Custom made shop tools

[Moparmat2000]

Rack installed and loaded up

 

[Moparmat2000]

So I made this for the GSE guys for their battery charger and battery related stuff out of 1" square tube, and 1" angle. The hooks are for jumper cables, table top is for the batteries they might be charging. Underneath the table top is for a wheeled battery charger. The top shelf is for the hydrometer, a load tester, and a portable jump box. The table top, and shelf top are plywood pieces. I may rivet on an aluminum back splash. When I left on tuesday I told them I wanted it painted safety yellow. The jokesters had the paint shop spray it "t!tty pink". Oh well at least it wont rust lol. I may have to find and stick some my little pony stickers on it.

 

[Moparmat2000]

Nice rack. (I'm sure there's a good joke to be made here.)

Gas and diesel? The Air Force got smart early in my career and ditched all the gas equipment. Everything we had could run on JP8 or diesel.

I had to maintain a few deicing trucks that had Ford 300s running the pumps. Never saw a Lima motor (2.3). Huffer carts are fun. Toss a couple tennis balls in the exhaust and fire it up. Then try to catch the flaming tennis balls as they fall back down. What kind of equipment is the 8V71 powering? We had 4-71s in our older generators. The newer ones had 6BTs, but our aircraft only needed about 20kW.

Civilian use. Our pickup trucks, and the 2 company vans are gasoline too. We get what they give us to use. We go through their parts dept in DFW to get what we need to fix this stuff and they just put it on a flight coming in. I suppose that's why we have what we have motive power wise, because they have the in house inventory to support it. It's all the same equipment system wide.

 

[Erik the Awful]

The Navy was that way when I worked GSE as a contractor. We had a mish-mash of equipment. We had four B-5 stands on order for years, and when they finally came in, there were 4 pallets of parts, mostly unusable, that they had scrounged from DRMO in Kadena. They got pissed that I ordered more $$ in parts than new stands would have cost, but completed stands were no longer available, even though every part needed to build one was. All they really got from DRMO was four serial numbers.

 

[Moparmat2000]

The Navy was that way when I worked GSE as a contractor. We had a mish-mash of equipment. We had four B-5 stands on order for years, and when they finally came in, there were 4 pallets of parts, mostly unusable, that they had scrounged from DRMO in Kadena. They got pissed that I ordered more $$ in parts than new stands would have cost, but completed stands were no longer available, even though every part needed to build one was. All they really got from DRMO was four serial numbers.

That sounds sooo typical. A buddy of mine was a senior master sergeant running the local AFB GSE dept, and the waste that the military does is epic. The stuff he told me just shocked me.

 

[Erik the Awful]

Many years ago the A/C broke in our hangar in early July. CE said they didn't have the budget to replace the A/C unit until the new fiscal year. We put MA-3D A/C units outside and ran them for three months, just to cool the offices down to the mid-80s. The fuel bill was three times what the new A/C unit would have cost. Not to mention the MA-3Ds were maintenance hogs, and we spent low five figures in increased maintenance costs. "It's a different pot of money."

 

[Moparmat2000]

We were "gifted" a "new" to us lav service truck for our station. Ford 2.3L fuel injected, automatic trans. I say new to us because the fuel was stale, and I think they pulled it out of storage somewhere and said hey ABI needs one, just give it them. lol. Several pieces of our Junque is typically from somewhere else and "new" to us. We fix it get it running, then give it to paint shop to scuff and repaint. I call it making chicken salad out of chicken $hit.

We drained the gas tank, poured in 2 gallons of MEK, a bunch of bolts, nuts, and washers. Shook it around for a few days and dumped it out. Put in a new fuel sending unit. Fuel pump wouldent work, put in a new electric pump, and fuel filter, and blew out the lines. Got it to start but it wouldent idle without one cylinder loading up. Figured it had an injector not closing off because it wouldent maintain pressure after shut off.

So fuel rail came off. Blew that and the lines out, 4 new injectors, new fuel pressure regulator. Sonofabitch ran really great, then just quit. No fuel pressure at the rail even though the pump runs. Blew out the lines again, checked fuel filter again. Back to square 1 on this thing. When they dropped it off it had varnish in the tank and did not run. We havent even checked to see if the PTO to run the poop water pump works.

 

[Moparmat2000]

The belt loader truck at our station has 2 service doors on the side right next to one another. One for fuel and one for hydraulic fluid. Even though these panels are clearly marked for gasoline and hydraulic fluid, the people at the terminal have put gasoline in the hydraulic reservoir 3 times by mistake. This last time is now while I am running the GSE shop. I told my minions in GSE to drill holes in both corners of the hydro fluid door, and bolt that effing thing shut. There is no reason for the terminal people to even open that panel.

 

[Erik the Awful]

We started putting bolt marking compound on the voltage adjustment on our generators because some of the crew chiefs would tweak the voltage instead of fixing the electrical problems on their planes. QA wouldn't allow us to padlock the doors. Mind you, the doors had to be opened with a flathead screwdriver.

An interesting note, being in Oklahoma, we get lightning strikes on our aircraft from time to time. When a plane would get hit, we always had to tweak one of our generators higher and dedicate it to that aircraft for a few months until they worked out all the electrical bugs.

 

[Moparmat2000]

We started putting bolt marking compound on the voltage adjustment on our generators because some of the crew chiefs would tweak the voltage instead of fixing the electrical problems on their planes. QA wouldn't allow us to padlock the doors. Mind you, the doors had to be opened with a flathead screwdriver.

An interesting note, being in Oklahoma, we get lightning strikes on our aircraft from time to time. When a plane would get hit, we always had to tweak one of our generators higher and dedicate it to that aircraft for a few months until they worked out all the electrical bugs.

Altus OK ?