2016 BS and Chat Thread!

[AHineman]

My truck is a srw ton also. Lots of people hate on flatbeds, even more hate them on srw trucks; but I like them and find them useful for my uses. With the price of getting an old bed straight and painted, I'd rather just buy a nice bed like I did and use it.

[CumminsPower59]

If you don't mind telling, what did that aluminum bed cost?

[AHineman]

I got it for $2600. I've got one of the best Moritz dealers around with in an hour of my house. Next closest one had the same bed for $2750 I think. A dually bed is a little higher, but I didn't price one this time. They were usually $200 higher when I've priced them in the past iirc. I've looked at most of the big name beds and the Moritz one seemed to be the best for the money. The Hillsboro 2000 series didn't have pipe spool reinforcements on the rub rail and was a similar price. The Hillsboro 3000 series was WAY more money (well over $4000 last I checked ) though very fancy. The Eby, Bradford Built, and TG Mountaineer beds didn't have an extruded floor and we're farther away and/or more money. Other problem is a lot of places only keep chassis cab dually sizes in stock. (60" cab to axle and wider than SRW, but not as wide as pickup dually)

[CumminsPower59]

If I had to go the flatbed DRW route, I'd probably end up running a C&C rear axle, but I'm sure there is a difference in the cab to axle on a C&C truck versus ours...so I'm sure it'd be more money being a custom built deal. I could handle a $3k price tag for something as nice as the one you picked up, it is pretty slick.

[matthewh]

Nice looking flatbed, hell the while truck is looking very nice. Been mulling the idea of a flatbed on my dually, but really want a skirted flatbed, or a western hauler style. Wish we had dealers around here to compare and actually look at beds. I'm so far north there's no stock sitting around, everything has to be pre-paid ordered. And its not like there's other flatbed 1stgens running around here either.

[Tacoclaw]

Flatbeds R fer turds.

[Farmboy]

I did the pickup DRW axle and it sits pretty nice under the flatbed... Tires pretty much line up with the outside of the rub rail. Looks nicer that way IMO..

[Tacoclaw]

Had a fun job come in at the machine shop. Our power plant uses a bucket conveyor to unload coal from barges, we rebuilt one of their head pulleys and the other one went down not much later. The one we rebuilt didn't have the giant plates bolted to it like these ones, they were right at 6ft tall.



They had another shaft laying around this time, just needed us to press the wheels off. 150tons and a whole lot of rosebud got us nowhere.


Well, actually it got us a bent piece of 2x4 welded to 12"X1/4" I-beam.



We did eventually get it, we had to torch back into the shaft almost 7", left about 1/4" wall on it and it popped loose with 150tons and a whole lot of beating with the 18lb sledge. It was a good day.

[1STGENFARMBOY]

We have a 700 ton press at the shop, when you have 5-600 tons on something and she lets go, dirt falls from the roof for a while. , and yes we are all hiding behind stuff as well.

[Tacoclaw]

We've got a giant, unknown tonnage horizontal press sitting out behind the shop, probably 20ft long and 15ft tall, it would have been perfect for these wheels but the thing is an OSHA wet dream so we don't even bother with it.

We may have to figure something out of more crap like that comes in.

[PToombs]

Wow. That's tight. I was scared when I tried to press the receiver out of the hitch on my truck. I had 60 tons on it when I started to heat it, after it popped it still took 20 tons to push it out. Now that I cleaned the rust off it's a little bit loose in there.

[DMan1198]

Well looks like I'm going to be out of a job again right away. For some reason I can't fathom the idiots upstairs want to go to journeyman who can do cvips, and get away from having apprentices. That makes me the expendable one, but still needed for a little more than a week still since they don't have another mechanic hired or something. So basically I have very little motivation to do things in a timely fashion. If it were me getting laid off due to lack of work again I wouldn't mind so much, but this is total bs.

[Philip]

Well looks like I'm going to be out of a job again right away. For some reason I can't fathom the idiots upstairs want to go to journeyman who can do cvips, and get away from having apprentices. That makes me the expendable one, but still needed for a little more than a week still since they don't have another mechanic hired or something. So basically I have very little motivation to do things in a timely fashion. If it were me getting laid off due to lack of work again I wouldn't mind so much, but this is total bs.

Sorry to hear that. Corporation bean counters at their finest. One question I bet was not asked. How many qualified journeyman does this area have and is it enough to support the company long term goals.

[1STGENFARMBOY]

our bean counters just let 80 go world wide, we have 800 total...good news is they started at the top where the most fat is, i am good unless they shut down the ILL shop, evansville IN lost 63....it was really fat over there, whats funny is production will not suffer one bit, we always knew there was something wrong with that shop over there.

[RumbleFish]

So apparently ubolts got expensive since I last bought some. I needed some for my 93 with 6" blocks, and I'm adding the factory overloads. Of course nobody local had anything close so I called a semi trailer repair place to make me some. They didn't have 9/16" rod so I upgraded to 5/8". 4 ubolts with nuts and washers = $76. Really?