MiniRollOffTrucks.com
|
|
| <> HOME <> JOURNAL <> CURRENT EVENTS <> DOCUMENTS <> PROFILE <> | |
|
Helpful Hints
Depending on how much money I have, whether I'm having to build my next truck from money I make from pounding nails or having my books sell well, plans can differ a great deal.
Some may wonder if I would be worried if I ever had a fire. That means, big fence and motion detectors around the perimeter to keep them out. And any manufacturing facility of mine will have fire hose racks all over the place because the last call I ever want to make is to an outside fire department. I would have my own firefighters. Meaning I would give any of my crew who could carry me on their back up a flight of starts to have the opportunity to be trained as a professional firefighter and they would be paid a little more per hour to be a in house firefighter whether the are a welder or a painter and I'd make sure that everyone would have a closet with their gear inside where ever their work stations are. You say that might be hard to do. Nah, because I'm the one who's doing the hiring. I'd be keeping my eyes out for them, but then I think a above average IQ text score would be needed to seal the deal. I noticed the people are surprised that I would think of building my truck with new parts and not remanufactured. Yeah, while there is fields full of used cabs out there. As I've said before,
|
Building a truck can be as difficult as anyone could want to make it. I've worked on race cars and I understand that a vehicle is just a bunch of components put together. I happen to think that the doors, hinges and window tracks are about the hardest parts to fabricate.
Ah, don't need no stinking doors In fact I've been thinking of building my next and very well be the first batch of trucks with reconditioned conventional cabs because of it. The hood or as some might call " bonnet" can easily be custom fabricated to fit the smaller running gear. Once made: a mold isn't the hardest thing to do, and popping out fiberglass or epoxy hoods is something many boat shops around know how to do. (But I prefer an all aluminum one.) If I wanted to make some work out of it, I'd just lengthen the top of the cab and chop down the window post and lower upper window tracks down a few inches. The door windows will just roll right up to it just like chop toping any other pickup, simple as that. But then again I think I may very well leave the cab the original height because I happen to like the headroom. For myself I want to have a 235 hp Cummins B engine with something like a six speed manual shift automatic Allison transmission. I happen to like the older 12 valve models (at least they still sound like a tractor.) but would like to get the 235 hp torque plate for the fuel pump. I feel if you are not pumping so much fuel in order to get so much power, you simply need
less
polution bullshit to run along with it. Having a 6 speed with about 500 punds of torque would be suffisant to do most anything a mini roll off would need to do.
I drive by this truck almost every morning. I know how I could make this set up even better. I also like the fact that I mount my rear fenders higher than most hook-lift and roll-off suppliers do. (They remind me of the trailer shop I worked at where they would put a 4x4 block of wood on the tire to hold the fender up before they welded it.) Lets say I get my web-site selling my books well. I'd get a larger warehouse and a forklift or better yet an overhead bridge or gantry crane. I'd get a plasma cutter or maybe even a cutting table. Cutting touches and all. A good welder, compressor, bandsaw. (One thing nobody does is have one big bandsaw set straight, and another set up at 45 degrees, because for some reason, I'm just crafty with 45's.) What I'd really like is a hydraulic punch because a drill press is just way too slow. I'd like to get an straight line tractor welder too and eventually robotic ones. I'd start off by building two trucks and build a few jigs in the process. Since it would have a tilt nose like the big trucks, a mechanic wouldn't have to pull a starter just to get to the fuel pump. If I start building the cabs from scratch, the standard cab will have longer doors and a longer rear cab portion so that there will be enough room behind the seat to carry two bass guitars instead of one and the driver seat will be able to recline. I love the thought of having an air ride seat most of all, because when you reach the 15,000 - 20,000 pound range, the ride with no bed on it would make you want to ware a kidney belt. I'll have a jump seat which will open up to be a large tool box underneath it. (From using multiple payload beds, I discovered that I'd need tools and straps I use with all the different beds.) Basically it would be quite similar to the older narrow nose Peterbilts. But if the nose was shortened it would end up just a little wider at the nose which would almost scale out to the more modern looking trucks. The cabs are actually about 6 inches narrower then this piece ah shit Dodge, how ever
I like it that way and even three or four inches narrower would even be better for cutting the wind. (Kinna like a sports car of trucks.) All I care about is having two seats and room for a center consol, or shift linkage and an armrest. I don't think the market for these things are tired to prospect of a person buying one to take the kids to the a soccer game.
What I'm looking for is a truck with more payload capacity and better fuel mileage and I think a smaller, lighter and narrower cab is the way to do it with out getting so high tech it would take a damn computer to park it. Since the standard cabs total almost a foot taller than these car styled cabs, if retrofitted, I would just raise the floor a bit and take out some of the tops dome, which would equal to a 6 or 7 inch drop in height. The real true modification that retrofitting just wouldn't make is being about to put a little more slope to the windshields. A brand new custom cab is the only way I can get the windshield to slope - cost effectively.. Little longer doors, a little behind the set. The front windshield will probably be of the two piece design so it will cost less to get rid of a broken windshield. And I love the dual windshield wiper motors, with double wiper arms. They will move from one side of the window frame to the other with the blades straight up and down. I've always liked those. And like my brakes: I don't want any ABS crap going on, I
just want hydraulics, because I want to be the one who is doing the stopping.
Eventually I would offer a cab-over design for the market that has to operate in congested city streets but those designs would be more complex to start from scratch, and I have a strong feeling that once people drove the conventional cab design, they would know what they would be missing and prefer the conventional cab over the cab-over design. Sure I would eventually offer stretched cabs and crew cabs, but starting out, I happen to thinks the best market is the one I described for myself. Now there has been some things I wish I had a second opinion on. However, I'll give you my own take on it. It's between the fuel tanks, hydraulic oil tanks, battery's and the hydraulic manifold block. Then even though I found a good place to my hydraulic reservoir on the Chrysler piece. I feel mounting under one of the fake side tanks will help move weight forward and the manifold block right next to it is even better. Then the other side would have the two batteries and a storage place for tools and straps. Pretty cool truck huh? Yeah, I've had it figured out for over a decade and nobody out there was even smart enough to even think of building anything like it. But now you have a better idea of just how I would want to build it. I bet you want nothing else. Isn't there a saying that you always want what you can't have. Well it's your own fault. You haven't done anything but feel sorry for me. Hell they have you driving some kind of SUV with a tin can on back. I feel sorry for you. Yeah, I bet everyone will wants to build parts for me. But how many of you think you can even do what you want to do in this country. They say you can do anything you want to in America. Well, just prove it. As for my own design of a truck -- if one couldn't get at least 300,000 miles out of it, there would be something wrong with it. I'd just build it like the big conventional rigs but in a scaled down version. Sure it will cost more than the tin cans that are offer to you now, but my truck would pay for itself so what's the price mater anyway? No doubt it would be the better deal. And oh, there are several modifications my truck will have, not only to the system on back but the chassis itself, but I'm not about to list them because that is privileged information.
|
