Photo taken at 9am in Anchorage. Still dark out (sunrise was supposed to occur at 10:12 am, but the clouds kept it dark)

As we begin counting longer days, Paul’s toiling away in his warm and cozy garage as the snow falls, the sun hides, and aftershocks rattle Anchorage.

Paul writes, “Since the earthquake November 30th we’ve had almost 5,000 aftershocks in less than three weeks.  Many of the tremors are too light to feel but we’ve had a few strong shakers that concerned me enough to make a trip to the local hardware store necessary where I purchased additional tie down straps.  The trailer and box assembly is still sitting on two work tables and will remain that way until I finish rolling the upper edge of the trailer box.  I’ll rest easier when I get the trailer frame finished, the axle attached and the box lifted off the work tables and bolted to the frame.”

“The trailer box is riveted together so the next step (after the taillights) is to weld the tubing into a big rectangle to match the upper edge of the side panels and then roll the metal over the tubing and weld as necessary.  I’m not quite sure how I’ll accomplish this task but I expect it’s going to cost more than I planned and take longer to accomplish than I’d intended but that’s normal for this project.”

I’ve made 6 or 7 different designs for the taillight/turn signal layout on the M100 trailer but none of them are without problems. Here’s my mockup of the lights mounted to the rear of the trailer. To me they are too close together and would look awkward sticking out from the box.

It would be much easier to position these lights if I went to a smaller size LED light but I want the trailer lights to match the ones I installed on the little Willys so I’m running into location/space issues.

I’ll try again.

Here the taillight brackets would be mounted to the trailer sides just forward of the rear corner sections.  They’d be close to but not interfering with the use of the grab handles bolted to the corners.  The housing for the lights would be stainless steel sheet fabricated into a one inch thick box with a removable access panel on the front side.

Here are some of the poster board mockups of the tail light housings I’ve made while attempting to achieve a reasonable balance of visibility, secure installation and ease of fabrication.  The first mockups were made from white poster board with line drawings to indicate the light assemblies.  

As I refined my design I began coloring in the tail/brake light lens (red) and the turn signal lens (orange) with felt markers to give me a better idea of how these lights would look on the trailer.  I’m pretty sure I’ll use the mockups number 5 and 6 (starting from the first mockup on the left as #1) as the final design so tomorrow I expect to begin cutting sheet metal.

Paul’s made a little more progress on the trailer.

As you might have heard, Alaska was hit with a good-sized earth quake near Anchorage a couple days ago. Our own Anchorage-based Alaska Paul filed this report:

“This past Monday (Nov 26, 2018) my friend First Larry came over to the house and helped me shoot the 90 remaining rivets in the M100 trailer floor section so I could attach the side panels to the floor flange. The seams where these parts overlap is sealed with a two part rubber like sealant and cleco fasteners hold everything together while the sealant hardens.

Usually the sealant cures within 3 or 4 days so this morning (Nov 30, 2018) I was working in the garage cleaning up the excess sealant by 8am. Because the trailer is sitting on two work tables it’s necessary for me to stand on a 5 gallon bucket which allows me to bend at my waist to clear the trailer sides while still being able to reach the floor panel.

This was the position I was in when Mother Nature decided to remind me just who was really in charge of my life.

We got hit with a sharp jolt and then the garage began dancing. As I was holding onto the trailer rear panel trying to remain upright I noticed the walls of the garage were flexing hard enough to open and close the walk in door and this door had been latched. For some reason the movement of this door fascinated me so I continued watching (while tightly holding onto the trailer) until I realized the door was opening and closing so fast it looked like it was waving goodbye. I agreed it was a good time to say goodbye to the dancing garage so I bounced my way out of the garage and staggered towards the house.

Unlocking the door to the house took longer than usual since my actions resembled a drunk opening a door while on a ship in a storm. A couple of years ago I’d installed outside grab handles on either side off the kitchen door so I hung onto a handle with one hand while I tried to get the key in the lock with my other hand. I gripped the handle so tight I think I left fingerprints pressed into the metal.

After getting the door unlocked I quickly checked on the Goddess (she was fine) and Samson the wonder parrot who was not amused to have his perch catapult him skyward. Samson sought safety on top of his cage in the living room but the many aftershocks continue to irritate him.

In the brief time it’s taken me to write this email we’ve had six noticeable aftershocks along with many little tremors.

While I’ve been thru stronger earthquakes than the ones we had today this main one was impressive. There are reports of power lines down, sections of local roads destroyed, broken water pipes in commercial buildings and traffic signals no longer operational.

The Goddess and I have been real lucky… we never lost electricity, we still have heat, we have enough food to last for more than 3 weeks and since we’re retired we don’t have to go anywhere. We’ll be staying home where we can help the neighbors if need be.

Oh yeah.

The garage made it thru the quake with no damage to speak of, the little blue house shook and shimmied but it’s fine. Some stuff got broken, some stuff got tossed around but the little Willys and the M100 trailer are both fine.

We’re pretty happy

I’ll send a few photos to show the ground cracking in the back yard (See below).

That’s all,

Paul
The Goddess
and Samson the sleeping Wonder Parrot

As the days grow shorter in Anchorage, Paul’s getting busy with his trailer. Thanks to Paul for taking the time to document another beautiful build!

“With fall in the air and winter coming fast the first week of September is when I began working on the rebuild of the M100 trailer after I hauled the frame home from the sand blasters. There were a couple of cracks in the frame where the shock mounts attach and a few other areas I felt also needed some attention from the welder so I positioned the frame on a 2X6 and plywood platform and screwed blocks down to hold the frame in alignment. My plan was to fabricate the replacement box on the clean frame and after the box was bonded and riveted together the box would be removed so the frame could return to the powder coat place for a coating off satin black.

I felt the original trailer box floor was a little weak so I planned to add extra hat channels for strength and I needed to design and fabricating the tail light, brake light and turn signals mounts.

Below is the new 18 gauge stainless steel floor being fitted to the original trailer frame.  I’d hoped to have a local company press the reinforcing strips in this floor panel (like the original) but soon learned I couldn’t afford the cost to make the die and pay for the press time just for one floor panel.  I ended up buying 60 feet of 1 inch wide by 1/4 inch thick stainless steel strap for the trailer floor and 24 feet of 3/4 inch wide by 1/4 inch thick stainless strap for the side and end panel reinforcements.  The strap was rectangular but I needed the floor strips beveled and the side strips rounded along the edges so I had to get creative and come up with a cheap solution to recontour these straps.

I used scrap pieces of plywood stapled to the platform along with additional plywood clamps screwed to the wood to hold the strap in position while worked on the strap edge.  By carefully holding a 4 inch grinder at the necessary angle as I rolled from one end of the strap to the other while sitting on a roll around seat I was able to reshape each strap to the contour I needed.  The floor of my garage has a good sized crack down the middle so I had to pay attention and not damage the stainless strap while bouncing across the uneven floor surface.  With my face mask on, my ear protection clamped to my head and nothing much else to do I spent 47 hours grinding theses straps so they would be a reasonable duplicate of the original ridges pressed into the trailer panels.

Here’s the end result of rolling back and forth while holding the grinder against the stainless strap. It’s far from perfect but it’s something I can live with.

After I’d finished with the sides of the straps I needed to bevel the ends in a 180 degree curve.

I miscounted and beveled 10 straps for the floor when I really only needed 9 straps.  Oh well, what’s an extra three hours or so of grinding. Continue reading →

Paul took advantage of a warm Anchorage day and took this shot showing the reflection of his engine on the hood.