Hayes HD dump truck...RCP's style

[Lil Giants]

I use a specific cutting oil for tapping aluminum & chuck the tap in a cordeless drill too... depending of the thickness of the piece you're tapping, you'll likely have to back the tap out several times, clean off the filings (I use a brass bristle brush) & relube before you tap all the way through... the cordless drill makes fast work of that.

I chuck the tap gripping the smooth round, instead of the squared end, so the tap slips easily when the cutting threads get too full of chips.


That's pretty trick welding Reg to fish the broken tap out!
I'm looking forward to getting my own tig welder here shortly & learning the craft.

[Acadieman]

Thanks for the pointers. I thought about drilling a bigger hole and will use this tip from now on.
I broke a few bits in aluminum, and I wasn't able to get them out. I tried using alum to corrode the bits, and I think this may work with more time.

http://etsymetal.blogspot.ca/2009/01...t-removal.html

Looking forward to more updates on this project!

[RCP57]

Nothing really went as planned for me today but I did get started on the rear wheels and finished my spare. For the rear wheels I am attempting to stamp out the centers, do a little machining and then press them into the rim. So far I have made a couple of dies and successfully punched out one center to play with. I am not sure what I will end up doing as it is kinda trial and error at this point. I will try to mess around with this a little more over the next couple of days and nail down a setup.

This is what the first one looks like prior to drilling the bolt circle. I will put it back in the lathe to clean up the edge where the center meets the rim eventually.

[RCP57]

Well I spent the whole day working on the wheels today. I made some modifications to my dies this morning and tried some different setups in the mill. Anyway, long story short I think I have a wheel that I am happy with for the truck. It always seems like the hard part is setting up for the job. Once you get all the tooling sorted out you have no excuse to use it anymore! Oh well...

Here's a few pictures of the parts and the assembled wheels. I ordered some 1/8 nuts as suggested so once they get here I will button it all up!













I still have some caps to make and some machining on the rear hubs left to do.

Let me know what you think of the wheels.

Thanks for looking

[Brian in PA]

Man this is sweet Reg! Every now and then a biuld like this comes along and just leaves my speechless. Your scratch biulding skills are unbelievable.