Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

[pairospam]

Hi everybody. Some said I was dead, others that I was just lost, and others even said that I had been abducted.

Well… I was just busy and travelling. The work on the Merkabah still goes on, with ups and downs, but still goes on.

I would like to ask the forum if it is too out of place to publish some of the pictures of the recent trip to Europe, where I met some members of the forum and others that do not belong to it but have the same travelling spirit, where I found many interesting things and places and people, old and new friends.

I wait for your comments.

Cheers.


Pairoa

[Bahnhofs-Emma]

Hi,

you know that we love Pictures - especially if somehow related to trucks and travel, so don't worry...

Marcus

[Wilmaaa]

A good place to post the photos of your recent trip would be the "Lagerfeuer" section of the forum.

[Worktom2011]

Hello Pairoa,

Lets meet in the "Lagerfeuer" and see the Photos of yours.
We met in Vienna and had a glorious time at the "Schweizerhaus" eating Stelze (Eisbein) with the original Budweiser

Until then
Tom

[pairospam]

Hi all:

The story is on the Lagerfeuer site, http://www.allrad-lkw-gemeinschaft.de/p ... 45#p566545.

I will try to update the thread soon.

Kind regards.


Pairoa

[pairospam]

Hello again. Let’s continue with this thing:

When the story paused, some months ago, I was dealing with the front axle and the pieces and components of the suspension, Eduardo and the guys of the shop were trying to finish the overhaul of the 6x6 Tatra, among other stuff.

Don Pato, one of the mechanicians, was busy trying to figure out how to assemble the engine of the Tatra. It was Eddy, the missing ecuatorian guy, to disassemble it, and he left no pictures of the disassembling nor was of help the Tatra EPC or the manuals. He was pretty upset but never lost his temper.



I primed the steering arms on one side, but actually they were not ready yet and there still was some work left. I had to remove the king pin from one and the seals from the other. It took me not too long to do it but I had to clean them again from oil and complete the metal brushing. Hmm…



There would surely be very difficult to prime the axle soon so I wrapped it in paper to avoid it to be covered by dust while I was out. It looked not very good, but it was good to know it was ready for painting. I had to check the longitudinal blocking mechanism before, though.



Well, I was done with the axle so the next day I picked the steering bar up among the pile of dirty and dusty parts on the floor and inspected it. The tie rod ends had to be replaced, of course, but the bar had been intervened many years ago and someone pretty skilled had cut the extremes os the bar and welded a threaded tube to both ends to fit the tie rod ends you see. They were not Mercedes, for sure.



I removed the pieces and went to a local store and asked if they had a new kit. After almost ten minutes the seller came back with a pair of Scania replacements of Turkish make. In fact, they were the same, at surely a fraction of the cost of the replacement of the original steering bar that included the tie rod ends. Good.




So, I went on with the cleaning of more pieces, for a change. There were lots of bolts and nuts that needed a bath in solvents, for a change too. Then, a little sanding and powerbrushing, with the company of a few themes from Nickelback to make the morning nicer. The first to be ready were the U brackets, and they looked pretty nice.

[pairospam]

Later on, the famous steering bar, long and not easy to handle. But nothing resists the unstoppable momentum of the subscribed and his tools, not even his own flesh when from time to time gets ripped off from his body. After a while the barr was ready too and then it was gently wrapped and stored.





I used the bench grinder this time to brush the bolts and the nuts, and the work was lighter and a little faster, and of course less boring than usual.




The storage box was filled rapidly with the pieces and I felt confident that they would remain intact until my return; it was warm and dry.



As I finished earlier than expected I profited to clean one of the brake supports. I spent a lot of time with it and suddenly it was time to leave. After wrapping the rest of the pieces I gave a last look and went home. I wouldn’t touch anything until returning from the holydays.



The next day I had to come back to the shop but only to take both bikes and leave them there, under the eye of Eduardo and the people of the workshop, as it was safer than leaving them at home. The dogs could chew and eat them.



Well, the trip to Europe began with the flight over the Andes. This is the only picture I will show here. We took more than 5000. Yes, maybe too much.



After one month, at our return, all the work that cumulated during my absence had to be adressed to and consequently I hardly showed up at the workshop for a few days.

Eduardo had already finished the overhaul of the engine of the Montero. It was burning a little amount of oil as a consequence of an unadverted critically low level of oil during one of my local trips and I wanted it repaired for good. Unfortunately, when Don Pato was putting the exhaust manifold back in, one of the bolts broke and it was necessary to take the engine out again for Maestro Chaleco, the welder, to extract the bolt.

[pairospam]

Those days, the big Tatra finally passed all the tests and Jago and Lucy came to get it. They were very happy, but the team was happier because it had been a real nightmare to fix it, dealing with long delays, wrong pieces, lacking pieces, imprecise manuals, etc.




