Metallica

The last couple of weeks have been devoted to heavy metal work. After stripping the frame and building El Grande, we set about sandblasting the frame.

Sandblasting is really nasty, dusty, heavy work. We started last Wednesday with 600 pounds of abrasive. Andy and I worked on sweeping up the spent sand and sifting it into 5 gallon buckets to reuse while Ryan worked the sandblaster. That crap is really heavy. I only worked about a quarter as many hours as Andy and Ryan last Wednesday, and my back was killing me.

Unfortunately, while El Grande has done a fine job keeping the rain from falling on our heads, the floor of our workspace has been pretty wet. Rain seeps in at the edges and keeps much of the floor damp when it is raining. As a result, we were unable to reuse large piles of wet sand and ended up needing to buy another 300 pounds Thursday to finish up. The resulting soaking wet sand probably weighed at least 1,200 pounds and it took forever to clean up.

The end result was a very nicely cleaned up frame ready for repairs and modifications. However, if I had to do this again (which would almost certainly result in a divorce, so I will never do this again) I'd have to seriously consider taking the frame to a shop for the sandblasting. Andy and Ryan put a good day and a-half into this part of the job, and at the end of the day I'm still trying to get rid of several hundred pounds of wet nasty sand blasting abrasive.

Now that we have the frame cleaned up, Ryan has started work on putting everything back together. Monday and Tuesday he started by removing all the old running gear brackets and several of the cross members to prepare for installing the new axles and gray tank mounts. I've decided to add a second 30 gallon gray tank just forward of the axles as a galley tank. Something tells me my girls may want to use our shower on a regular basis while camping and the additional gray tank capacity will be a welcome addition to our amenities.

The rebuild started today with the addition of mounting plates for the stabilizer jacks and some repairs to a couple of broken welds on outriggers and the rear most cross member.

We also picked up a bunch of plumbing supplies today so we can dry fit the gray tank exit valves and make sure we get them mounted at the correct heights to allow for our plumbing plan. Ryan will be back tomorrow to add in some frame stiffening plates to the area where the axles are located and begin work on the spare tire carrier that will go up front in the a-frame area behind the tongue.