Today’s episode has me correcting the crappy welding I attempted last week. First thing I needed to do was to cut the bad patch off the firewall. Since the welds were trash, the patch came off easily.
The next job was to make a new patch. This time I made the patch and shaped it to fit the curved firewall. A little hammering on the sand bag, a little bending in the vice…and boom we had a nice patch.
I took time to cut out the floorboard. I also used the air chisel to explore the rust and seem sealer on the footwell. It found more rust.
The plan for today was to get the firewall patched. I got the patch placed and began welding it. My nephew came by to do some laundry and he showed me how he was mastering the solving of a Rubik’s Cube. He can do it in just under 4 minutes. I’ve never solved one.
I got the patch finally welded into place. I painted everything again with two coats of primer. I then got some seam sealer setup in the caulking gun and went about getting everything sealed up. I was pretty sure my welds were good. But when I sprayed the primer I had some sneak through some welds. Well I put enough seam sealer on it, it won’t leak. Plus I’ll likely but the Fat Mat back down once I’m finished.
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In this very frustrating post, I report on a complete loss of a Sunday working on my Big White Bus. Yep, I spent a few hours trying to patch the firewall. I cut the fender well and investigated the rust on the shelf.
I also cut the a spot on the firewall that had rusted through. I dutifully made a template, and cut steal for a patch. I then spent about an hour welding the patch into place. All that time, hearing the welds and never realizing that something was not right.
That something…I never turned the shielding gas on. So the welds are basically trash. I’m going to have to cut that patch out and start over.
I’m pretty frustrated. I am not making the progress I want to. This fender rust is complicated. There are so many converging panels here and all of them have rust. In the coming episodes I’m going to have to bend some panels and the measurements have to be pretty close.
The tornadoes have been pretty plentiful. The day I recorded the video more than 20 tornadoes skipped across the state. You probably saw the damage in Sulphur, Oklahoma. If you can contribute to help the people affected I urge you to give to the Red Cross or one of the religious organizations that have assistance ministries.
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I think I know the answer to that. But I have to show my exasperation. This rust find is possibly the worst thing ever. It’s in the most terrible of locations.
Mrs. Okierover said, “Maybe you should call it Rusty Rover instead of Okierover.” She’s not wrong.
Every where there’s red its rusted through.
It’s as bad as you can imagine. There are at least four different panels converge in this area to form the firewall, fender well, and the foot well.
There are a LOT of peripherals that run through there too. Including the fuel lines which I may have nicked when I was air chiseling the panels out. If you’ve followed the blog for very long (at least since 2010) you’ve seen The Evil German Dude and I attempt to fix the floor pan when it rusted out.
We had fun, but we failed to keep the water out and our work finally failed. I had an ongoing issue with water getting in and wetting the fargin’ OPEN CELL floor pads under the carpets. The carpets too we constantly wet. I found the place where water was getting in making the carpet wet. It was through the firewall at the corner where it married up to the side wall.
As you will see in the video, this rust is bad. Real bad. The repair is going to be really difficult and probably beyond my skill set. That being said, I have to fix it myself. There is no money to send it off. The body work itself would likely cost more than the entire vehicle is worth.
I’ve still got a LOT of work to do. I need to find a solution. It will probably be welding several panels together. I’ll need to study it more to make my mind up.
I stared at it at least an hour while I shot the video. Still struggled to sort out a concrete idea.
I am going back out the weekend this is published as OkieF150. We are going to the 200th Celebration of Fort Gibson. Fort Gibson is the oldest town in Oklahoma. Way back when it was still Indian Territory the United States needed a fort to protect the trade from this area.
We are going to make a weekend out of it and I’m hoping we can get some fishing in while we are at it. This will be the last overlanding trip for this year as I will be spending every weekend for the rest of the year trying to sort out all these issues.
Unless you just crawled out from under a rock or came down from a cave in the mountains you probably know there was an eclipse on April 8th, 2024. I told Mr. Fisher and our newest add on Mark Obermiller that we had to go see it. So…we did.
Let’s talk a little about comms first. All three of us got our GMRS licenses prior to the trip. Mr. Fisher splurged and bought several radios.
