The Hokie Hoopty returns! It didn't actually go anywhere, but you get the point. Work has once again gotten in the way of my life. The cubefarm stole my attention for the last few months. It was difficult and dangerous but I persevered. Don't laugh, those were scary times. You think fishing for opelio crabs in the Bering Sea is dangerous? How about dealing with an endless review and comment cycle on a 200+ page engineering document with a somewhat uncooperative customer? Cold water and crabs – give me a break. That was a daily possibility in the shower for all of us who spent our formative college years in Pritchard Hall. This was truly dangerous. I stood at the edge of the precipice but I didn't fall. The good news, no, the great news is that I have returned to my semi-retirement status (eat your heart out Walker) and now have a couple more days a week to dedicate to my many endeavors. More time for our 75 year old house, the sawmill, my woodworking, and of course, the Hoopty.
Even though the Hoopty hasn't been touched in a couple weeks (or more), there is progress to report. Sure the new laminate flooring looked great but the front floor was in rough shape. Some shoddy rubber mat was hiding very bad things.
Pulling up the old mat revealed some rust and lots of crudola.
A fair bit of elbow grease and an equal amount of Simple Green and the floor board was starting to shape up nicely.
The exterior step into the Hoopty was toast. The paint on the diamond plate steel had failed and the plate was completely rusted through in some spots. Not very safe, but more importantly it was just dang ugly. Can't have no ugly step into tailgating utopia.
Some of the rough areas were smoothed out with some very high-tech metal sealing compound (i.e. bondo) since there would be no rubber mat or carpet to cover up the pointy edges. A near eternity laying on my back with my trusty angle grinder blazing and nasty hot metal bits bouncing off my safety glasses resulted in the extraction of the rusty step.
The captain's quarters were then treated to a good coating of that gooey black truck bed liner paint on the floor. This should definitely improve the durability of the step area and driver's area.
With the help of a friend at work (props to David Smith) and a well spent $75, we had a set of replacement stainless steel diamond plate steps built. No more rust worries with the stainless steel and they look damn nice against that black paint. Now that's an entrance to be proud of (as long as you excuse the gaping rust wound in the rocker panel - we'll work on that later).
Chairs
The seat acquisition phase is now COMPLETE! Thanks to the kind birthday gifts from Megan and Larry Bowen as well as Lisa, Pat, and Macie Morgan we now have the complete set of 12 Hokie chairs. I'm currently trying to build the cart that will neatly hold all of the chairs and serve as our primary table. It's turning out a tad bit larger than I anticipated, but we'll find a way to make it work. The next update will probably revolve around the chair cart.
Benches
I've also started to mock-up a bench seat prototype to figure out the proper dimensions. The benches will be an ongoing project that will be complete later down the road.
AREVA Fans
For all of you Hoopty fans that work at AREVA I'm sorry to say that thehokiehoopty.com (or more accurately the blogspot domain) has fallen to the banhammer of Big Brother and his IT department. Your Hoopty updates will have to take place on your home computer much like your porn surfing.
In Closing
I apologize for the delay in posting and I will do my best to update more frequently, but I don't think anyone should hold their breath.
Even though the Hoopty hasn't been touched in a couple weeks (or more), there is progress to report. Sure the new laminate flooring looked great but the front floor was in rough shape. Some shoddy rubber mat was hiding very bad things.
Pulling up the old mat revealed some rust and lots of crudola.
A fair bit of elbow grease and an equal amount of Simple Green and the floor board was starting to shape up nicely.
The exterior step into the Hoopty was toast. The paint on the diamond plate steel had failed and the plate was completely rusted through in some spots. Not very safe, but more importantly it was just dang ugly. Can't have no ugly step into tailgating utopia.
Some of the rough areas were smoothed out with some very high-tech metal sealing compound (i.e. bondo) since there would be no rubber mat or carpet to cover up the pointy edges. A near eternity laying on my back with my trusty angle grinder blazing and nasty hot metal bits bouncing off my safety glasses resulted in the extraction of the rusty step.
The captain's quarters were then treated to a good coating of that gooey black truck bed liner paint on the floor. This should definitely improve the durability of the step area and driver's area. 
With the help of a friend at work (props to David Smith) and a well spent $75, we had a set of replacement stainless steel diamond plate steps built. No more rust worries with the stainless steel and they look damn nice against that black paint. Now that's an entrance to be proud of (as long as you excuse the gaping rust wound in the rocker panel - we'll work on that later).
ChairsThe seat acquisition phase is now COMPLETE! Thanks to the kind birthday gifts from Megan and Larry Bowen as well as Lisa, Pat, and Macie Morgan we now have the complete set of 12 Hokie chairs. I'm currently trying to build the cart that will neatly hold all of the chairs and serve as our primary table. It's turning out a tad bit larger than I anticipated, but we'll find a way to make it work. The next update will probably revolve around the chair cart.
Benches
I've also started to mock-up a bench seat prototype to figure out the proper dimensions. The benches will be an ongoing project that will be complete later down the road.
AREVA Fans
For all of you Hoopty fans that work at AREVA I'm sorry to say that thehokiehoopty.com (or more accurately the blogspot domain) has fallen to the banhammer of Big Brother and his IT department. Your Hoopty updates will have to take place on your home computer much like your porn surfing.
In Closing
I apologize for the delay in posting and I will do my best to update more frequently, but I don't think anyone should hold their breath.
4 comments:
Holy Shiester! that is some sweet work you did Randu! Really....that looks great.
Chip
I suppose I should be contacting the "Voice" pretty soon to obtain recordings.
Are we gonna aedd chrome engine highlights and massive air intakes with gaudy "neck" features?
What are all of those wires for? Do we need those? They are kinda ugly.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure we need to keep all those ugly wires considering they are the spark plug wires and coolant hoses for the engine. The good news is that there is an ugly brown cover that goes over the engine.
If you sign in as "anonymous" make sure you put your name in your comment so I'll know who to yell at and humiliate.
Randy.
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