[NA] Repurposing Ideas [NA]

timwinters

timwinters

Ejection Handle Pulled
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Feb 23, 2008
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Conway, MO
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LTD
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KLBO---Lebanon, MO
Thought it might be a good idea to share repurposing ideas. I'll start with the old hose reel I repurposed, strapped it to the wall of my barn/shop with ductwork sized zipties, and use it as a extension cord keeper. I have somewhere between 300' and 400' of cord on it.

IMG_20160503_080006158.jpg

Oh, and in case you're wondering why my tire pressure gauges are painted green, yellow and red...

Green = 0 to 20#
Yellow = 0 to 50#
Red = 0 to 100#
 
wow! That's a lot of Extension cord...if I ever need some power I'll grab the end and drag it down to NC... Also I like how you repurposed those nails to hold individual pressure gauges... Ingenious! :D
 
Holy zip ties batman, that install isn't covered by the UBC.
 
Thats a good idea cuz those things suck as water hose reels!
 
My turn, my electric leaf blower came with an attachment that let me suck up and shred leaves (useless). I zip tied the attachment to a pipe in my shop and now it works as a holster for the blower keeping it out of the way and off the work bench.
 
I repurposed my garage as a holding area for projects I don't feel like completing and all of the components required to do same.
 
What are you airing up that you need more than 60psi? Semi-truck tires? Also, does the 50psi gauge not show the same increments as the 20psi gauge? Modernize and get rid of the pressure-slide gauges altogether and get a round-dial or digital. :)
 
SoonerAviator said:
What are you airing up that you need more than 60psi? Semi-truck tires? Also, does the 50psi gauge not show the same increments as the 20psi gauge? Modernize and get rid of the pressure-slide gauges altogether and get a round-dial or digital. :)
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The F load rated tires on two of my heavy dual-axle trailers need 80. The fifth wheel (12,500 GVWR) and the big covered cargo trailer (10,000 GVWR -- we put a Miata inside it once. It works best if you leave the top down and climb out of it.)
 
SkyDog58 said:
I thought that was what garages were for.
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Someone told me once that they were originally designed to shelter vehicles, but I've never seen anything but my wife's half of ours utilized for this purpose. I think she's just lying to me to keep her truck free of snow in winter.
 
denverpilot said:
Someone told me once that they were originally designed to shelter vehicles, but I've never seen anything but my wife's half of ours utilized for this purpose. I think she's just lying to me to keep her truck free of snow in winter.
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Nope, you were told wrong and your wife is doing it wrong. Garage is for unfinished projects and misc junk. Driveway is for boats and RVs. The curb is where you park your car or truck. Must I explain everything?
 
SkyDog58 said:
Nope, you were told wrong and your wife is doing it wrong. Garage is for unfinished projects and misc junk. Driveway is for boats and RVs. The curb is where you park your car or truck. Must I explain everything?
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If you wouldn't mind coming over, say about January, and explaining this to her, I'll buy the beer. :)

And she wonders why I want a barn... Hahaha.
 
denverpilot said:
If you wouldn't mind coming over, say about January, and explaining this to her, I'll buy the beer. :)

And she wonders why I want a barn... Hahaha.
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Hmmm.... Denver in January..... I'd be afraid I'd have to remove a snowshoe from my butt if I tried to do it then.
 
SoonerAviator said:
What are you airing up that you need more than 60psi? Semi-truck tires?
Click to expand...

As Nate said, numerous things:

Skid Steer = 70#
Front tires on tractor (18 ply road tires due to having a big front end loader) = 60 to 70# if I really want to use the loader.
2 trailers, one box, one flatbed, both with dual 3500# axles, 50 to 70# depending on load.
Rear tires on truck when pulling aforementioned trailers, up to 80# depending on load.
Etc.

SoonerAviator said:
Also, does the 50psi gauge not show the same increments as the 20psi gauge?
Click to expand...

Actually, no, not to the same detail or accuracy. At the other end of the spectrum:

ZTR, 15# rear, 12# front.
Side by side, 10# all around.
Tractor rear tires 12# on dirt, 15# on roads.
Etc.

SoonerAviator said:
Modernize and get rid of the pressure-slide gauges altogether and get a round-dial or digital. :)
Click to expand...