First was the Midland GXT1000X3VP4
My personal experience with it? Battery life A-. We used them while we were driving for 6 hours. The knock on it was the battery life indicator showed full, right up to the moment it died. That’s pretty disappointing. Sound quality, B-, they were scratchy at the beginning of each transmission. We didn’t really test how many “far’s” it would work but a mile they seemed to work okay. Three pack for $99.00(US). That’s an inexpensive option.
The Second was the Rugged GMR-2 Plus
Mr. Fisher used this one when his other died. It took him a bit to program and his main complaint was getting it setup. We also were broadcasting on Channel 19 privacy 19. But on this radio the display showed channel 19 privacy 10. Not sure about that. Two for $150.00(US)
We’ll have more to say about these and others as we get further into GMRS. Almost all the options for GMRS radios are made in China. There are some made in Japan.
I did fiddle-fart around a little bit and didn’t bother to secure a campsite. Thankfully my friends at Fort Towson were hosting a Eclipse Watch Party. They consider me family, mostly because I visit them with my 1820-1840 Cherokee living history presentation.
We started out on Saturday morning. Mr. Fisher had plotted our route and I fell in behind him and Mark. Our first stop was Lexington Wildlife Management Area. This is a public hunting and fishing area in Slaughterville, Oklahoma. If you watch my videos, you may have seen a sign in my shoppe. Look for it next time. I have a creepy Slaughterville story, so ask me some time we are around a campfire.
We saw some fun stuff along the way including this moderate sized snapping turtle. Which apparently I can’t add a photo of right now. Thanks Google Photos, good work.
About a foot across the shell.
We drove around visited the Lake. My camera didn’t record while we were at the lake. Bummer cause we had some fun stuff to say.
The wind was blowing pretty hard 20-25mph with gusts to 30mph. We looked around a bit to find a campsite. We started where you see above but also went down to the lake shore but the site was too windy. With Mr. Fisher and Mark in tents, that wasn’t ideal. I went around to the opposite side of the lake but there wasn’t a suitable site over there either. We’ll be back to this site another time.
We setup camp and had some delicious sirloin steak, fried potatoes, and yeast rolls. Dessert was cookies. We had some adult beverages and started a small fire. We were expecting storms and they did not disappoint. We had a nice gust front hit us and then the rain started. I ducked into the F150 and they to their tents.
We rode out the weather which turned out to not be all that impressive. Considering I’ve slept through two near misses with tornadoes, once outside Kansas City dressed for 1750s living history where I slept in a wickiup and the second I was in the back of the Big White Bus at American Horse Lake, this one barely rates mention.
It was my turn to lead so I used Gaia to map out a route. I didn’t have as much trouble mapping as I did when I tried to use the PC. At this point, if it doesn’t get better I’ll probably cancel. I need to try the Overland Bound app.
We had a mostly uneventful second leg. That is until we were traversing what we call a “jog” in the road. This one made a right and then an immediate left all on a 10% or greater grade. There were some brick-sized rocks. Mark must have caught one just right because it separated and cut the tread on one of his Wrangler SR tires. Not necessarily rated for “trail” running but I didn’t think they would fail.
Without a spare we got back on the pavement to avoid another incident. We didn’t have another tire and it was a Sunday so better safe than sorry.
We arrived at Fort Towson and setup came while I found my friends and said hello. We cooked dinner and got setup for the night. They had a nice spread and we had some delicious food. Homemade cinnamon rolls really finished the night off right.
We were tasked with parking duty. We had a good time and welcomed everyone. I shared some fort history to those who hadn’t researched it themselves. All in all we parked around 75-100 cars and roughly 375 people came to watch.
The clouds were sparse early but built up more and more as the day went on. It was looking like we weren’t going to see the eclipse. But just as one of the guest said the parting of the clouds would occur and just in time.
There are no words to describe the eclipse. It was in the top 5 events I’ve ever attended. The light right before the eclipse was eerie. It was like an old Argon street light. Such a special event. Seeing the ring, seeing the solar prominence, it getting dark right in the middle of the day. Birds stopped singing, a tree frog croaked, basically nature thought it was night. I said “so cool” about a dozen times during my video. Like I said, there were no words.
The fort staff set off a cannon during the totality.
They say the next one is in August of 2045. I’ll be 80 years old. The path will go right through Oklahoma. If I’m still residing in Newcastle, I’ll only need to drive 75 miles to be in the center of the totality.
