Mazdeuce fixes the grosh

(Wondering if I should slap a GRM sticker on the silver twinkie before visitors this weekend)

Gaunt596 wrote: Just something to be aware of, working on medium and heavy duty trucks is a whole new ball game. Eveything is 3x the weight and price, and the tools to work on it are just as expensive. Your garage standard engine hoist and stand aren't gonna cut it.

This is going to be another "follow along while I try another ill advised project" situation. I think there are a lot of people that wonder about messing with medium duty trucks. If you're just a normal guy with a normal garage and set of tools, can you drag one home and work on it yourself? How do you even change a tire that weighs more than your wife? What's a torque multiplier, and do I need one? As long as I don't hurt myself, this should be fun.

In reply to Mr_Merkur:

Thanks. I think I actually have an Alabama plate from somewhere, but if I ever get back to putting them up and I can't find one I'll let you know. I'm glad you're having fun with the threads.

hhaase wrote: (Wondering if I should slap a GRM sticker on the silver twinkie before visitors this weekend)

I grabbed a handful of them while I was visiting the mother ship on One Lap. We should GRM sticker all the things.

I'll just echo everyone else and say thank you for making this thread- especially the history sections regarding the house. I've figured out how to sort of muddle my way through everything my motorsports addiction throws at me, but know nothing about buildings, plumbing, electrical, roofs, windows... any of it! Rereading this thread is helping me calm down a bit about our impending home purchase.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

Houses are always a restomod. You keep the old structure and update to modern tech for plumbing, electrical, windows etc. Since I did my house the tech has moved forward. PEX for plumbing, extra conductors in wires for smart home integration, it's always moving forward. I'm sure you'll do a better, more well researched job than I did.

I finally just finished reading this thread, too. I enjoyed the R63 thread and the Grosh (I love where the name came from, as my kids have unintentionally renamed a few things around here, too) did not disappoint. :) Amazing what you were able to do by yourself. No wonder you weren't intimidated by the AMG.

I can kick in some NH and MA plates for the bathroom if you're missing them.

In reply to toomanytoyz:

Thanks. There is actually still a ton to do if I can ever focus and stop bringing home dead cars to work on. Very hard to work ON the Grosh when I'm working IN the Grosh.

Include me as another who:

• found you due to the news of the R63 DIY success

• who has just completed 91 pages of the Grosh thread

• has been inspired by same

• and who has hardly gotten anything done after work for the last week ;)

Keep up the good work. This thread is just a little glimpse into your life, but it's also a little bit of beauty and fun in world that too often concentrates on everything else.

Thanks for that.

Grateful Dave

Oh wow. I love COE trucks. Cant wait to see what you do with it :) iam yet another reader that got sucked in by your Internet fame. I was in the Austin area till about 2 months ago. By the way, great going on the Mercedes:)

As directed, have now read and thoroughly enjoyed the Grosh thread. Great stories and great work! Pretty much ditto all the above that other folks have already said. Thanks for it all!

And a very practical question: I grew up raising chickens and guineas (keets! ) and would love to begin again now that we've got a place and some kids to enjoy 'em. But my wife and I are having trouble figuring out what to do about traveling... we travel a fair amount. How do y'all do it with spending the summers up north and all?

Chalk up another new reader here too. Got pulled into the C63 thread and have also spent several nights reading through every page of that and the Grosh threads. So inspiring watching you accomplish all this mostly by yourself.

I've started cleaning out my garage too, but I've got a heck of lot of more work to do before I can convince my better half that a lift is in our near future!

Keep on keepin' on Mr. Deuce!

In reply to revengineer:

We could leave the guineas alone for a couple of weeks at a time once they learned to roost. I had an auto-waterer hard plumbed into the same line that the hose ran off, so they always had water. They probably could have survived indefinitely without extra food but they would have wandered even more than they did, and I could fit about two weeks food in the big PVC feeder I made. That was the real issue, guineas don't respect fences, at all, and they occasionally needed to be coaxed out of the neighbor's yard and back into mine.

To everyone else, thanks for reading. There is still quite a lot more work to do. There probably always will be.

