How to replace a mechanical fuel pump. This is the topic for this episode in the series on starting an old 1965 Buick Skylark convertible. Last episode, Harley determined the fuel pump wasn't pumping any gas up to the carburetor. In this video we change the fuel pump for a new one. Will it start this time?
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Chipper", "Decisions", "Rocket Power"
Transcript
In the last episode of trying to get this old convertible started, I concluded that the fuel pump wasn't getting fuel up into the carburetor.
I've got a new fuel pump and in this episode, I'm going to install it and see if that makes a difference.
Will this car start after I change the fuel pump? Your guess is as good as mine.
If you're new here: Welcome!
I'm Harley and this is the House of Hacks where usually we make stuff. In this case, I'm repairing this old car, trying to get it started so I can start work on another car project that I have sitting over in the corner of the garage.
I'm going to go change clothes and get to work.
[music]
OK. I got the old pump out and the first bolt was no problem. The second bolt gave me a little bit of a challenge. At first I thought it was a different sized bolt head because it didn't want to go on. But as it turned out, it was just some road gunk that needed to get cleaned out and it was in fact the same size as expected.
I took the old pump off and there's nothing special on these blocks that you need to do internally. The pump rides directly on an eccentric cam inside the timing belt cover and so on small block Chevys, there's a pin that you need to make sure doesn't fall out it's kind of a pain to get reassembled.
The Buicks are much simpler in that this rides directly on the cam and so you don't have to worry about anything.
Putting it back on, I may need to bump the motor over a little bit to take some of the tension off, depending on where that cam is in the cycle.
In comparing these two pumps, they are the same as far as the engine connection is concerned. The flanges are the same. The arms going into the motor are the same and the dimensions overall are the same. They are different though where the hoses connect in and I'm going to need to go to the parts store to get some fittings to be able to install this new one.
[music]
OK. That should do it.
The old fitting for the output side, I was able to use from the old fuel pump. The fitting was just fine. It came off without a problem and the threads fit this one.
I had to get a new fitting for the input side. The old pump had the connection built into it and the new one just had a threaded fitting and so I had to get a brass fitting to be able to put the tubing on.
It took me four stops to find this. I found it at the fourth place I went to which is probably a good indication as to why Amazon is killing the retail space. Retailers just have a hard time keeping inventory in stock the way Amazon does.
So let's get this installed!
[music]
So there were two outcomes from today.
The good news is I was able to get the engine running!
The bad news is I had to put fuel in the carburetor for that to happen. That's telling me the carburetor is not really getting enough fuel.
I pulled the fuel line from the fuel pump to the carburetor off at the carburetor and there was a little bit of fuel there but no where near the amount that's supposed to be there to keep the engine running.
That tells me that the fuel pump is trying to work but its not getting enough fuel to be able to pump it through the system.
That tells me there's most likely a partial blockage from the tank to the fuel pump. I've replaced everything after the fuel pump to the carburetor.
So the next video will be investigating that, trying to either flush out the fuel line and clear that blockage or putting in a temporary line in the mean time just to get the project running.
Until then, I'll see you this video that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy and when making things remember...
Wondering about the challenges of starting a car that's been mothballed for a while? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley continues the saga of getting a 1965 Buick Skylark Convertible started.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: “Iron Bacon", “Prelude and Action", “Fast Talkin", “Zap Beat”, “Pump", “Happy Alley”, "Chipper", “Rocket Power", "Decisions"
Transcript
Hi! Harley here.
In the last video on trying to get this car started, I got the oil changed, I siphoned out the fuel and as I was working under the hood, I realized I should probably change the coolant.
I put a little pressure on the radiator hoses and could tell that the wires inside them had corroded and I didn't really want that floating around inside the car.
It was probably a good thing that I did. I pulled off the radiator hoses and found that the coolant inside had kind of gelled up a little bit and I'd never seen that before.
But because of that, I want to really kind of do a power flush of the system and try to get all that gunk out of there.
So, what I'm going to do today, my primary task is to try to find some fittings that I can attach a garden hose to both sides of the radiator system to be able to flush out both the radiator and the block.
I want to be able to connect garden hoses to both sides: one going in, one going out, for drainage purposes.
We'll see if that helps.
Once I've got new coolant in it, then I need to put new fuel in it, get the battery going and then I think we'll be ready to try to start this baby up.