I hope you enjoy the video. I know it is a bit long, but it was a big weekend.
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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering (of F150-ing if your Land Rover is in a shoppe).
Ever wonder what is inside of that gigantic custom-fit subwoofer box in the back of your Range Rover Classic…well wonder no more. I had to pull all the parts of the sound system out of the Big White Bus to investigate my rust issues.
It takes a few bolts to get it out but everything is easy-ish to get to and you don’t need any special tools. Take the amplifier off the subwoofer box. Then tackle all the bolts. Once the subwoofer is out you can get to the antique CD changer. Actually in 1993 a six disc CD changer was straight up gangster. My CD changer worked for a few years. It then got a little buggy. You could get it to work if you slid it out and slammed it back in. Most of the time it started to be available at the head unit after that.
It all has to come out. I have a new head unit. I have new speakers. I don’t know if the amplifier still works. I will have to sit down at some point and try to figure out all the plugs and see if the amplifier will be part of the equation. Having a working subwoofer would be a nice addition.
Once the subwoofer is out it takes 10 screws and a little gentle encouraging and the box will come apart. It’s a relatively simple setup. There is a dual cone speaker inside and that’s it. Mine as you will see in the video is toast. the cone has disintegrated. It is at least 30 years old probably closer to 33 considering assembly line technology of the day.
So the speaker will need to be replaced. In the video I speculate about the size but it turns out to be:
Cutout Diameter 6.5 inches
Top Depth mounting 3 inches
Bottom Depth Mounting 3.25
There are a LOT of speakers to choose from online. I went to Crutchfield.com. They don’t sponsor me, I wish they did, but they don’t. They have great customer service and the spec’s for everything are easy to find on their site.
I found a speaker that looks like it will fit.
That’s not a lot of money and 4 people think it’s pretty awesome. Mounting that is still a question, but I’m not worried. I will figure it out if that is the direction I go.
There is some debate going on in my head about replacing the old one with a NEW subwoofer. I found a Kenwood on Crutchfield that was not all that expensive.
ribbed polypropylene cone, sounds naughty….
It’s pretty small too. Just a little under 18x12x6 inches. I’m certain I’d have to cover the speaker cause it would almost certainly get damaged if I didn’t. I am confident it would fit in the space. But the real question outside of would it be better is…. am I really saving enough space to matter? I’m not sure I would gain anything. The space would have to be VERY creatively designed to take advantage of a few inches more here or there.
This gives us the cheaper option of just buying the speaker and figuring out how to wire it to the old AMP and the new head unit. Another plus of this operation was the elimination of the CD player gives me 12 volt switched power line back in that corner. That might come in handy, who knows.
I like tunes as much as the next guy. I even have a playlist named, “Can’t Be Too Loud”. It’s got some songs that you turn up until your ears bleed.
Van Halen’s Eruption
AC/DC Back In Black
Living Colour’s Cult of Personality
Beastie Boys Sabotage
Black Sabbath’s Iron Man
Wagner’s Die Walküre (Ride of the Valkyrie)
Carl Orff’s O Fortuna from Carmina Burana
There are more, but you get the picture…you probably have a list of your own. Whenever I hear these songs I turn them up to maximum volume.
Mostly today…I listen to audio books. Sooooo many audio books. It’s not uncommon for me to just drive, no music, just the window down and the sound of the engine and the tires on the road. That recharges my batteries almost as just sitting in the woods next to a fire.
There is a lot left to do to get the sound system installed. I’ve got to sort out the plugs and get everything wired up. The dash is still not installed. There is an order to putting the BWB back together…and the windshield needs to be first. I’m almost certain there is water leaking in and the last thing I want is to get his all put back together and still having water coming in.
That’s it for this week. As soon as I make a decision I’ll post it up and when I starting putting the sound system together.
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It turned out to be a long drive for nothing. My goal this past weekend was to go to the Southwestern Regional Rendezvous in Leslie, Arkansas. I went. But I didn’t stay.
It was a 5.5 hour drive to Leslie, Arkansas from Norman, Oklahoma. About an hour into the drive it started to rain. It rained from Shawnee all the way to Leslie. When I got to Leslie I found the event. I pulled into the lot that was passing for a parking lot.
