Random tip of the day

[Stigian 1,234]

Just a small tip for you here Guys.

If your widening a set of WH rims, it may be best to clean the old paint etc off first before welding the widened rim back together..

Otherwise it's a right pain in the 'orse cleaning all the rust/paint off when the rim has a lot of dish

On the bright side.. it's going to be worth it when they are finished :drool:

[Mith 2]

Bah, just paint over it

How did the widening go? Wobbly wheels?

[HorseFixer 2,013]

There you are Ian! have been wondering where ya been? :omg:

[TJ 184]

Good to hear from you again. :omg:

[Stigian 1,234]

Afternoon Guys..

How did the widening go? Wobbly wheels?

Howdo Jim, the widening went quite well thanks and a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

If your thinking about widening you rims Guys, don't put the wheel in a vice put the grinder with cutting disc in the vise instead and turn the wheel against the grinder.

If both are level you get a nice clean straight cut

Good to hear from you again.

There you are Ian! have been wondering where ya been?

Guy's, it's great to be back.

Sorry ive not been about for quite a while, my brain was "out to lunch" for a while.

I think normality is back now, well as normal as things ever get here

A few photo's for you chaps.

I spotted these tires on good old fleabay and could not resist them at a winning price of under

[Rollerman 290]

The 26x12x12's look good Ian!

I have a few sets here my boy keeps eyeballing & wants to put on his Lawn Ranger.

Your currency has me stumped....but it sounds like you got a bargain.

They came off a Kubota though?

This mean your going to paint the tractor orange & add forward assist drive too.

So how did you go about welding the rims back together?

Did you sacrifice another wheel for a center & splice it back onto one you widened?

Seems like we had some pics here on this site once (maybe another?) showing Dale "thirdroc17" running a wheel around bare on a tractor while carefully useing a cutoff wheel to make a set of wide wheels.

[sorekiwi 761]

but I have a plan to make some space.

Is it a plan so cunning you could call it a weasel?

(from a life long Black-adder fan...)

Good to "see" you again Ian!

[bo dawg 517]

Ian, I may have missed reading about it in the past, but I have to ask, what is that custom fab unit you have on the back of the tractor ? what do you do with it? Looks interesting.

:drool:

[Duff 206]

Ian, I may have missed reading about it in the past, but I have to ask, what is that custom fab unit you have on the back of the tractor ? what do you do with it? Looks interesting.

If you're looking at what I think you are, Dawg, it's a roll bar!

Here's a link to the build - very interesting read!

http://www.wheelhorseforum.com/index.php?...006&hl=roll+bar

Duff :drool:

[Stigian 1,234]

Good evening chaps from a nice warm sunny evening in the south of the UK.

I like these sunny days, makes everything feel better

Stephen - Your right, I did get the tires for a bargain price.. 99p or $1.43..

The postage cost me quite a bit more, but I still got both tires for less than half the price one one new tire

Yep they came off a Kubota, or so the fleabay ad said..

Funny you should mention the paint... But more on that a bit later.

The good news is I have manage to get the photo's off my new camera at last, and Garry found a few pic's of the wheel widening on his camera, so here's a few "how We did it" pic's.

Starting with the cutting.

The pic says it all really, just make sure the cutting disc is level, the wheel is turned carefully against the grinder, oh and someone to hold the vice (if it's not bolted down) is a good idea.

The steel strips were cut from some 2" angle.

If you cut through the side of the angle you don't want, the bit you do want will be right width without having to try and cut a straight line

Bending the steel strip ti the right round shape was interesting.

About 3-4" each end was beaten to the right curve over the end of the big vice, then one end clamped onto the rim.

Bend the rest around the rim as much as you can, then bung on a ratchet strap to tighten it up.

With me so far? Good : )

Now take the clamp off and slacken the ratchet strap enough to slide the steel ring of the rim.

If you got your maths right working out the length of the steel strip, tightening the ratchet strap up will close the ends of the strip up and give a nice band of steel just the right..er... round!!