Hopefully, we'll get all that done today, but I'm not going to make any guarantees.
Let's get started.
[music]
The trip to Lowe's was a success. I found a 1-1/2" flex pipe to slip joint adapter that fits perfectly into the radiator hose.
Put a hose clamp on that and that'll work just fine.
And then going into this adapter, I've got a bushing that slips in there for the 1-1/2" side and the other side there's a 3/4" slip connector.
And then I've got two hose adapters, one male, one female, and they've got a slip 3/4" connector on that side.
And so then I'll just take a little bit of 3/4" pipe and put right there in the middle like so and I'll be able to run water in one side, through the radiator hose and then on the other end it'll go into the radiator hose and come out the garden hose outside the garage to be able to flush out both the radiator and the block.
[music]
OK. I've got everything hooked up with the water and I have one minor leak in one of the solder connections that I made in my plumbing.
No leaks around the radiator hoses or the thermostat housing or the engine block or anything like that.
Water's coming through fine. I have it on high speed on the water, full blast, and I'm getting full flow at the other end.
So that is really good news.
One of my biggest concerns with this when I found the gelled up coolant was that there'd be a solid block somewhere in the radiator or in the engine block and it would inhibit the flow.
There might still be a block somewhere, but I don't really know how to check that without just completely dismantling the engine.
So, we're good to go now, I think.
I am going to reverse connections on the hose to put reverse flow through the engine to just kind of help knock loose any blockages that might be in there.
And then the next step will be to do the same procedure on the radiator and then connect up the whole radiator and put coolant in it.
[music]
So now, this is going to be the first time in I don't know how long, over a decade, that I've put key in the ignition with a battery in it and tried to start it up.
Let's see what happens.
OK. That is great!
I wasn't sure if this engine was going to be seized from sitting so long or what, but obviously it's turning over just fine.
So, now I'm going to just put some starter fluid in it and give it a couple more tries. See what happens.
[starting attempts]
We could hear it try to start but the belt started sqeeking and I checked the belt and that pulley is really, really, really hot on the water pump.
So I think the water pump is actually frozen up even though the engine is turning over.
So, I'm going to have to do some checking on the accessories on the front end of the engine before I really try to start it.
[Heavy sigh] If there's not one thing, there's another.
[music]
The internet in general and Amazon in particular are great innovations.
Back in the mid-80s when I was working on these cars on a regular basis, getting parts for them was always kind of hit-or-miss proposition.
You never knew if when you went to the auto parts store if they're going to have what you needed or if they were out of stock or if they even could get them at all.
Sometimes you had to go to the junk yard to find parts and hope that they in decent enough shape that you could use them.
I got a new water pump for this thing on Amazon for less than $20 delivered to my door within a week and a half of ordering it.
That's just amazing to me. It's mind blowing.
And I had a choice of many different brands to choose from all under $20.
And in addition to this, I could go to eBay and get new, original stock parts, genuine GM parts, originally manufacture, exact replacement, matching numbers, everything, for $80.
Again, trying to find something like that back in the day would have been a real challenge.
So, the internet is an incredible resource for working on these old vehicles.
That said, I did get the new water pump and started working on this. When I took off the old one, I did have one bolt head break. Fortunately, it broke just underneath the head and I was able to get some Vise-Grips on there after putting some penetrating oil on the screw and was able to pull the screw out without any problems whatsoever.
Fortunately, none of the other bolts had any problems coming out whatsoever. That was kind of a concern that something would break off and if something broke off on this then it makes it a much larger project.
So, I got the old one off and got the new one and started getting ready to put it on. I started scraping off the old junk that was on the mating surface so I could get a good surface for the gasket to seal to.
And in the process I found a hole on the back side of the water pump assembly.
The way these Buick blocks are designed, is you have the block and you have the timing gears that mount to the front of that. And then there's a casting that mounts over the top of that that the bottom of the crankshaft comes through and that assembly also contains the back side of the water pump.
So, it's a fairly thick casting. It's several inches thick that acts as both a timing chain cover and also the mounting for the front of the water pump and then also acts as the back of the water pump.
There's a common failure with these where the back side will wear through. I believe my Dad had a failure of this mode back in the 70s when he was driving one of these cars and had exactly the same thing.
He had a water leak. Changed the water pump and still had the leak and further investigation found that it was actually coming through the casting itself, not the water pump assembly directly.
