Welding Rig Pictures

[Sberry]

When I put the right O2 bottle on here the skid is completely self contained, it will forklift off and into a pickup. Adm, yours is a beauty but too sharp for me,,, ha

[admweld]

Not Dirty Long

SBERRY,Yes clean in photo but after being on site in mud or plowing a new england snow storm it looks alot more ugly but not for long i have OCCD [obsesive/compulsive/cleaning/disorder]with my trucks.

[J hall]

SBERRY,Yes clean in photo but after being on site in mud or plowing a new england snow storm it looks alot more ugly but not for long i have OCCD [obsesive/compulsive/cleaning/disorder]with my trucks.

I am also a nut about a clean truck. Mine gets a bath at least once a week.
The last repaint was in '96 and it still lloks good

[Rvannatta]

I was thinking of a steel pallet so i could move and load it with a forklift. Just a handy "kit", with everything I would need right there. Sometimes I go to Oregon or Nevada to work, this way everything stays together instead of rolling around in the back of the pickup. Just something to think about . . .

There are a couple of good reasons not to....

1) Weight: unless you have a dually pickup, when you get more than a ton in the back of a pickup you have seriously overloaded it---particularly the back tires. Likewise for weight distribution you need the welder as far forward as possible. If you make a pallet you are likely to balance the weight on the pallet, etc... When you are going the distance is when you REALLY need the real truck. Besides being a major safety issue every so often da fuzz has a pickup round up and herd the commerical looking pickups into the weigh scales and write them all up. this has been a major issue in southern Oregon where they love to round up loggers pickups which all have a 100 gallon diesel tank, a tool box, and a couple of chain saws in them.---

The other thing I watch regularly are the wood cutters. I live 60 miles out of portland in a region where wood cutting is popular and on sunny Saturdays Portland dudes hop in their pickups and come out looking for wood but the amusing part is they can't resist stealing more than they can haul. If you just fill a pickup bed full of wood the weight is about right and things work ok, but these dudes figure they can haul twice as much wood if they get a couple of sheets of plywood for 'sides'. ON any given sunny afternoon you can almost depend on seeing one of them parked along the highway between here and Portland. If you arent' going far or fast you can load a pickup
with a lot of weight and get away with it, but when you hit the Interstate those tires start getting hot and that isn't a good thing. Of course the rest of the story is--- you won't save much fuel either.---You put that cornbinder of yours in cruise mode on the interstate and its milage will stretch out while the overloaded pickup milage will drop big time.

[fun4now]

calweld

I'd like to mount the trailblazer with a set of bottles and a small toolbox on some kind of pallet so I can load it on the pickup or flatbed for the quick little service jobs. Anybody have something like that

yea just a lil wile ago i was reading about some one doing that with an I bolt to lift the hole thing on and off, ill look back and see if i can find it and post ya a link if i can, maybee he will show it off befor i have a chance to find it though.

took a wile but i found it, it starts on this page and he goes threw the hole process of building and ballenceing it. maybee it will help. precisionworks did it.
here is the link

http://www.millermotorsports.com/mboard/showthread.php?t=3806&page=3&pp=15

happy building

[calweld]

sberry - where do you keep your air compressor? I like your truck -- for the size, it is nice and compact, looks like you do a lot of service work yourself. It looks to be the right age too -- about 20 years old like mine we don't have to spend sundays washing and waxing That skid you pictured is exactly what I had in mind -- but I was going to make one out of steel, maybe figure out a way to squeeze a small air compressor on it too.

Admweld --(my ex-neighbor from MA) that is a beautiful truck. Many years ago (before i got old and tired) I had ambitions to have a sharp truck also. I bought a new F350, built a utility bed out of Aluminum. I still have the bed if I get a chance I'll get a picture of it. Only problem was I never quite finished it, and it just wasn't in my nature to use the truck to it's full potential. I'm much happier now with the big truck, it's set up more to fit my personality (I'm kind of a slob-- just throw everything in the back and go --my grinders and my saws have never been under cover. I suspect our businesses are a little different also -- you are probably more a pure welder than I am -- I'm just a farmboy with a welder, some jobs I have a hard time figuring why I'm called, I might not even use the welder.

Portable welder: A crane would be good, but it's also something that can get you into trouble. I'm the type that sets the load limit at "5 pounds before it breaks" only problem is you don't know where that is until you actually break it. Almost all my customers have a loader, forklift, or boomtruck or something to lift with, I can operate anything and between the stategic use of tabs and with chain come-a-longs have gotten pretty good at getting things where I need them to be, even without help many times. If need be, I also have two fieldlifts with 30' masts I can haul one out and just bill it to the customer.
A crane would put me into another weight classification, I would then have to abide by the same rules the heavy duty trucks have to -- log book, hours of operation, required rest periods, etc. etc. Can you imagine finishing a 20 hour day then having to sleep for 10 hours in your truck before driving home?? Uh-uh, I want to sleep in my bed.

