Friday I went and picked up a couple of things. Most notably a truck cap and a boat trailer. The truck cap is black, which looks better with the truck than I thought it would. Black and red don't strike me as a great combo, but all the trim and stuff on the truck was black, so it fits in nicely. One of its nicest features is that it has gigantic windows. It doesn't limit visibility nearly as bad as many caps do.
It has the raised top, which I don't particularly care about one way or the other. It does have brackets on it if I wanted to build anything on it (like a rack for solar panels?) but anything like that will likely be after the expected death of this truck. It needs a bath (one night and everything was coated in pollen), but some of the clear coat is peeling. I might repaint it for thermal reasons, we shall see how hot things get inside.
One thing I didn't look for: ants. When I went out on Saturday to take all these pictures, I saw a bunch of ants in this gasket. I hosed it down inside and out with some spider and scorpion killer I had lying around, and the ants vacated the premises.
I saw other caps at the same price range that needed less work, but they are scarce and sell quickly so I decided to pounce and pay a little extra for the guarantee of being able to get one. The cap needs some work, mostly new lifters and latches, and I probably could have gotten a better deal if I had held out, but oh well.
One thing I noticed that is kind of nice is that my cargo light still works and illuminates inside the cap, it isn't completely blocked. I washed the windows after this, they were bad.
The other thing I went and picked up on Friday was a boat trailer. I feel a little bad about it, but didn't have time to change the ball before I went down, since it is a 1 7/8" not a 2". I ended up putting the guy I bought the trailer from to work. Fortunately he restores old things for a hobby (some of the stuff in his garage was really cool) and he had tools to take the old ball off (my 12" adjustable wrench just didn't cut it). The old ball is only a year and a half or maybe two years old tops, and it was thoroughly rusted in place. Enter one of the guys specialty tools. I apparently took a picture of the wrong side, but it had "Snap Off" engraved on it. It is basically a 6' pipe with a 3/4" drive extension welded onto it. Now that is a breaker bar. Even with this (and a 30" crescent wrench to keep the ball from spinning wedged into the draw bar so it wouldn't move) it took both us half an hour to get the old ball off. It saved me from having to make a separate trip and from having to buy a new draw bar though. Thanks dude.
The trailer. It is largely homemade and needs a paint job, but my untrained eye didn't see any welding issues. The fenders need replacing, and I towed it home with magnetic lights.
The coupler looks like hell, but worked just fine and holds tight.
The tongue jack isn't really a jack, there is a piece missing (the handle that raises and lowers it), but it works ok. Maybe you can find just a new handle, I haven't looked.
The winch works, though the spring is shot so you have to manually lock and unlock it. Steel cable isn't ideal for a boat, but this would be a very low priority thing to work on.
Some of the rollers need replacing. This one looked pretty bad.
Some of the rollers work fine though.
The rear roller spins freely but is splitting apart. There is a worse split on the other side.
The bunks are junk. They are height adjustable assuming the bolts come apart.
One of the odd things about this trailer is that it looks like it has car tires on it. This makes the trailer taller than one would expect. Not great for a boat. One of the hubs is a little loose (with the trailer sitting still you can wiggle the wheel), but it towed home with no problem or vibration. The tires are dryrotted, but still hold air.
The trailer is a tilt trailer. I don't profess to understand how it is supposed to work, but I did see the trailer tilt, so it works.
How much it tilts is limited by this joint, so perhaps modification will make it work better.
It is parked over by my other trailer. I managed it, but am out of practice backing a trailer.
I also went and picked up some reinforcements for my wimpiness from Barry that go through 4/0 cable quite easily.
I didn't really do much else on Saturday other than go to a BBQ. One of my coworkers was trying some brisket in his new smoker. I played around with the camera a little bit, and tried to take pictures of my carport resident.
Apparently he has made some enemies, since I saw a couple of eggs on the ground in the carport.
I also finally finished assembling my new air hose. It is annoying that they don't come with all the pieces anymore and I had to go grab a quick connect fitting for it.
Sunday I got back to work on the power center. It got the rest of the aluminum installed and the lid attached.
I also attached the peripherals on the side. With those on, I can still lift it, but it is a pain (it is bulky, and the weight is very unbalanced). I might consider adding some straps so I can haul it like a backpack, or just go serious wimp and use the tractor move it around.
After all that I found an issue with the bus bars. I thought the wires for the inverter were plenty long enough. I was wrong. I am not sure how I want to fix this yet.
It rained off and on Sunday afternoon. I didn't see any major leaks in the cap, though some ran in at the front. I will have to get a new gasket for it appears.
The only other thing I did was I finally condensed down to a single toolbox in the truck.
Almost all of these pictures were taken with the camera I picked up. The guy left a bunch of scenic pictures on it, and I have uploaded some pictures (not on the blog because it horribly shrinks everything) to my web albums (which only does minor compression)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NXFDXof8rh6Q68Pa8My conclusion on the camera: all in all, it is an old camera that was probably decent albeit not great when it was new (in its class of lower end DSLR). Even despite being a really old DSLR, it is still better than my phone camera or a lower end modern point and shoot. Compared to a modern DSLR it pales, but that isn't surprising for a 13 year old body. It has trouble with dynamic contrast, and I did see some purple hazing and chromatic shift, and the auto-exposure overexposed most of the images in my opinion, but despite that, the pictures look nice when not looking at them at a pixel level. It is still perfectly fine for a novice photographer or a beater camera.
No movement on the checklist. The rain is supposed to hold off for a few days, so I might try to finish up painting the smaller trailer and get that checked off the list this week.
2021 Projects:
Prepare summer equipmentCarport repair- Windows in shed
- Shed supports
- Table
- South wall siding
- Bridge over creek
- Review options for house (mobile home vs stick built vs modular)
- Trailer hub
- Rebuild smaller trailer
- Level back yard
- Level side yard
- Level front yard
- Clear trees to creek
- Remove dead/dying beech trees
- Retaining walls?
- Eliminate pile of crap in back
- Camper Power Center (portable AC power source and generator)
- Clean up/level area down by second parking spot
- Driveway round three
- Fix shed door.