We went to make a test drive and Eduardo profited to teach Jago how to use the engine appropriately for the initial period. When we reached the dry bed of the Putaendo river we found this rare Bremach 4x4 motorhome and, naturally, we stopped by. They were a couple of retired French people that had not found a proper place to park near the city and so they waited for the night to come in that lonely place.



At first a little reluctant, they came out and we had a little chat. I invited them to stay by us but they were not pretty convinced. French. They showed up the next day by the shop, though, and they finally stayed there, while Eduardo fixed some problems of the engine and I worked as the official translator. Odile and Richard had many years of experience living in campers, and it was she to drive. I am already retired! he said and laughed. Their truck had a very neat and functional design. They bought it used and modified it at their requirements. After a couple of days they left for Argentina, as did Jago and Lucy, very happy with the work done on the truck but still having problems with the altitude/heat that needed more time and resources to be fixed.



As my back was still a little sensitive I tried to make some progresses working lightly sanding the frame. It was not quiet demanding so the back withstood the efforts and I was almost happy with the results.






The big problem was that the cleaning of the old paint and the rust was unsatisfactory and, yes or yes, I would end up using the blaster to complete the job “comme il faut”. Nothing can be compared with the grit blasting, as I sadly realized.



So, there was no alternative. I had to take the cabin out if I wanted to go further with the frame, the front axle and so on. I needed to lift the cabin but, over all, I needed some kind of troley big and resistant enough to be able to handle it and to move it as easily as possible. So I took both the troleys that were designed and built to carry the pieces of the Blazer 6x6 and welded both together.

[pairospam]

I cut and welded as well some supports to fix the cabin on them.




As I had no much time available, that job took me at least three days, and to do that only. I was starting to feel frustrated again.

Things were not going right at all, and not only with the Merkabah. After putting the engine back on the Montero, another bolt of the exhaust manifold broke, with the minimum torsion force. Don Pato was very pissed off, and also Eduardo. They had to take the engine out again, extract the broken bolt and all the other old bolts and order new ones, but there were no available spare bolts in the market. Hmm...



Wisely, Eduardo asked me to better remove the battery tray of the Mitsubishi, spotted and hurt by the acids, and to give it the same therapy given to the parts of the Merkabah. He knew I had pretty little or no time at all to share with other jobs, but he insisted. I realized that he was completely right; maybe I was becoming too anxious to make progresses on the Merkabah, and I had forgotten all the rest, as usual. The little and faithful Montero needed not only parts and pieces but also some love and attention from my part.



And so I did. I took the tray out, washed it thoughroughly with solvents and then sanded and powerbrushed it. But the result was not perfect so I also grit-blasted the tray where needed and then applied a few hands of primer and finaly the black paint. It was all I did that afternoon, and the day after I put it back on the 4x4. It looked like new. Eduardo found the replacements of the bolts, not Japanese, though, the same afternoon. No other things went wrong with the old Montero from then on.



One thing I would not trade, ever, was the Sunday’s bike scape, no Sir. Eduardo and I went out and discovered some trails that we thought we were the first guys to travel. Not precisely, as you can see by the sign.



Another weekend came to an end, and another new week arrived. The plan was on, the cabin had to be lifted and removed from the frame. I fabricated a kind of bobby pin to hang the cabin from, made from discarded pieces of steel I found around.




The roof hatch was taken out and the pin was settled with the aid of the presses. I went to the store and bought many meters of chain and some tensioners required to distribute the weight of the cabin to avoid deformation of the roof when hanging. After some cutting and welding the tensioners were set up and they looked good and firm.



But, and there is always a but, the year was about to finish, and I still had some holydays to take if I wanted not to loose them. So I decided to go south. Carmen could not accompany me this time because she had no more holydays and someone had to put some order in the business. The shop was a chaos in her absence.

I changed oil and serviced the Africa Twin, preparing her for a trip of unknown length. It would start at the annual meeting of my schoolmates in Pichilemu, a relatively close beach in central Chile, and from there I would continue to the south.

You will shortly find the story and the pictures, a very small selection, on the Lagerfeuer section, just following the trip to Europe http://www.allrad-lkw-gemeinschaft.de/p ... 16&t=59610. It was a terrific trip.

[pairospam]

Merry Christmass to you all!!

[bo]

Merry Christmas to you too

[Bahnhofs-Emma]

Thank you and thank you for a lot of interesting stories.

Merry Christmas to you as well!

Marcus

[pairospam]

I do not remember if it had been mentioned before, but Ignacio and Francisco Casale and I did some kind of merging many months ago to ask for the panels of the Boxes for our trucks to be manufactured by a german constructor. Well, the process had been slow and with some difficulties, but when I came back to the motel after dinner in Hornopirén, some 1300 km away from San Felipe, I got a few emails that talked about a very close date for starting the production of the panels.

