Weekend Welding

Cuzzin Ricky and I went to the USAC Sprint Car races at Plymouth Speedway Friday night. It was the first time either of us had been there. Nice track - 3/8 mile dirt, stadium seating and 5 buck pork tenderloin sandwiches. It was a great night for racing other than the temperature - low 40's by the time the feature was run. I thought I had on plenty of clothes but I was still pretty chilly by the time we headed for home. The race itself was great. 30 lap feature and not even a single lap run under the yellow. Easy drive over there as well. Have to watch the schedule for more open wheel events there in the future.

Saturday I worked on Rick's trailer. I had the plate to mount the winch all set to weld on, just a matter of grinding off some paint where the welds were going and clamping it down. 

I had to cut out the tube that supported the top rail in order to mount the roller guide that the cable runs through. I made up a couple of angle iron braces to bolt the guide to and welded those in place.

He wanted a couple more tie-downs in the middle of the trailer, so I had to weld one of these in on each side. The loop that holds the "D" ring in place is wider than the channel the frame is made from so I had to remove the wood planking so I could weld the loop from the bottom side and I made a plate to go over the top of the loop that I could weld to the frame rails and to the loop since I couldn't weld it to the inside of the fender. 

Took me a bit longer than I had figured but mostly that was because I hadn't seen all the parts before the trailer arrived. If I had seen everything before hand I would have had everything ready to go. Not really a problem, though. It was a nice day to be outside welding and using the tools. Rick tells me I've got a free haul coming if I ever decide to drag home a farm truck! Always good to have one in the bank.

Got some other spring-timey chores done on Sunday. Took the covers off the air conditioners, did some yard work and some piddly things on the to-do list. Need to do a bit more with the garden and then get things in the ground. It's starting to look kind of scary if you pay any attention to the news at all. A couple of big cities lost power last week, things even more shaky on the international scene and lots of store closings across the country. Definitely need to have the garden going as well as checking out the rest of my "preps". Things just might come unglued one of these days before much longer. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

Have a good week. Be ready.