So, it seems to be a fairly common failure on these, in this design.
Again, I went to the internet and did some searching and did actually find this assembly. I can get it, depending on where I get it from, it's between $110 and $250. Again from many different manufacturers.
So, that's a good thing. The bad thing is it's got a seal for the crank assembly and it's more disassembly of the front end of the engine that I just really don't want to go through.
Particularly for what I'm doing with the car at this point. I just need to move it around the property. I'm not planning on driving it. It's not going to be a daily driver. It's not even going to be registered for the road or insured. So, I really don't want to put that much effort into it at this point in time.
So, to do a much simpler, faster, cheaper, patch job, I'm going to use JB Weld.
I've never used JB Weld on a engine patch like this. I've have talked to people who have done this successfully without any problems so I'm going to give this a shot.
Hopefully it will work.
JB Weld does come in a couple different formulations. This is the original formulation. They also had a quick setting formulation that has a shorter working time and sets up sooner.
But in looking at the specifications for it, the quick set has a lower tensile strength and also lower maximum temperature that it's designed to work in.
So, the original has twice the temperature range that it's going to be working on and so because this is on the engine around the coolant, it's not going to get super hot like the inside of the engine on the block, but it is high enough that the quick setting stuff was kind of on the edge of where I felt comfortable using it. So, I did get the original formulation.
So, now I'll do some more cleaning out. I'll put some of this on that hole to patch the hole and then I'll also use some gasket...
Once the JB Weld is setup, I'll put some gasket material on the inside, just in an effort to make sure it seals properly and then I'll go ahead and put the new water pump on.
[music]
The other day, I got the patch on the timing cover. I don't think it's a perfect solution, but it's good enough for what I need to get done right now.
There's always, in working on projects, there's always a balance between practicality and perfection. In this particular case, I need to get it running, so I can move it around the yard and get it out of the garage to be able to work on the other project.
So, it doesn't need to be perfect for this application.
This car needs a lot of work on it before it's considered road worthy in my opinion. And this is kind of the least of the issues. So, this is good enough for now.
I think it's actually good enough, I'm not going to bother putting any silicone sealant inside here. I think that'd just be overkill and so now I think I'm ready to put the new water pump on.
I've got the new water pump, bright, shiny and ready to go.
It came with a gasket.
I got some red, high temperature silicone sealer and some new bolts.
The procedure on this will be to put some of the silicone sealer along the edge where the gasket goes. Then the gasket will go on top of that and then another thin layer of sealant on top of the gasket.
Then this will go onto the timing cover. There are two pins in there that will help locate it. And then I'll put one bolt through to hold it in place and then it'll just be a matter of installing the rest of the bolts.
When that's all done, it needs to sit for 24 hours to let the sealant set up and cure.
Then I'll be ready to put coolant and try firing this baby up again.
[music]
New day. It's been enough time for the silicone to set up and today's task is to replace the lower radiator hose, refill the coolant, attach the battery and we'll give this another try.
Hopefully it'll work today.
[music]
I don't know why I thought that this was going to be an easy project. Nothing ever goes according to plan.
I started putting the coolant in and heard a drip that was more than what was accounted for my the little bit of spillage that I had when I started to pouring things in.
I started looking around and found a fairly major leak somewhere around the upper radiator hose where it goes into the block.
I'm hoping it's just the thermostat housing because that's an easy fix. If it's not the thermostat housing, then the only other place it could be leaking from would be the intake manifold and that changes the project to a whole new level, which I don't know that I really want to get into.
So, I do have another block that I think has a thermostat housing on it. I'll take that off. Hopefully it's serviceable enough to patch this one and get this thing back going.
I got the thermostat housing off the extra, spare block and it's in serviceable shape.
It has a little bit of corrosion on it, but just surface stuff. Nothing really that would make it a problem.
I'll take it downstairs into the basement and put it on the wire wheel and kind of clean it up a little bit. Get it so it's serviceable on this other car.
Hopefully I can get the old thermostat housing off without breaking any bolts. I did have one bolt on this one break in the old block. I don't care at this point.
And then I'll hopefully get this one installed on the car I'm trying to get running.
[music]
Here's the old one. You can see right in there, there's a hole.
That's on the bottom side of the engine where I couldn't see under there. Actually it was filled with corrosion that only became obvious once I got it off and started cleaning it.