Another photo for you chaps, the ring was tacked to the rim using only 2 G-clamps (I keep breaking them) and a lot of weight on top to keep things together.

If your happy the rim is all right all round, seam weld the joins up.

Back with some photo's and ramblings a bit later, It's food time :drool:

[Stigian 1,234]

That's much better, mixed meat curry, rice and chips always goes down well

And on to the cunning plan Mike..

To make a bit of space for the new tires a few bit's of WH had to come off first.

Getting serious now

Lets raise things to a new level... with the help of 5 small bits of box welded together.

The rear lift cable will run through the bit of box closest.

The hardest part of this was finding a couple of bolt that were long enough and also matched the thread of the trans bolt holes

Some more box under the gas tank/seat pan thingy brought the front up to the same level.

Tire space... the final frontier

Loads of clearance now, when the gas tank goes back in it will look a bit less.. empty under the arches.

Moving forward now (just a little bit) the foot plates needed a few tweaks to gain the vital inch odd needed.

Some cutting and welding later had things sorted. The back of the foot rest thingy was cut off, moved forward a tad or two and angled back so it kinda looks factory WH.

A view from under the wheel arch shows the foot thingy still bolts up.

Strange as it may sound this 312-8 is the most original WH I have, even with all the bolt on extra's. So I thought I might as well try and keep it that was. The 312's foot step thingy's have been stored away in a safe place and a pair of 314's plates were sliced up instead.

The belt cover is 314 as it needed a little bit of trimming to meet the new profile of the er... thingys..

[Stigian 1,234]

Onto paint...

With parts being cut up and/or welded a like of paint is needed to stop things rusting again. Of course a bit of a parts clean up is needed first..

Spot the original WH paint and the faded pink stuff that someone in the past (no not me)

chose to coat it with.

The sharp eyed amongst you will of noticed this panel is the 312 original..

My thinking was as id already cut it about a bit to fit the height stop I made for the lift arm, it had been cut already and a bit trimmed off the end wouldn't do any harm

The only trouble with finding the original paint, is it got me wondering how much of it was left under the pink crud on the hood.. Not much, so a quick brush repaint it will have to be..

More work I know, but ive had enough of the faded pink stuff.

And this is the color it will be.. It's a bit bright I know but should dry and fade to a less er.. blinding shade

Thank you for reading my mad ramblings.. More of the same to come..

Note to one's self..

Buy some more paint and order some inner tubes tomorrow :drool:

[Stigian 1,234]

Morning all, hhmmmm it looks like this thread has moved away a bit from a "random tip of the day". Is there any way I can change the title?

The good news is the inner tubes have been ordered and should be here early next week.

As for the paint.. Well from the next few photo's you can see I got some more of the red stuff.

I can see why someone repainted it in the past, under the thick faded pink paint there wasn't much left of the original WH red.

While stripping the paint off I uncovered the chassis sticker thingy.

Still can't work out what year the 312 was built though.

More painting.

The hood after it's first coat.

Re-masking the decals for the third coat.

Looking quite good after the third coat, but don't be fooled, It's not as smooth as it looks in the photo as you can see the brush strokes when you get closer.

I tried to rescue the front decal from under the paint, but alas it could not be saved

Out of interest We wondered how close the paint match was, not far off when held up against the C-125's hood

[Duff 206]

Ian, 21-12K804 makes it a 1987. Got one of 'em I'm working on right now!

Paint looks good, my friend!

Duff :omg:

[Stigian 1,234]

Thank you for finding out the year Duff, I guess I was putting the wrong number in the Toro search website.

So, back to painting we go. In the episode we grab a rattle can of black Smoothrite satin finish.

It's action shot time

Looks quite nice.

And then a panic moment, We noticed the steering arms sitting on the bench still with a pink-ish coat of paint on...

Fear not... The rattle can saves the day.

Ta-Daa.. Not a perfect paint job, not bad though.