Lemme guess, even though you're a Sooner, you've never actually worked on a farm and had to run Slime of Fix-a-Flat in your offroad equipment. Or, you don't have honey locust trees (or mesquite) in your neck of the woods. Without Slime, I'd be repairing tires weekly...literally. Slime kills digital gauges instantly...at least every one I've tried (which, admittedly, has only been two since they died quickly...immediately). It's hard on manual gauges too, but at least they last for a while. And besides, it's not hard to grab the proper one off of the wall when their color coded, eh?
 
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timwinters said:
And besides, it's not hard to grab the proper one off of the wall when their color coded, eh?
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That's also good for telling someone to grab the "Yellow air chuck", vs "Hey grab the 0# to 50# air chuck". The last one I'd have to look at the gauge of each one if I got unlucky on the first grab.
 
I took all my old glass Gerber baby food bottles and use them for screws etc. Nail the lid to the under side of a shelf and they hang up quite nicely.
 

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timwinters said:
As Nate said, numerous things:

Skid Steer = 70#
Front tires on tractor (18 ply road tires due to having a big front end loader) = 60 to 70# if I really want to use the loader.
2 trailers, one box, one flatbed, both with dual 3500# axles, 50 to 70# depending on load.
Rear tires on truck when pulling aforementioned trailers, up to 80# depending on load.
Etc.



Actually, no, not to the same detail or accuracy. At the other end of the spectrum:

ZTR, 15# rear, 12# front.
Side by side, 10# all around.
Tractor rear tires 12# on dirt, 15# on roads.
Etc.



Lemme guess, even though you're a Sooner, you've never actually worked on a farm and had to run Slime of Fix-a-Flat in your offroad equipment. Or, you don't have honey locust trees (or mesquite) in your neck of the woods. Without Slime, I'd be repairing tires weekly...literally. Slime kills digital gauges instantly...at least every one I've tried (which, admittedly, has only been two since they died quickly...immediately). It's hard on manual gauges too, but at least they last for a while. And besides, it's not hard to grab the proper one off of the wall when their color coded, eh?
Click to expand...

I've got slime in several tires in the shop and we run a couple of Kubota tractors (B and L-series). We have a nice ZT and a cheap riding mower which do the 10/12 psi thing, but I've never cared to be more accurate with the tire pressure than getting "close enough". Honestly, I've never had the tire slime mess up a pressure gauge, but I usually don't check the tire pressure immediately after putting it in. No mesquite up here though, except in the smoker.
 
denverpilot said:
Someone told me once that they were originally designed to shelter vehicles, but I've never seen anything but my wife's half of ours utilized for this purpose. I think she's just lying to me to keep her truck free of snow in winter.
Click to expand...

HER half? Of the garage?
What has the world come to :confused:
Next thing you know they'll wanna run for President or something :eek:

(After 25 years of parking her vehicle outside in our northern winters, Mrs. GRG55 threatened me with an imminent 50% net worth reduction, which was enough to prompt a slightly less expensive attached garage addition to the house so I could continue to claim her half of the detached for said vitally important projects, "til death do us part").
 
Redneck Wind Chime:

26718651212_cbc77656e2_z.jpg
 
400ft of extension cord? What do you work on, a B-52? :)

Funny redneck wind-chime. One year, I put a small car part on our Christmas tree as an ornament. It was in plain sight but the wife never found it. :D
 
BigBadLou said:
400ft of extension cord? What do you work on, a B-52? :)
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In a former life I was a general contractor. I have LOTS of extension cords. This represents about half...maybe. Likely another 200' at both the hangar and the house.
 
tree96 said:
I took all my old glass Gerber baby food bottles and use them for screws etc. Nail the lid to the under side of a shelf and they hang up quite nicely.
Click to expand...

Had a bunch if those when I was growing up. Saw a 2x4 square, screws rows of caps on all four sides. A nail in each end makes a nice rotating mount to hang on the wall, spin for the one you want.
 
Also you can take your POA and use it as a Google.
It works pretty well.
 
SoonerAviator said:
I've never cared to be more accurate with the tire pressure than getting "close enough".
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Towing 12,500 lbs, that will get you a blowout and a lovely day changing either a tire on the dually or on the trailer, on the side of the road. (Actually if you stress the trailer tires by blowing one, you'll probably be changing the other one on that side on a dual axle trailer real soon thereafter...)