So....are they (guineas) gone?

Sounds like guineas. Our neighbors threatened to call the the town if the birds wandered over again til we told them how guineas absolutely destroy ticks...then the neighbors told us they were welcome in their yard anytime, racket and all.

Sadly, it sounds like your birds are no longer?

They got picked off one by one over the course of two years. We went from ten to one and that one hung on. Unfortunately he didn't deal well with the loneliness and developed some very weird attachments to me. Male guineas have a habit of randomly practicing smashing each other. I assume it's fun and practice against predators and dominant behaviour and what not. It's just guineas being guineas when they do it to each other, but about the third time he ambushed me and tried to claw my head in full flight I realized it was time for the shotgun approach to guinea ownership. They were fun. We're not getting more.

Having read that I'll stick with my three hound, poor boy, home security system....

Ha, I'd forgotten about particular peculiarity of guineas...one of many! Having been pecked/clawed by a few, I don't blame you. Darned if those aren't the most muscular birds...

Anyway. Grosh > guineas.

I'd just like to say, now that I'm very close to breaking ground on my 32x40 garage, that this thread helped us a lot in deciding what we really needed and wanted out of our garage. 

I have been reading your stuff since just before the R63 popped its bolt. I can't really figure out why I like to keep up with all your doing, but I just do. Keep on keeping on. I have always wanted to do a lot of what you are doing but I'll just need to do it through you and others vicariously because finances do get in the way. By the way, you GRM magazine admin folks, I am here completely and only because I found you through Mazdeuce, a real treasure. Now for why I came in out of the woods; you mentioned a hammer that was 'lost' somewhat early in this Grosh forum. I may have missed you mentioning if you found it, but it has been poking my curiosity button for a while. Yeah, stupid point, but again...

In reply to editus :

Thanks. I lost more than one hammer. The "good" hammer ended up on top of one of the walls where I eventually found it. The other hammer got pushed off with the old roof on the back section and I didn't find it until I threw all that in a dumpster. When it was all said and done I think I found more hammers than I lost over the length of the project. 

GRM and I are in a good place. They built this clubhouse. Even though a bunch of people come here to see me, I'm still here to hang out with everyone else too. There is no way my threads would be what they are without the constant feedback from the people reading along. I'm glad people are still reading this, I still have to much work to do. 

So, now that you've had the MaxJax in there for a while, is there anything you would do differently when installing a lift again?  We're getting a 2-post and I'm wracking my brain trying to think of the pros and cons of where it goes relative to walls, outlets, doors, etc.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Probably not much that I could do differently given the space I have to work with, but if I did it again in a different building I would think of space in a different way. A lift really dictates where a car will be. This is obvious, but it means that the work flow of the bay is ALWAYS the same. You also lose a larger footprint than the car alone and this affects where you can put things. Essentially you lose space to stack things next to the car as you work in it because you're always in and out under the car. I use more space with a car on a lift than with a car on jack stands.  

My ideal work space has gotten bigger the more I use a lift. I now want a work bay that is at least two cars wide. The lift would be on one side and I would keep rolling tool boxes, rolling shelving, rolling parts washers, rolling...everything on the other side. When a car is on a lift that whole bay is now useless so I need a space to work on the stuff that I just took off or am about to put on. Without a lift you're always improvising, it's just what you do, with a lift you have an opportunity to organize and do things properly and the more you want to.  

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

What he said - you want space around the car. Space in front, space on the sides, space in back. You can't move the car a foot or two forward or backward in the shop based on what part you're working on. You're going to want to be able to roll your tool boxes around the car without hitting things, so you'll want room between the lift posts and the wall. I centered mine in my 3-car garage area. I'm lucky in that it's wide enough to still park three cars in there even with the lift. But you need the room around it to effectively use the lift.

It looks like I can keep the left post 3ft off the wall, and the right post will be in the middle of the shop with enough space to fit cars around it on the other side.  The company recommends 12ft from the lift to the front wall, which I think I can do better than without being so far back that the garage door opens into the area occupied by the car.