The Co-op: More stuff all under 1 roof

We both slogged through all of that stuff yesterday and I forgot to leave my point.  The point I was trying to point out is that for 20 years….. in some level of competence The Co-op has been trying it’s best to do what folks wanted.  “Be careful for what you wish for cause it just might come true”…if another adage is true “anything like this you do will take much longer and cost much more than you thought”….. those 2 run into eachother in our business.  Through the years we’ve gotten better both through a much better place to do this but also attracting more talent to the point we can now branch out into other fine restorations.  Oh, and I’m proud of the team we have put together.  Through the years of appreciating nice rolling stock the hardest thing to find is someone who knows more than you about what you want to do…..and who cares about their work.  That’s what I’ve always wanted to be a part of…now I am.  1 spoke in the wheel…that’s the place I like to be…not the hub….a spoke and now I can do that because I have a pile of really good spokes helping me turn this wheel……. I know, now I’m bragging!  I’m sorry but i’m happy over the improvements in the past 2 years here at The Co-op.

Now that I have that off my chest, lemme show you yesterday’s work……… well I got my dash AC work done, Ruby’s passenger side dash is repaired, prepped and will get it’s skin today   You can maybe visualize the shape of the dash after loosing 2 vents.  This will increase the output velocity of the air got or cold. Everything gets bagged off before spraying adhesion promoter, contact adhesive then stretch a new skin on the pad.    While working yesterday over on David’s dash AC project #3 jacking the rear up to assess putting in a maserator we found so much more   What?  Oh, the kiddy’s 4 wheeler strapped to that rolling stand holds our 30 amp cables and adapters for the 11 50amp outlets on the building….hey, I had to make it do something…Shhhhh secretly I’m hoarding, I think I can make something out of it!!!  SSSHHHhhhhhhh  …But on a looksee under you can easily tell whoever put this in wanted it to do EVERYTHING wether they would ever use it or not!  The personification of a GMC enthusiast….”my coach has everything!”  Lemme show you this then I’ll describe it  Well, actually most of what you see there isn’t bad….the maserator is hard plumbed to the output tubethen positioned on a ledge for protection and to get the outlet pointing back with a Valterra gate valve going to a manual dump pipe…..but at the top of my poorly centered pic you can see he can run the gravity dump left or right with mechanical drops for each side.  I don’t know about you but once you have evacuated a holding tank with a maserator you will NEVER launch barges down a 3″ pipe again!  When it breaks we install a gate valve where you can find the nearest Camping World and replace the pump and still have a full tank…that system you cannot.  It’s good to have a second way to get rid of yesterday’s chili cook-off and something needs to do that.  We have a bayonetted cap fitting but no plumbing on it…no mess to drag off.  Hey but that’s not the bad part, the tank is cracked!

Let me explain this…as plastic gets old and deteriorated it shrinks.  The stresses from shinking causes cracks at fittings, corners, etc.  Made of roto-molded polypropylene plastic, you can braze-weld it but soon another stress crack will form.  When you start seeing this you know it’s time for a new tank.  Look pack at the pic and notice there is a white gate valve on the back of the tank…that’s an original Thetfort gate valve bolted to an original plastic holding tank………the outlet fittings are cracked…been gobbed up and is still leaking.  Friends we are gathered here today to say fare-the-well to a trusted friend of this coach until recently…The holding tank is dead!

We understand from the notes (haven’t checked it yet) that there was an issue with the maserator so lets say it’s dead…that happens, it’s an electric motor so we are looking …to not leave a present everytime you stop….. we’ll need a new holding tank, new maserator and plumbed to offer the countermeasures you need to service the system and not have “Mexican plumbing” under there!  Oh and it needs to be done right..1 time!  No one wants to play with this end of the motorhome again!

The green Ford is now on roller, the flip front hood and fenders are back on…hey, it looks like a truck again!  Physically smaller projects are going to be mounted on rollers like this so we can move them around in the big house…..  this motor….I was corrected yesterday is also a “400”….hey, I don’t know it’s a Ford!  But I do knoe it has just the right amount of bling and FiTech    Oh and we have the folks who we’re working on this Airstream trailer on for are coming in today   The first step on one of these is not mechanicals…The interior goes down to it’s “root mean” or all the old stuff goes out

     Those wood walls are 1/4″ and will come down in a heartbeat but being a twin bed the walls may stay because of the bed length.  We’ll take the battery outside to the tongue and gain at least a little outside storage. Kind of a neat projects, stay tuned for more……

Tom, who belongs to Texas Tux called the other day asking for a couple of pics on where we were..    The underhood and firewall are ready for wiring   inside the red carpet is out exposing the insulation   working today on it’s electrical connections this is a great heat insulator material.  We’re going to keep it using it again.

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