Having had temperature sensors on the trailer tires before (removed them due to an unrelated problem, along with the entire aftermarket trailer TPMS system...), it doesn't take a tire being very low to drive the internal temp WAY above where you want it when towing on a hot day.

It'll happily delaminates and splatter itself all over the road for you if you do that enough.
 
denverpilot said:
Towing 12,500 lbs, that will get you a blowout and a lovely day changing either a tire on the dually or on the trailer, on the side of the road. (Actually if you stress the trailer tires by blowing one, you'll probably be changing the other one on that side on a dual axle trailer real soon thereafter...)

Having had temperature sensors on the trailer tires before (removed them due to an unrelated problem, along with the entire aftermarket trailer TPMS system...), it doesn't take a tire being very low to drive the internal temp WAY above where you want it when towing on a hot day.

It'll happily delaminates and splatter itself all over the road for you if you do that enough.
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Yeah, I've seen plenty of dually fenders after they've had a tire go with 80psi in it. I never ran my load E tires much over 50psi, but they were on an F-150 towing 7k or less most of the time, and never more than about 500 lbs of tongue weight. I just meant that whether it was aired to 12psi or 15psi on a mower it wasn't going to matter enough to me to break out a separate air gauge with a smaller scale. If I have a tire pressure gauge that goes to 80, with 10psi increments, I'll just ballpark where 12psi is.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Yeah, I've seen plenty of dually fenders after they've had a tire go with 80psi in it. I never ran my load E tires much over 50psi, but they were on an F-150 towing 7k or less most of the time, and never more than about 500 lbs of tongue weight. I just meant that whether it was aired to 12psi or 15psi on a mower it wasn't going to matter enough to me to break out a separate air gauge with a smaller scale. If I have a tire pressure gauge that goes to 80, with 10psi increments, I'll just ballpark where 12psi is.
Click to expand...

Ah ok.

One problem with dually tire setup for proper towing is that folks push the tires to the limit listed on the tire, and the truck manufacturer already listed the proper tire pressure for the max tow load on the yellow sticker inside the driver's door. Rarely does it say 80 for all four rear tires on the dually, but they read "80" on the E rated LT tire and they set it by that. And then it's wrong.

Of course most 250 and 350 class truck owners tow over the GCVWR listed on that tag, too. And 150 owners almost always are way over. The actual legal payloads on pickup trucks are much lower than the truck owner thinks, because they often see the "max towing" number from the manufacturer of the truck in a commercial and think that's for the entire model, not just the stripped down work truck the max number is always based upon. Once you add 4x4, heated leather seats, and the extra cab option, the actual legal towing number is de-rated by quite a bit on all brands. Depending on where you put the towing weight (bumper two vs gooseneck or fifth wheel) you often limit out on the axle rating long before you hit the GCVWR too. And that's also on the yellow tag.

Some States are starting to catch on, and Troopers will happily calculate it for you if you didn't. They'll read the door tag and put you on a set of portable scales and see if you're over on any of the limit numbers. Not many, but a few States are finding this an excellent source of new roadside revenue.

Sorry, way OT now, but don't just slap 80 PSI in the pickup's shiny new LT E rated or higher tires and think that's the answer to how to tow correctly. :-)

Like aviation, the limits are there in the POH and on the placards -- but I've seen pilots WAY over the placards on their trucks who wouldn't dream of doing it in their airplanes. :-)
 
P.S. And then you have the agricultural States where a farmer or rancher can go X percentage above what's on the door tag... As long as it's short haul for Ag use. (Usually seen when a one-ton is towing a full sized tractor on a flatbed trailer.)

:-)
 
denverpilot said:
. . . Of course most 250 and 350 class truck owners tow over the GCVWR listed on that tag, too. And 150 owners almost always are way over . . .
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Yup. I shake my head when I see the commercials for 1/2 ton trucks claiming 10K lbs of towing capacity. Yeah, in a regular cab long-bed with largest engine, 7-lug/HD axle/4.1 gears using a fifth wheel/gooseneck and nothing else in the cab/bed! Even then, I wouldn't be towing 10K with a 1/2 ton unless it was a few miles down the road at low speed, like denverpilot mentioned.
 
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