Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Tire carrier mod. continued 04-23-14

The first thing I did was to get the short piece of tubing off the mounting plate for the gas can mount.  I was able to use my power hacksaw to cut the piece free rather than grinding the welds off.

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Next, I cut another piece of tubing to what I thought was the correct length and tack welded it to the plate. Next I checked it with a wheel on the tire carrier.
It was too short by the amount that I had cut off.

I spent a lot of time looking through my scrap metal trying to find another piece of tubing to replace the one I cut short. Unfortunately it was the only piece that I had.
Okay, so I decided to go see if I could buy a piece of the same kind of tubing. I went to Home Depot and True Value hardware, but neither one had the heavy wall tubing. 
One good thing about working with metal; if you cut it too short you can always just add a piece to make up the difference so that is what I did.
I clamped the two pieces to the welding table

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and did a couple of tack welds to hold the two pieces in place while I did the final welding.

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After it was welded up all the way around, I ground off just enough weld so the tube would fit in the socket on the tire carrier.

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I checked the length again.

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Okay that’s better. Next I drilled new holes for the pin that holds the mount on.

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Next I finished welding the tube to the plate.

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After that I assembled the mount and tried it on the carrier.

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Next I tried the the gas can and it fit.

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The next thing I wanted to do to the carrier was to put a rubber bumper on it between the carrier and the door. It was pretty simple.
All I had to was drill and tap a hole for the 1/4-20 screw to hold the bumper in place.

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There was just one more thing to do. That was to weld a small lip on the mount for the carrier to put the magnetic tow lights.

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All there is to do now is paint the the whole thing and put it back on the jeep. Maybe I’ll get that done this afternoon.

I have a doctors appointment this morning to see if they can fix the trigger finger on my right hand.

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