got home from picking up the second round of powder coating from Rick at Cool Concepts. He does killer work:
Anything that is a high wear area I have coated in Micro Tech. It is a really tight-pattern wrinkle finish. It holds up VERY well even on the high side of foot edges. I am not sure how well it will show in the picture:
Here is what the rest of the sled will be coated in. A matte black. The tunnel and bulkhead will also be coated in this finish:
I dropped off another round tonight. After this, I just have the exhaust and HPS can to do. It too, will be done in a matte black finish.
I got some more powder coating back today:
I had to work today, but when I got home Terry from Snow Eliminators had my boards here.
I got the boards tweeked to fit around the flares.
The area just in front of the boards is going to get the flares like my other mountain sled. I will 3 or 4 holes and then flare those.
After all of it was marked off, I cut out the board openings with my DeWalt jigsaw w/metal cutting blade, and clamped it all back in place.
Here is what I got done today:
Liberty Anodizing called yesterday, and they have the cooler anodized black for me. I should have that here on Tuesday.
Once that is here, I may take a day off work and put the whole together so I can get the tunnel to the powder coater.
Things are moving.
Brian (at Tricked Toys) about has my billet stuff done up.
I got the cooler back from anodizing today. It turned out better than I expected:
