Mike2015

Area51 - Mike's Miscellaneous Projects 2015:

2015 was one of the busiest years I've had in awhile. Between work, ceramic tile work and gun club stuff (including installing a new 15kw generator) I still made time for a bunch of projects in the garage.

The first was building four new gun racks for the trap field at the gun club as we needed additional racks for the expanded sporting clays range so they used the racks we built two years ago.

Next was the design and modification of four steel hand carts for the gun club. These will be used to store and move our voice release systems from the storage garage to the trap field.

I started with a standard moving cart, on which I built an expanded metal base to fit five microphone stand bases.

Next I added an upper support bar with with five clamps to securely lock the the microphone stands in place while transporting. These have worked out very well and have made set up during all of our Trap Shoots much easier.

Shortly thereafter, Dad started having trouble with his 2006 Outlander 400. It was squeaking and binding up intermittently in reverse. I found the two rear driveshaft U-joints were completely worn out.

Maffer and I removed the rear driveshaft, installed two new U-joints and the issue was solved.

In July I finally got around to fixing the blown down fence that came with the house last year when we moved in. We get a lot of strong winds on our street as the whole area is very open with only a scattering of trees. The previous owner installed 4x4" posts on 10' centres buried only 12-24" in the ground.

The posts that didn't topple over simply cracked off. I replaced the posts with 6x6 pressure treated lumber cemented 30" in the ground on 8' centres. With lots of fence material on hand, I re-cut and refit the existing fence panels.

Our neighbours own the adjoining fence, they had the entire side replaced by a contractor a few weeks ago.

Our rear fence is not on the property line so I added an access gate to get out there and remove weeds and alders.

November arrived and with snow not far away I got our vehicles ready for winter by changing over winter tires and steel rims. Sandra's car also received new brakes front & rear.

Sumer wheels all washed up inside and out, ready for storage.

During the tire changeover I threw on a set of rear pads and rotors on my Silverado 2500HD.

After nine hard winters my trusty Honda 9/28 snowblower definitely deserved a full maintenance and inspection. There was a noise in the impeller which I suspected to be a worn bearing. I removed the augers, then the whole front bucket to inspect the belts and impeller bearing.

Sure enough the bearing was rusty and rough as hell so I replaced it with a new one.

The impeller belt was in OK shape, the smaller track drive belt was in need of replacement, since I had both already in stock I installed two new belts. It's amazing how well the Japanese blower belts hold up, these were original to the machine. Everything else checked out OK so the only other repairs were an oil change and greasing of all moving parts such as the controls & chute.

While we was in Bangor Mane earlier this fall with Steve & Kailee I picked up this dandy powder coating kit at Harbour Freight. It got great reviews from a number of sources and happened to be on sale. I cant wait to try it out!

Cheers, MIKE