This is a building my father has just bought!

It was originally built as a shop for heavy trucks, hence the huge door. We're going to use it for our classic car projects, starting with the next phase of Project Impala and hopefully proceeding to the long-deferred rebirth of Angus the Wonder Truck. I might also put my old Honda motorcycle back together at some point, we'll see how it goes.

(1968 Pontiac GTO not included, alas. Dad did ask about it, but he would have had to sell the Impala, which would have bitten pretty hard now that we're on the doorstep of having THIS PLACE in which to work on it.)

Check out that upstairs area! It was presumably the office when this place was a commercial garage. There's a half bathroom up there!

Also, note the door in the wall behind the stairs. There's a whole 'nother regular-height garage bay tucked away behind there.

It's also where the air compressor lives. There's a fitting for it on the other side of the wall, under the stairs, so you can use air tools out in the high bay without having to hear the compressor roaring away in the same room with you. Awesome.

(I think those tires in the low bay are going away too. They're for a backhoe that didn't come with the property.)

We're planning to start moving things over there this weekend. There's a ton of stuff in Dad's old garage that's going to have to get moved, which is going to take... a while for two broken-down old men to wrangle by themselves. And then there are the vehicles themselves, which will have to come over on a trailer. (I would just drive the Impala, but noooo, my father is the one man in the state who cares that a car isn't registered. Or painted. Or equipped with an interior. OK he might have a point. :)

We're also shopping for a lift, because at this point why wouldn't you? There used to be one there, but some previous occupant took it with them when they left--you can still see where they torched the anchors off the floor.

I suppose I should get busy converting the old Project Impala forum posts into a GOTW-style static blog, like I said I was going to do, like, three years ago...

Anyway, huge shop hype! Harry's Little Dog Garage Mk II is go!

(Did I ever actually mention the Harry's Little Dog Garage joke in the older posts? I can't remember...)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I -wish- I had a workshop like that, it make refurbing arcade cabinets way way easier.
(I just wish I knew someone on this side of the continent that was qualified to work on CRTs, I’ve got one from my Super Street fighter 2 cab that isn’t working and nobody makes LCDs in 4:3 aspect ratio bigger than 19 inches anymore ). ;_;
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Lime2K
The One True Evil Overlord

It's on quite a large lot too isn't it?

>It was originally built as a shop for heavy trucks, hence the huge
>door. We're going to use it for our classic car projects, starting
>with the next phase of Project Impala and hopefully proceeding to the
>long-deferred rebirth of Angus the Wonder Truck.

Sviit! Much squeezing ensue! Well...perhaps a bit more maturely, looking forward to seeing where that all leads!

>(Did I ever actually mention the Harry's Little Dog Garage joke in the
>older posts? I can't remember...)

I don't think so, at least it doesn't ring any bells with me!

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The
Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-
Covered Balls!"

In my head, the regular-height garage is where you park the car that got you there, leaving room to work on the SRS BSNS.

Hoping to see photos once everything is moved in!

(Also, I don't think I've ever read about the Harry's Little Dog Garage joke ever, which feels like an oddity here.)

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

Today's main order of business, besides moving some spare lumber, pieces of steel, and assorted other bits and pieces, was to relocate a set of storage boxes and their holding rack that Dad built to go under his workbench ages ago. Here they are in their original habitat:

And here's where they ended up in the new shop.

The metal welding table on the left came with the building, and will get repurposed into a general tool bench since neither of us is going to be doing any welding. That'll be where the drill press, bench grinder, vise etc. end up. Meanwhile, the plan is to build a wooden extension over the storage boxes, more or less replicating the setup they had before and providing some worktop area that isn't a hard steel surface.

Note the object to the left of the box rack. That also came with the shop, and when we saw it in the real-estate listing photos (you can see it behind that yellow GTO), Dad and I weren't sure what it was. Well, now we know:

It's a hardware center! And it still has a whole bunch of stuff in it. Nuts, bolts, washers, cap screws of various sizes... probably a couple hundred bucks' worth. Technically it wasn't free, it was included in the purchase price of the facility, but still, feels like free! :)

Note the thing hanging down at the top that looks like, probably because it is, the G-clip from a dog leash. The rope it's attached to leads to the cover for a giant vent fan. Pull the rope, clip it to a ring on the wall beside the hardware center, flip the switch you see to the right, and voilà, fumes be gone! Less useful in the winter, but even so, handy.

Also in this shot, you can see two of the many, many 120VAC outlets the place is equipped with, one of the surprising number of 240VAC outlets, and one of several junctions of a system of compressed air lines that run all the way around the high bay, ready to have tools connected. This place was almost obsessively supplied with utility hookups. It looks like whoever did the wiring just put up a 120VAC outlet every 10 feet, whether there really needed to be one there or not. And that's not just in the high bay, the low bay and the upstairs area are also set up that way, as you can see in the real estate photos in the OP.

Finally, I didn't have the time or energy to take all the pics I was thinking of taking when I went over there today, but I did get this shot of the back part of the high bay, from a slightly different/closer angle than the older one.

From over here, you can see that the man door at the bottom of the stairs leads into the low bay, and also the pressure tank for the water system (that blue thing). Also note that they left the fridge from the real estate photos. Again, technically not free, but feels like free. Assuming it works, we don't actually know that for sure.

We're starting to strategize about how we want to lay stuff out in there. For instance, we're reasonably sure the area right in front of the stairs is destined to be a seating area, where we can put some old comfy chairs and a table, maybe fence it off so Dad's dog can come hang with us without us having to worry about him getting into mischief. The lift will probably not go where the old one was, which was just a few feet in front of where the fridge is, but rather closer to the front of the high bay. Upstairs could be shelved up for parts storage, but we'd need a small forklift or telehandler to enable retrieving them without having to carry them down the stairs, so my guess is that will probably end up happening to the low bay instead.

