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Is this a tool, or a big honkin' machine? I spent many months cleaning and repairing this sad, abused boat anchor. Before: After: Next project, whack together a sturdy bench for the South Bend on the floor, and I will be truly dangerous.

Good day all I am in Raleigh NC today. Drove there this weekend. 1440 miles from my house to the hotel, work reasons. Some observations. Louisiana needs to do something about their roads in Shreveport, horrible. MS, AL, GA have nice roads, nice rest stops (Hello Texas pay attention) and really friendly people at the TC gas stations, clean bathrooms too. I usually avoid large gatherings like at Buc-ees, no thank you. SC and NC have decent roads too, but damn do something about that 55 mph limit y'all have. No one obeys it. Made the trip in my company truck, 2019 Silverado 2500, 4x4 long bed. Yep a tank. Nary an issue and I probably just jinxed myself, lol. Class is done on Wednesday, going to see my youngest daughter down in Fayetteville and head back Thursday, most likely. 21 hours of driving and one night of sleeping, at a rest top in Alabama, clean bathroom there as well. Thankfully I have a big ol' truck to sleep in, I actually got 6 hours of sleep, lol. At my age that's almost the same as sleeping like a teenager.

I have an old Craftsman pedestal drill press (a bit ashamed to say so, seeing yours...), and it had a good bit of slop in it - that is, you could take hold of the shaft and wobble it back & forth. I took it all apart and discovered that it wasn't due to wear in the bushings, but that the bushings weren't snug in the drill press frame, or housing. I discovered that shims cut out of a pop can were exactly the right thickness to take out the slop. My son bought a sort of lathe attachment for the drill press, but it isn't accurate enough for what I want ("need") to do. So regarding the SouthBend, I've been looking for a bench-top lathe for a long time. Some years ago I was at an auction of a small machine shop, and just didn't keep yelling Yep! long enough I guess, or else the other guy simply had more money to play with. At that same sale a huge lathe went for a good bit less than where I was at on the small Craftsman lathe. That big one went for low scrap price. And that's the way it runs around here. Lots of small machine shops (mostly owned by Amishmen, doing repairs on old hit & miss engines, etc.) around here, and that sort of sale always attracts a bunch of other guys that I wish would just stay home with momma.

nice commercial drill press, this will out last you I am sure. As for the South Bend, I cannot see how I ever got things done about the home and shop without mine. Congrats for both items...

Just one comment. When testing make sure you mix the paint with any reducer & activator as applicable for the paint you are using. If not, you can't be sure you won't have a bad reaction without those solvents and hardeners. If your first-time shooting take advantage of the test panel by giving a sand prime and shoot to get your settings on the gun and increase your comfort zone.

You made the right choice. I used to rebuild starters and electric motors for a living and i would have put that one in my parts barrel! Often when you press a new end bushing in, the armature shaft wont fit and you need to ream the bushing to fit...special tool. And your shaft end had so much brinneling that it would be questionable how long it would last even with the bushing clearance done right. All of that happened from lack of lubrication...

The hole for the allan wrench is sort of half hidden by the door weatherstripping. The other two pictures are from my parts car and I decided to cut them out of the door just in case I needed them one day for something.

You know, it is not the distributor that matters regarding 6v or 12v. It's the electronic control module it triggers that matters and there is no reason a 6v version couldn't be designed, well no reason other than the money involved doing it.

Quick weekend update. Went out today and used some 320 to prep the paint for spraying. I blended into the area's that had color, and did the surfaces with primer. There were a couple places I hadn't done any work to yet, so I got them all ready to put some color on also. As I was getting down, the sander started to make bearing noises. It's a fairly cheap Black and Decker 5 inch electric sander. I've had a small vacuum connected to the exhaust since I started working on the truck, to keep the air from being a cloud. Anyway, I took it into the "shop" and disassembled Johnny 5. It was pretty dirty inside and the bearing under the main aluminum fan/disk was pretty rough feeling. I took it all the way apart, including removing the rubber ends of the bearing. They seemed to come out pretty easily. I cleaned the thing with WD40 first then brake cleaner. Next is hit it with some white lith grease. It now spun fantastically again. I popped the rubber ends back in (they are backed with integral brass washers) after cleaning them inside and out. I spun it a bunch on my finger tip, cleaning all the excess grease that came out. Smooooth. I put the whole shebang back together after having cleaned everything. I tested just the motor in the housing at first and it ran very fast with no abnormal sounds, so I put the rest of it back together. Gave it another test run, on the back patio of course...works like new again. I put it back into it's box, ready to be used in the future...then bought a air powered random orbital on Amazon with excellent reviews. It was only $32, but had 400 reviews and nearly 5 stars...so what the heck. It will be here on Tuesday, which I chose to delay until then because I have the day off. I love Amazon, even if Bezos is a tool. I tested the paint as was suggested by dipping a screw driver in some and letting it run on the parts that no longer matter. I don't see any reaction at all. If the weather is good next weekend, I'm going to try my hand at getting some color on the cab. Once that has had a week to cure up, I'm going to mask the cab well and then remount the fender. I'll finish doing the body work with it on the truck since I think it will be easier for me. We'll see if that's right or not. Comments are always welcome. Have a good Sunday everyone.

No, Detroit built for the NZ market. Yes to the D9 being based on the smaller Plymouth wheelbase and body size. Chrysler Corp did lots of things like this to be a global supplier that enabled them to do business into overseas markets and meet the different conditions in those countries. The design of the whole range of WCP vehicles from an early stage allowed this export business to service all the peculiarities of different markets. Some were government tariffs around size of vehicles, encouragement of local assembly industries or bodybuilding, righthand drive traffic systems etc. You will all see some of this engineering in your rides from the sharing of body, engine and chassis parts; symmetrical stamping of the cowl panel and dash design that can accommodate adaptation to right hand drive. They had smart people that quickly turned Chrysler Corp into a giant global player. A great US success story really.......now the world needs this type of creativity and scale to fix what we have inadvertently brought upon ourselves....very quick solutions to our human induced climate problems.....here's hoping.....

I have one that I couldn't get to work with my phone. However hooked it up to a cheap Chromebook and it has saved me twice now. Once on my 07 minivan when I dropped a bolt inside the sliding door and once when adding an outlet to the house I used it in the wall to see why the Romex was getting stuck

Probably the 254th version of a homemade brake adjustment tool, but since the topic headline is "show your tools", here`s my version ? The main tool body fits on the rear axle, an adapter sleeve fits into the main body to fit on the front axle. Adjustment by the knurled nut (where the A in the picture is - nut fine threaded), so no extra tool / wrench required. Spring A makes it a little easier to adjust the tool`s diameter while checking. Spring B pushes the tool onto the tapered axle. The load is slightly adjustable, just enough pressure that there`s no wiggle, but slight enough to allow easy rotation. The gauge (piece of an old Allen key + threaded rods) is for determining the specific drum diameter. A caliper to take the determined diameter and check the brake shoe diameter (minus clearance). That`s it. brake-adjust-tool.pdf