WALSTIB - 2

Pics from the lot, inside the venue, as promised. Oh, the setlist:
Set 1:
Help on the Way >
Slipknot >
Franklin's
Good Lovin
Cassidy
Bird Song (ended reservations about JG-less Jerry tunes)
Uncle John's Band (with a smokin' kybd solo)

Set 2:
Unbroken Chain >
The Other One
Drums of Fire (fire dancers during drums) >
Space
Sugaree
Gimme Shelter (reference to Altamont?)
Sugar Mag

Encores:
St. Steven >
The 11 >
Hendrix (Foxy Lady?) tease >
The 11
Touch of Grey



picture contents.....
top - Bell enjoying the lot. Green '78 Westy was parked 2 cars to her left. Mid-80's Vanagon was about 8 cars down to the right. Overall, there were very few bay window or vanagons in Mt. View / Shoreline.

next from top - Dwayne-o. Old friend of mine from my Las Vegas days. He came down from Florence OR (didn't realize he was a fellow Oregonian) to meet up with a few of us old Shwaggtown-ers.

next from bottom - Entry to Shoreline. That's Ed, lead singer and driver of the Winnebago (or '73 bus in our case).

Bottom - inside Shoreline as the Dead start filering onstage. That was our view - pretty darn good.

On the bus work.... I have given up on brazing, and I'm back to welding again. After reading the fine print on the HTS-2000 website, it looks like the kind of fabrication I'm doing is with tubing that is too thick to get up to temperature. Basically, the website says something about 12" x 12" x 1" in size, or something like that. I think the heat dissipates so fast, that a torch can't keep the tubes hot enough long enough to braze well.

So, I'll be buying a welding helmet at Harbor Freight, and some steel bars at Home Despot (or The Steel Yard on Columbia Blvd), and re-starting my welding efforts. I have reached out to a few friends that have welding on their resume's, but this is a hard time of year to get time from folks - they have their own delayed projects that need their spare hours. Before I break into the welding, I'll be rust-treating the underside of the bus with Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator. That shouldn't take more than an hour, but its necessary before welding in a radiator mount under there.

I'll have pics of the return drive, and from the Gorge show (May 16, 2009) in follow-up posts.

Aluminum tubes

Work has been extreme these last few weeks (logging near 60 hrs a couple of times), and things around the homestead have been taking a toll. Now that the project is wrapping up, and the weather has turned nicer, I hope to be able to use the longer daylight hours to get something done. First, I rolled Hapy back into the middle of the driveway. Apparently, my sone and his friend rolled it back into the dirt so they could ride their bikes or skateboards or play basketball or something. Anyway, just byb rolling him back so all 4 tires are on cement seemed to make him sit happier. That's all it took.

I started opening windows and doors, and re-thinking what I was doing. I did a little research, and talked to a few people, and settled on brazing an aluminum frame for the radiator. The folks over at Pacific Metals in Tualatin were able to set me up with 1" rounded-square 6063 extruded Aluminum tubing at around a $1 a foot. With the angle grinder I got last Fall and a tape measure, I spent Saturday afternoon (between release activities for work) cutting up tubing.

I have a small section I needed at the rear (front-is-front) of the hatch I cut above the engine. I may need more supports around the hole, but the rear edge has no support, so I preped something for that (picture to the left). Then, I cut up the support "U" for the raditator support. The opening "U" will face rearward. Last, I measured, test fit and cut the square-ish frame that the radiator will be bolted to. This will have a hinge at the front so I can determine the best pitch in real testing. I'll support the rear end with cables until I have a firm setting. The picture on the right shows the "U" and the frame as they will be after brazing. All of that tubing consumed about 20' of the tubing I bought.

I'll be breaking out the torch and brazing rods tomorrow night, and I hope to have some pictures of some brazed framework shortly thereafter. By the weekend, I should be ready to cut more for the hatch door supports and a jig to go between the ATV jack and the bottom of the engine. I'll post an explanation of that later.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Its been really crazy both at work and at home.