As I was cleaning it, another huge chunk fell off. You can see it right there.
Now if we look at this and compare it to the new one, or the one that's not in as bad a shape, you can see what that looks like.
And if we look at the bottom side, you can see how it's all corroded and eaten away on the old one...
...and how the new one looks a lot better.
Fortunately, it's not the intake manifold that's the problem. Yay!
[music]
OK, that's really encouraging!
Putting the starter fluid in there, it did try to start and stumble along and ran for a second or so.
So that's telling me it's got spark. The engine is probably basically is fine.
I do need to find out why it's not getting any fuel though.
I took the fuel line off the carburetor and it's completely dry.
So, it's not getting up from the fuel pump up to the carburetor.
My guess is it's probably just taking awhile to pull the fuel out of the tank through the line the length of the car through the fuel pump and up.
So, I'm going to put a vacuum on the line going into the fuel pump to kind of pull the fuel up from the tank.
Prime the pump so to speak.
And then we'll see what happens.
I made this real simple setup to try to pull the fuel out of the tank and get most of the air out so the fuel pump isn't trying to pull a bunch of air through the carburetor as I'm cranking the engine over.
Hopefully that'll help the car start easier.
It's just a trash salsa container that I put a couple holes in and epoxied in a couple fittings.
One fitting is a barbed fitting that will go to the fuel line coming from the tank and the other, I have a compression fitting with a little bit of this hard tubing that the inside diameter of this is the same as the outside diameter of this other hard tubing that's going into the vacuum pump.
And I'll just push this in here. I suspect I'll probably have enough seal in here just through friction that I won't need any additional clamping on it.
If I do, I'll just put a hose clamp on it.
I got this great little air pump from some people that didn't want it any more and they were just going to throw it away and I gladly took it off their hands.
It has this flexible tubing that's connected to the vacuum side.
It also has a output side that's pressurized if you need air pressure instead of air vacuum.
And there's nothing wrong with it. It is a low volume, little diaphragm pump.
It's pretty quiet though so I think it'll work perfect for this type of application.
OK. As you can see, we have the fuel pump right here and we've got the vacuum chamber down there that will receive the gas.
We've got the vacuum line here and the line coming from the tank there.
Now all we need to do is apply power. Let's see what happens.
It looks like it's working.
[music]
And we got some gas out. Hopefully that's enough to get the air out of the line and fuel up the carburetor.
[music]
Well, it's obviously trying. It's just not getting any gas. Obviously. It runs for brief, a second or two, when I put fuel directly into the carburetor and it tries to go for not quite as long when I use starter fluid.
So, I'm getting spark. I'm getting air. It's just not getting any fuel, enough to keep the engine running from the pump or through the carburetor, or something.
So, now I need to kind of do some diagnostics on that. [shakes head]
Off screen: It's not going to catch fire is it.
On screen: Nope. At least I hope not.
Off screen: You got a fire extinguisher handy?
On screen: Yep.
OK.
[cranking]
OK. That's good.
Well, I had my wife turn the engine over while I was holding the end of the fuel line that goes into the carburetor and nothing was coming out of it.
So that really points the finger to the fuel pump. We have fuel coming to the fuel pump because I used the vacuum to pull it up. I replaced the fuel line and the fuel filter from between the fuel pump and the carburetor so we know that's all good.
So the fuel pump is really the only thing left in the system that could possibly have anything wrong with it.
So the next step is to replace that. That'll be in a future video.
For now, YouTube has some videos down below of things that it thinks that you'd be interested in and my latest video that I've released.
And up here in this playlist, somewhere over there, there's other car related videos if you're interested in those.
Have a situation where a Silverado tailgate won't open? In today's House of Hacks episode, Harley shows how easy it is to fix a Chevrolet pickup tailgate latch that won't unlock. This is a simple job that can be done in minutes, without tools.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Transcript
Uh, oh! This isn't good.
I had this happen the other day... I went to open the tailgate and it wouldn't open.
So, let's tear into this and see what's going on.
The bezel doesn't have any screws on it at all and there's nothing on the back that would control the bezel, so I think it's just a press fit.
And... yep... sure enough... it just kind of snaps into place.
So, I pulled on the top and the bottom just lifted out.
And... yep... there's a rod in here that's not unlatching properly and has a little plastic piece on it. So, I think that's probably what's broken.