[calweld]

rvannatta-- we're not talking full service truck here, just the basics. I see no problem keeping it below 1500 pounds or so, since on my pickup (f150) the weight decal somehow mysteriously got defaced the commercial cops just go by the tire ratings anyway it should be ok. The F350 flatbed -- no problem. Just a few weeks ago I did a little thing -- welded up a broken gate hinge - threw the welder and a grinder in the pickup and went down there -30 miles each way 15 minutes to do the job. Was able to cut with the grinder, torch would have been nice. No sense dragging that big truck around if you don't need to. Last January I had it in Klamath Falls -- had to weld supports in the basement of one house and cut an old heating oil tank out of a crawlspace in another house -- either place that big truck just wasn't going to fit. Other thing is once you cross state lines with the commercial vehicle, you open up a whole new set of regulations and rules, which I don't need.

[calweld]

fun4now -- I saw that thread previously when it was being written but couldn't find it until you posted the link. Thanks -- I'll go ahead and print out some of the pictures I especially liked the bottle clamps and cable rack. That was pretty much what I had in mind, but with less bottles and the addition of a small toolbox.

[calweld]

I am also a nut about a clean truck. Mine gets a bath at least once a week.
The last repaint was in '96 and it still lloks good

I have a rule -- I wash all my trucks once a year whether they need it or not

[admweld]

washed and waxed today

Well i must say today was the first time i washed and waxed outside my shop in february it was 54 deg.Also took some newer photos of the rig w/bb on board and new snap on road chest i special ordered in blue.Taking camera to work tomorrow to finish it off where working in fenway park the home of the boston red sox. i,ll post,em when i develop them it,s a disposiable camera.

[JTMcC]

My Happy Orange Truck.

JTMcC.

[JTMcC]

Happy Orange Truck #2.

JTMcC.

[JTMcC]

Happy Orange Truck #3.

How bout them Steelers!

JTMcC.

[MtotheIKEo]

I keep kicking around the idea of building something like f4n has --only without the wheels. I'd like to mount the trailblazer with a set of bottles and a small toolbox on some kind of pallet so I can load it on the pickup or flatbed for the quick little service jobs. Anybody have something like that?

Cal- I live in Lodi also, and work at a Modular building company, you probably know what place. We use Lincoln stuff for the field work, a few Ranges and a Vantage, that are mounted on steel pallets we made. The welder is on one side, and a Knaack box is on the other that holds all the leads, grinders, wire brushes, etc... We dont use bottles for field work but I made a rack for one for a single occasion. I can take a picture for you if want a better idea of what they look like. It fits in the bed of a GMC Sierra truck, snugly, but it fits.

[Rvannatta]

rvannatta-- we're not talking full service truck here, just the basics. I see no problem keeping it below 1500 pounds or so, since on my pickup (f150) the weight decal somehow mysteriously got defaced the commercial cops just go by the tire ratings anyway it should be ok. The F350 flatbed -- no problem. Just a few weeks ago I did a little thing -- welded up a broken gate hinge - threw the welder and a grinder in the pickup and went down there -30 miles each way 15 minutes to do the job. Was able to cut with the grinder, torch would have been nice. No sense dragging that big truck around if you don't need to. Last January I had it in Klamath Falls -- had to weld supports in the basement of one house and cut an old heating oil tank out of a crawlspace in another house -- either place that big truck just wasn't going to fit. Other thing is once you cross state lines with the commercial vehicle, you open up a whole new set of regulations and rules, which I don't need.

Know something about the state line issue. We live 15 miles from the state line and even the grocery store is in Washington state. Every highway truck has to be pro-rated into Washington. The log book is an issue for any commercial vehicle that wanders more than 100 air miles from home, and not an issue if you are closer---regardless of size.

the CDL is a nuisance, but is a function of the GVW rating of the truck not what it is licensed for--assuming that is less.

Here in Oregon It actually turned out cheaper to license our service truck
for 30k than 26k as Oregon is a weight mile state for trucks over 26k.

On trucks under 26k they balance the whole state budget on the license plate, but on trucks over 26k they charge a lower license fee and then by the number of axles on the road. since our service truck sees few miles on the road we kicked the registration up to 30k and saved some bucks.

IT is also one of the many reasons that loggers haul their trailers when empty.
since you are charged based on the maximum gross weight you could haul considering the number of axles on the road, I come home hauling the trailer on the 3 axle rate, but go to town on the 6 axle rate. (the log truck has an air lift axle)