At this point all the painting had been done and the 312 bolted back together, but your going to have to wait for the "finished" pic's..

Here's the hood instead

Jumping on a few days now, this box full of inner tubes turned up, two for the 312 and a couple for the trailer.

Then I remembered one of the widened wheels still needed painting.

A quick coat of silver and some "express drying" soon had the wheel ready for tube fitting.

[Stigian 1,234]

It's getting wet and heavy time.. Well the wheels not me

With the tubes in, it was time to add some weight with some water.

Oh, when my screen wash arrives it will be added

But how to get the water in through the small valve???

With one of these, a screen wash pump and bottle.

I should point out the bottle looks better than it tastes.

No photo's of the tire filling as it would be quite boring, but here's a snap of one of the very heavy wheel going on..

Just in case your wondering, each wheel has just under one and a half of the purple buckets of water in them. No idea how much that is though

Both wheels on, time to find out how it drives..

Will it fit through one door??

Just!!

[Stigian 1,234]

And finally for this update, some almost finished photo's

And that's about all for now folks.

You may of noticed that i said "almost finished" (are these projects ever finished?), as am working on a couple more parts for the 312 just to tidy a couple of parts up that really need sorting.

Your have to wait to find out what im up to, the only clue is.. Im shaping much thinner metal that i have been of late :drool:

[69DEZ 6]

That looks tough! Good job! :omg:

[Sarge 3,465]

Now that is what I call a "Mad Max" build , love it .

May do something similar with the C I just picked up...lol.

Sarge

[Duff 206]

Man, Ian, I love it when your creative juices get to flowing!

Duff :drool:

[Stigian 1,234]

Morning Guys, thanks for the great comments

Sarge - A Mad Max build eh.. I don't think I will be fitting a dog seat on the door, mostly because the 312 hasn't any doors and I don't have a dog..

A supercharged V8 could be fun though

As good as the 312 is looking now, there were a couple of bits missing that would finish it off.. Problem is although I do have one of the missing bits, it's a bit on the broken side.

So, what am I rambling on about...

These things, the headlamp surrounds.

The first problem was how to make a template..

Masking tape to the rescue again..

Once all the tape is on, mark all the edges with a pencil.

At this point I needed to decide where the welded join in the metal was going to be.

At the top almost out of view seemed the sensible place, so the tape was carefully cut with a scalpel and then even more carefully peeled off the plastic before being stuck to some card.

Trim the card/tape temple down to the lines marked earlier then transfer the shape into steel..

Metal of choice this time being an old computer panel.

Easy to cut with snips and easy to shape

A couple of snaps of the extensive array of metal bending/beating tools used.

Vice, some round bar and the bit of red box section that's shaped like a hand brake.

And this selection.

[Stigian 1,234]

It's metal bending time.

Here's the first two bends.. I bet you can guess where the next two bends are going

Lot's of bending, hammering, and all four corners being cut later we are at this stage.

Almost there now (sorry for the bad pic) with the cut corners filled in, just in need of some tidying.

That looks much better

As the 312 has the big pair of lamps on the roll bar I didn't think there was any need to fit a pair of normal WH lamps in the holes, so make em into vents.

The ally will be changed for some steel honeycomb that I have just remember I have got

At least the steel can be welded on to the surrounds which will tidy up the back a bit

And that's about as far as I have got with the surround for now.

How im going to fix the surrounds in place, Im not sure of yet.

Going to be fun working it out though

One last photo for you..

Let the metal forming start again

[TJ 184]

Good information. Great job. :omg:

[jusjeepn 59]

Ian, Great work on the 312! I just wanted to comment on the filling of the tires. In the pic of you tasting the tank your clean shaven. In the next pic you have at least a 3 day growth! That did take a long time to fill! I'm really liking the headlight bezel's! That is some awesome metal work! Always look forward to reading your post's! I'll just sit back, , and wait to see the next installment! Great job!

[wheel horse 1045 2]

looks like you went all macgyvor on us with that build,looking sharp my friend