Welcome to the House of Hacks.
If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I make stuff, usually out of wood or metal.
But today, I'm fixing stuff. Specifically the tailgate for a 2005 Silverado.
OK. So we can see this is floating free and it's broken off from this hole where it's supposed to be going in.
To take this off, all I'm going to do is rotate this down and then it just slides off the back of the rod.
And here's a good one. And you can see that piece that's broken off.
Now to put this back in, this needs to spring. It won't work if we put the rod on first.
We need to put this in the hole and clip it in first... like that.
And then slide the rod into it.
And then the clip comes up like so.
And we should be done.
That works well.
Now we just need to put the bezel back on. The bottom slides into place in a couple holes and the top snaps into place.
Cool! That works.
That's all in all, about five minutes worth of work once I knew what I needed to get done.
I was able to pick up a lifetime supply of these clips. There were five red ones which go on the left and five green ones which go on the right and these were less than $7.
So now, if this ever fails again in the future, I have plenty on hand. I'll leave a link to those down below in the description.
Over here on this side, YouTube has some videos that it thinks you'd enjoy. You can go check those out.
In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley prepares to start a classic car that has been sitting for some time. He'll cover a couple things to consider when you go to start a car that has not run for years. Today he takes the first steps to start a 1965 Buick Skylark convertible after it has sat for a number of years.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
Twenty-two years since it's been driven.
Ten years since it's been started.
The question now is...
will it start?
[Intro music]
Hi. Harley here.
In the last video, I got everything cleared out from around this car.
So, today, we're going to try getting it started.
I need to change the oil.
I need to drain and put more fuel in it.
And I need a new battery for it because the old one went dead and is long gone.
But first I need to get some supplies.
[Incidental music]
I've been so focused on getting the convertible accessible and cleaned out around it that I forgot about this corner back behind the coupe.
It's been a long time since I've pulled everything out of here and cleaned it out and there's just a lot of dirt and dust that had blown back in the corner.
A lot of spider webs that had kind of glued everything together and so I spent a little bit of time today to clean this out because I needed space for a new toy that I picked up.
While I was out getting the oil and oil filter and things like that I also got a new air compressor.
I've been wanting a new air compressor for a while but didn't have the place to put one or a project to justify getting one before.
And so today with this project and now having a little bit of space in the garage, I went ahead and got one but I didn't have a clean spot to put it.
So, I went ahead and cleaned out behind the garage here because I think it'll fit here temporarily for right now back here.
But, I've got these jack stands that have been sitting on the floor for years.
They have a tendency to collect dust around them.
They have a tendency to get spider webs around them and it's just a pain to always keep them clean, and so they never do stay clean.
I realized I have a perfect space.
It's right here between the corner of the garage and the garage door.
To put them, they should be able to just hang right in here like this.
I think that'll get them up off the floor, make them easier to get to, and leave more floor space in the garage.
So, that's the intermediate project between cleaning things up and getting things going.
There's always something, isn't there?
[Incidental music]
OK. The new toy has a new home.
All nice and clean.
Ready to get put to use.
[Incidental music]
So, I got the oil changed. The fuel siphoned out. The air in the tires. And I kind of ran out of steam for the day.
You can check out other videos in this project, continuing in this series, up here in this playlist.
If you're interested in videos covering everything from woodworking to electronics, photography and working on old cars, I encourage you to subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley starts to pull a project car build out of mothballs. He has plans to do a rebuild and restoration on these classic muscle cars.
Playlist to other vehicle related episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWmDBD9Srrwn4ctIXDE3nfJDSlCUrJ9Er
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Incidental: Backed Vibes and George Street Shuffle
Transcript
Hi. Harley here.
I'm out in the garage today for what's probably going to be a prequel for a much longer, probably multi-year, series.
If you look over here, I've got, underneath all these boxes, there's a car buried and back in the corner behind that car, there's another car buried.
Both of these are project cars that have been sitting on the shelf for way too many years and it's time to start working on them.
I want to primarily start working on the one that's back here in the corner but in order to get to that one, I need to get the one in front to be moveable.
So, the purpose of today's episode is to get this unburied and get it runnable. It hasn't been driven in a number of years since the battery went flat and wouldn't start it.
So I need to get a new battery. I need to change the oil in it.
I should probably check the gas in it; put some fresh gas.