It's a little sad to be stripping the old Project Impala Technology Center after so many years of service, but at the same time, exciting times.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The first step was to get the old pickup out of the storage building where it's been living for the last 20 years. This presented us with a few problems, one of which was that the building was full of other stuff that was in the way. That took us a few days scattered throughout October to correct, leaving us with just one fairly large one remaining:

I'm not sure why he did that the last time he rearranged the shed, but he did, which left us with a slight problem in that the tools he used to do it were no longer available.

Still, nothing a couple of hours with a floor jack, some things like giant furniture movers, and a bunch of swearing couldn't fix...

And then, with a bit of a push down the ramp, Angus the Wonder Truck saw daylight for the first time in... a long time.

On that day, we didn't have the tools to move it as far as the new property, so the goal was just to move it from the shed, which is on the back edge of the old house's lot, to the main garage, where it would be safer until moving day.

This was complicated somewhat by the fact that the truck doesn't have an engine in it, but we did get it done, and for the first and last time, both vehicles were together in the old Project Impala Technology Center for a few days.

Then (as you can see) we had to put the wheels back on the Impala and clean off all the junk that inevitably ends up getting left on any car that's in a building and not being used regularly.

I'd like to pause for a second and grumble about the wheels. We have classic Cragar Super/Sport wheels for the Impala, which I think I've mentioned before, and while they're very stylish and the absolute go-to for the particular period look we're going for, they are a royal pain in the ass. They have slotted lug bolt holes, so that they can be used on cars with a range of different bolt spacings on the hubs, which means that to put them on, you have to use special lug nuts that have self-centering washers on them, and it's just an enormously fiddly process. I guess the design saved Cragar from having to make S/S wheels with a bunch of different hole patterns, but it makes putting the wheels on any given car a massive hassle.

Anyway, we got that done, and today, Dad rented a car trailer and we finally did the thing.

Pickup's turn first:

It turns out that if you have a non-running vehicle and you rent a car trailer that doesn't have a winch, you have some more logistical problems to solve. We solved them with a tool called a come-along, which was slightly annoying in that its cable wasn't long enough to reach the full length of the trailer, necessitating that each loading process be done in stages with a pause to re-rig in the middle. But, you know, you do this kind of thing, you get used to everything taking longer and being a bigger pain than you expected.

Anyway, we got there in the end.

Even got it unloaded without crashing it into the stairs! This was exciting with no engine and an only vaguely functional braking system.

Then it was the Impala's turn. Same deal, except this time instead of no engine, the car has no seats in it right now and so cannot be driven even if it starts.

As an aside, once we got it outside and I could get a look at it from farther away than the old Technology Center allowed for, I realized that as it is now, with no trim or lights, the car kind of reminds me of sportsman-class stock car racing at the small local tracks when I was a kid. All it needs are some really sloppily spray-painted sponsorship graphics for the junkyard-slash-towing service over in Milford!

Anyway, we timed it pretty well and unloaded the Impala just as we ran out of daylight.

And here they are, both in their new home at last.

Obviously we're going to have to rearrange a bunch of stuff, that's not the final positioning of... well, practically anything in there. But they're there! Woo!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

This is an electric hoist, mounted on a custom-built swinging arm at the edge of the loft, where the barrier chains are hooked (see these views). When we need to move something upstairs, we can unhook the chains, swing the hoist out over the edge, run the cable down, rig up the load, then lift it up, swing it in over the loft floor, and let it down. To get something downstairs again, reverse the process.

With the arm and hoist installed, the only extension cord we had handy was a mile long and already plugged in downstairs, so we just took the end up and connected it that way to test the hoist. In practice, it'll be connected with a short one to that outlet right next to it. After that, the plan is to build some metal shelving (of which Dad has a ton that he salvaged from his erstwhile workplace when they went out of business) up there, then address the iffy safety solution up there. We need something more substantial between the loft and the yawning drop onto concrete than that rickety wooden fence and three measly chains!

There is a tremendous amount of messing around involved in this process. Right now, stuff is piled in every corner awaiting proper sorting and stowage, having been brought over from three or four different places that all had to be cleared out. During a break in the action today, we looked around and were like, "How did it get this messy already?" But it's an inevitable transitional phase, and being able to get things up into the loft will be a big help in getting through it.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

A bit surprisingly for such an occasion, most of my hometown stayed on this time; here at the Fortress of Solitude itself, the power went off a handful of times over the course of yesterday, but never for more than a minute or so at a time. My father's new house was offline for most of the day, but it has an automatic whole-house generator (of which I am enormously jealous), so that represented relatively little hardship for him and his wife.

However, tonight he discovered that the VAB--which has its own separate service, and is far enough from the house that the pole line serving it actually comes from a different road--is down. Careful investigation with a flashlight revealed that at least one tree is down on the line, which means a crew from Versant will have to come and deal with it. Since they're up to their asses in alligators and prioritizing jobs by number of households affected--and in this case technically that number is "zero"--who the absolute fuck knows when that will manage to happen.

Oh, and there's another windstorm in the forecast for Thursday. Somewhat less intense than yesterday's, admittedly--right now they're calling for peak gusts of 40 mph, as opposed to 75(!)--but still, that's not going to help anyone get anything fixed, now is it.

It's always something!

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Regardless, this is awesome, and I'm glad you had a little good fortune over the holiday. :)