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I'm going to mess up the rest of the floor with oil and other spills, and call it patina!
I had a good, flat, and slightly elevated location, and friendly local guys, so the excavation work was just $2412. They pulled up a lot of large rocks and put in about 3 feet of gravel. Rocks, stumps and other debris could be pushed into the woods, unlike more civilized places. Drainage will be good. I cleared the site myself - lots of 22 year-old trees that grew up after the Blowdown of 1995. I wonder how many Camp 928 attendees noticed that I added Stihl as a sponsor in the poster.
Local guys did the concrete work for a nice round $10,000. Six inches thick, 22" around the perimeter (the "haunch" of a monoslab/Alaskan slab). This included some final excavation steps and forming the inner profile of the haunch. Most concrete guys won't do any excavation themselves, so this made things a lot easier. Very good results.
I've got to update my cost spreadsheet with actuals, but the column that includes estimates totals $59,958.17. Includes the lifts, but not the apron to be poured in the spring. I started the project with a deliberately non-optimistic figure of $100K in my head, so I'm pleasantly surprised - but wishing I'd made it a little wider. The 401K shrugged it off, but I'm feeling a few twinges in my back.
The Mitsubishi is still pumping heat this morning. My first four flare joints ever do not leak badly - but it's early yet. Of four opportunities to forget to put the flare nut on first, I only forgot once!
STIHL sponsoring a PORSCHE event... is there a story here? The best relevance I can come up with is STIHL's headquarters is near Stuttgart. They've been around since the 1920s, so it's not hard to imagine that early STIHL chainsaws may have been used on the site of the original PORSCHE shop....which appears to be about the same size as your garage...in a similarly coniferous setting.
Curt , Wow love the progress .What are you planning on doing with the rest of the floor ?
XS79L9B Concrete work was about 80K , excavating including dealing with some granite bedrock , engineering , permits , over the top rebar . 8 inch walls, 8-12 inch full reinforced floor ....
Originally Posted by Captain_Slow
We are so spoiled living on a passive continental margin far south of the soil-stripping extent of the last glacial maximum.
I was going to say, the clay was easy... No bedrock or granite to dynamite. I probably have $9k in concrete. Poured walls, 8" thick. In the back, about 5' tall.
Yes, the tree massacre was done with Stihl equipment. Cutting them down was easy; dragging them into the woods was exhausting, but yielded some firewood for the cabin that Alex VanD likes to stay in.
A new wrinkle in this garage story: I was always going to make sure an open shed could be added to one end. As of last night, I can set its dimensions. I have Capt. Jon to thank (?) for encouragement on this acquisition of vintage German steel. Jon may seem a gentle and civilized guy, but he has owned four Unimogs. For him, working on a 928 must be like working on a watch.
1978 Case Unimog, aka Mercedes 406. 20-speed gearbox (low gear: 0.7 in/second at 2550 rpm). Not shown: front-end loader, backhoe, front blade, 3000 lb counterweight, tipper bed, oh boy.
Gonna need another building to store stuff like the MOG. Dedicate the new "clubhouse" to in-process projects.
Did an interesting project overseas where a collection of 20' conex (shipping containers) was arrayed and stacked to form a covered courtyard, offices and workspaces. A 20' will easily hold a car, in 40' it will hold 2+ some workspace. Perfect for storing vehicles. Paint 'em pink and nobody will notice.
Yes, the tree massacre was done with Stihl equipment. Cutting them down was easy; dragging them into the woods was exhausting, but yielded some firewood for the cabin that Alex VanD likes to stay in.
A new wrinkle in this garage story: I was always going to make sure an open shed could be added to one end. As of last night, I can set its dimensions. I have Capt. Jon to thank (?) for encouragement on this acquisition of vintage German steel. Jon may seem a gentle and civilized guy, but he has owned four Unimogs. For him, working on a 928 must be like working on a watch.
1978 Case Unimog, aka Mercedes 406. 20-speed gearbox (low gear: 0.7 in/second at 2550 rpm). Not shown: front-end loader, backhoe, front blade, 3000 lb counterweight, tipper bed, oh boy.
Sweet deal Curt. How are you getting it and all the goodies that go with it to your compound? It's in great shape. Looking forward to giving it a spin. Love Mog smell in the morning (a bit stinky...no glow plugs...just 20:1 compression in the 6 liter straight six).
Roughly 15,000 lbs. My local Unimog guy - Jon's fellow Unimog pusher, Neil - lives near the machine. He's an equipment junky and has big trailers at his summer place up here. He busted one of them out of the ice yesterday, and we're loading it today with various implements of destruction. He'll have to go back for the Unimog itself, which we hope can be loaded with the front loader and back hoe attached. It will take one or two trips in my pickup for the loose items - items like five big wheels and tires.
I don't know what your exposures are like, but if you have a wall that gets good sun, especially early or noon, you might consider building on a Trombe wall to get the shop really warm with solar gain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall
I'm guessing on clear days you might even overcome an Adirondack winter.
I can't accomplish what you are doing so I have to live vicariously through your feats. ;-)
I intended to make very plain countertops I could mess up with oil etc. Dr. Bob warned of having tops too nice to use. Well, I chose the cheapest material, some sort of heavy chipboard. I stained and varnished it to make it a little less crude-looking, and make oil stains less noticeable. Put some edging on it made from scrap plywood - fancy 8-ply plywood. And, dammit, it looks too good to mess up.
I was in a bit of a rush to start the torque tube job, so I put various finishing tasks off. Here are some scenes of actual use of the facility:
A very nice addition was an Apple HomePod. "Hey Siri: play Roy Buchanon." I was at NAPA the other day, and the guy helping me happened to mention that he played in Buchanon's band in the 1970's - I may have actually seen him at a concert then.
I finally got around to wiring the lifts properly. I don't like cords running across the floor for battery tenders etc., so I really wanted receptacles on the lift columns. The lifts themselves required only the two live legs for 240 volts, but I brought in the neutral for 120 volt receptacles. I got my first taste of working with metal conduit.
I mounted a small compressor high on the front wall to supply the four-post lift locks and a hose reel. This particular compressor is very quiet - the small California compressor from Northern Tool. I may get another one, and connect them together if I ever need more CFM.
There was some discussion earlier about a sink. It would have been a major effort to bring water in from my supply, but you gotta have a sink to wash your hands, at least. I've finally acted upon my vision of a tank stand and sink. With a demand pump, since gravity is strong enough only at those brief times when you've slipped on ice. The tank holds 65 gallons; I may eventually install a float valve system to fill it automatically. A local fabricator made the stand. The obvious thing to do would be to make it a simple box structure. I imposed a little - very little - industrial design to it. My powder coating guy does on-site sand blasting and painting. He will be coming by next week to paint one of my Unimog implements, and will blast the tank stand while he's at it. I'll be doing my first bit of PEX plumbing to get it connected. It will drain into buckets, at least until I receive a Certificate of Occupancy.
The Unimog needs a roof, so I've started the process to add a shed roof to one side. The building permit folks made me go back to the engineer for permission to modify his building yada yada yada, but I think I'll have the permit next week. My concrete guys were coming back to put in an apron anyway. They're actually doing site work next door to me right now. I just told them the concrete would have to be finished by June 14, or not started until afterwards. We'll see.
June 14th, of course, is when many of us will be gathering in the Adirondacks to celebrate our efforts at automotive excellence.
Side note, I'm using my old trumpet/french horn skills to use my wifes grandfather's WWI bugle to scare the deer from the back yard mornings. Boy is it loud, and I still got it!
01-29-2018, 11:06 AM