Put air in the tires. That sort of thing.
I just need to get it so I can move it around the yard.
I may end up selling it at sometime in the near future.
But right now, the goal is to just get it moveable so I can get access to the one in the back.
So, let's get started.
[Intro]
[Time lapse]
OK. I got the first level of stuff off there and see, there really was a car under there.
You couldn't really tell before, but I've got a convertible and a coupe.
I don't know if anybody else organizes this way but the way I do it is I tend to move things into piles and then shuffle the piles around and progressively reduce the number of piles I have and get each pile organized individually.
So, over here, I have something to go to the basement.
I've got a pile of trash that goes in the trash can.
I've got a whole pile of cardboard that for some reason had been getting saved and needs to go in the recycle bin.
I've got a pile back here that goes to the garden shed and a pile that goes to the garden storage.
I've got a pile here that goes... I don't know what to do with that yet. That stuff from the old truck that we used to store in there that we don't have room for in the new truck, which is a project in and of itself, try to figure out better storage in the new truck.
And over here we've got stuff that should go in the back of the Jeep for emergency preparedness stuff.
And over here is project things that need to go down to the basement. And I've got a vacuum pump in there, so that needs to go to the basement too.
So now the next step is to start organizing these individual piles.
[Time lapse]
OK. So I got a good chunk of things done.
Those are my wife's projects back here in the background. I need to talk to her about what we want to do with that stuff.
But I got all the cardboard off and got piles sorted.
Some of it was just a matter of moving piles to other places for future... to deal with in the future. Still need to figure out what to do with some of that stuff.
I do have quite a few things now to deal with down here that are stacked underneath the vehicles and around the back. So I need to figure out what to do with that stuff but that's going to be for some other time.
My wife's home from the activity she was working on and we're both hungry so we're going to go get some food and I'll probably tackle this either later this evening or tomorrow or next weekend.
A couple days ago it was 85 degrees and sunny. Now we've got drizzly and 55. Typical Utah spring.
Anyway, last week I didn't get as much done as I was hoping to which you know is pretty typical when you're working on projects.
But I did get all the boxes off the top of the car here, so we can see there really are two cars here and today I want to try to get all the stuff that's around underneath these things so that I can get to them and work on them and have space to actually get the project going here.
[Time lapse]
This is some of the stuff I had stacked around the car. It's track lighting that I was able to get out of a building that was being changed. It was a strip mall and one business was moving out and left this behind, the new business coming in didn't need it and so I was able to go in and scavenge this material.
I'm going to be using it for project lighting for videography in the basement so I really need to get this put together and in use.
[Time lapse]
And I've got the obligatory cute cat picture as Smoke is out here trying to help me.
[Time lapse]
So this is kind of an interesting little device that was given to me.
It weighs well over a hundred pounds I'm sure once it's all put together.
But it's got a motor in here, and a drive mechanism here that's chain driven with gears and a power supply.
It runs off 110 and it's got these tracks that go on each side of it.
It's designed to carry refrigerated vending machines up and down stairs. So those vending machines weigh 12 to 14 hundred pounds and so it's really, really heavy duty.
It also has these kind of outriggers on it that slip into these ports on both sides for additional maneuverability.
I have no idea what I'm going to do with this. If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments below. I'd love to hear them.
One interesting thing is it does not steer. It's designed to just go up and down stairs, as I mentioned, and so it only goes straight. There's no steering mechanism on it. So, in order to use it for some other application, it might require some engineering.
I'm not sure if it's worth trying to salvage anything off of this or what I'm going to do with it.
So, like I said, leave a comment below if you have any ideas.
[Time lapse]
These cardboard tubes are another thing I could use some help with. If you have any ideas what they could be used for, I'd love to hear them down below.
I though about maybe a telescope project with a little bit of it, but that's only going to use probably not even a whole one of these and I'm not sure what else I'd use them for.
They're too good to be thrown away though. You know how that goes.
They're smaller than the concrete forms that are used for fence posts and things like that. I think they're cores from something like carpet or paper rolls or something like that; that's about the size that they are.
Another idea I have for those tubes is to make some storage for all the long scrap metal I have in the corner of the workshop.
[Time lapse]
I got everything cleaned up from around this thing.
I'm ready now to try to start getting it running. That'll be the next video.
If you're interested in this series or other car related videos, there's a playlist up above.
