Long time no update

[Papaloo]

I'm not sure if anyone here remembers me since I don't think I've updated in almost 2 years. Two years ago I suffered an injury where a wire from a wire wheel went passed the guard, under my safety glasses and pierced my eye. That meant no work through the summer, but the eye healed fully. Winter came, and I have no garage so at my Grandfather's request, I began to restore his 1985 Harley Sportster for him. He passed away in March of last year, so I continued to work on it in his memory through the summer. At the end of last summer, our house was flooded by Irene. Our house has a walk out basement, where my workshop is located. Most of the parts for my 1971 K10 were in my work shop, including the newly machined engine block new 383 rotating assembly, and fully rebuilt SM465 transmission. The engine block was completely trashed. By the time I dug it out the muddy silt had pitted the cylinder walls. The rotating assembly was also pitted. As for my 1972 C10, that was on an elevated parking pad, but the water made it into the cab of the truck, and I had just installed a 2004R transmission, but with the approaching storm, I had to turn my attention to getting things from the basement to higher ground, and I didn't finish the installation, leaving the coolant lines uninstalled, which mean the 2004R was filled with water. As you can imagine, all of this has made thinking about my trucks rather depressing. My goal was to combine all of my trucks to make one functional 4wd truck. Once the 4wd was stripped down, I found that the frame had some questionable repairs made to it. Now I'm trying to decide to try and repair the 4wd chassis, keep the 2wd, use the front end of a modern chevy truck to convert the 2wd chasis to 4wd with independent front coil shock suspension, or just say to hell with it and sell off all the parts and be done with it.

On the plus side, I did convince my wife to allow me to buy some new tools to replace those that had been damaged in the flood. I was able to replace my craftsman benchtop drill press with a 1948 M head Bridgeport milling machine, and to go along with that, a 1945 Logan Model 820 screw cutting lathe. My Dad then gave me my Grandfather's 1960's Model 150 floor standing drill press.

Here are some pictures from the flooding. The first one is the 4wd down in the yard, the 2nd is the 2wd on the raised parking pad, and the 3rd is my workshop under 5ft of water.

[1972_K5]

Well they say bad things come in three's. Hopefully you're past the bad and some good luck will roll your way. Hang in there....

[slikside]

Damn. Sorry that all happened to you. Sounds like you lost a lot, but if you and yours survived, it could have been much worse.

Keep on keepin on....

[RenoKeene]

Looks like it's time to get back to work.

My parents home in Tennessee burned to the ground and my house here in Florida has been destroyed three, yes three times by hurricanes....we just keep on going.