The Box of the Merkabah has many openings for doors, hatches and windows, as every wohnmobile of course, but, for purposes of safety and integrity of the components, the panels will be produced and shipped without any, and we will do the openings and rabbets here in Chile.




We ordered also the GFK profiles for the doors and the windows to another german maker. All would be shipped to Chile when the panels were ready.

There are quiet a few makers in Chile that fabricate PUR and composite panels for thermal cabins, but we chose to do ours abroad because of the quality of the materials and the experience in such type of works.

Each panel is a series of layers of different components with particular properties according to the needs of strenght and isolation. The external layer is 3 mm thick glass fiber, the core is of high density polyurethane, then an internal layer of a harder composite material 5 mm thick to fix furniture or whatever, and then an inner 1,8 mm thick layer of glass fiber. All along the borders of the panels is a 60 mm revolving strip of a harder material to fix the panels between themselves, and the roof will be reinforced by aluminum tubes. The rear wall, the one which will hold the rack for the bike and the spare tyre, will have have a special reinforcement made of hardened PVC foam.





As the dynamic forces involved when running, and especially when going off road, will be stronger than any calculation you can make, I designed the Box with internal reinforcements done with 40x40x4 mm aluminum profiles in the rear zone and to make every screw and bolt coincide with a reinforced point. The rear rack will also be supported by extensions of the subframe bolted to the Box, so hopefully it will stand.




The baseplate frame will be produced here, probably at the shop, by myself and Maestro Chaleco, and completed as a sandwich panel in a plant in Santiago, somewhere in time.

I returned from the trip to the deep south after eleven days. As I said, it was great, and profiting of the one day left of my holydays I asked the people of the workshop to give me a hand to take the cabin of the Merkabah out, the job I left unconcluded before my departure. In a funny and somewhat chaotic maneuver six people succeeded, barely, to put the cabin on the ad hoc trolley without harming the cabin itself nor the engine of the truck. Good.





Once the cabin was secured and fixed to the trolley it could be moved easily on the floor, and the engine and the front frame were plainly accessible for cleaning and painting.

[pairospam]

The next day I went to pick a parcel from the post office. After a couple of months, the bearing cups sent by Klaus from Stuttgart, finally arrived. Great guy, Klaus.




Furthermore, some pretty nice presents were inside the box, among them something I had been looking for many, many months fruitlessly: a die cast scale model of the 2626 AK 6x6 truck. It was fantastic, but it would have to wait a little, until the actual Merkabah was at least running, for the garbage container to be replaced for the scale model of the living Box.




The days that followed I had a lot of regular work and a lot of extra work, as always happens at the end of the year, and I had to forget about the project for a while.

One day, when I could, I wrapped carefully the engine to avoid grit particles to enter when blasting the frame. I put the “blasting-chamber” over the front of the truck but could not start the blasting because I had to rent a bigger compressor and not enough days together to work on it.




I had to work non stop for many hours, and life seemed to be reduced only to that. I had had too many holydays together, wonderful holydays, and the problem was dealing with my usual and unusual duties.

At a given moment I decided that I needed to stop, stop and have a little talk with myself. So, I took the recently washed and waxed Africa Twin and rode until I came to a very steep mountain slope, and then I began to climb, and climb, and climb.

It was only me in the quiet and the loneliness of the heights, with the wind, some goats and one vizcacha as company. By the way, if you can find the goat on the picture you may have a prize.




I reached the top a couple of hours later. From there I would have been able to see Santiago, some 70 kilometers away, if it wasn’t for the foggy day.



Well, I could not get to any reasonable thinking up there, as any saneminded guy would expect, so I went back home and had a long and intense chat with my wife. It was all I needed. Oh, I really love her. Being with your friends, the people you love and the ones that truly care for you is the best and only thing a man could want and have.

Nothing is better than a little personal crisis to shake you up. From then on I slowed down, put first gear, tried to be more patient, more tolerant, humble and grateful.

[pairospam]

The next day, thursday I think, the new Karoo 3 for the Honda arrived. They looked pretty good. The noble bike needed and deserved them, and she also deserved a complete servicing, including carburation and oil change after almost 4500 km of mercyless riding.




I went absolutely out of the subject, as usual. Sorry for that.

My colleague needed also to take his holydays, and I took charge of the hole thing including the double watch until the very end of the year, so I decided not to worry about the Merkabah; I would go on depending on time. In the meantime I would finish all the pending jobs of the Montero and the Africa Twin.

The first thing I did was to install the new stereo, bought many, many months ago and stored since, waiting for the spare of the broken panel to be found. I did the mechanics and Eduardo helped me with the electrics. It sounded pretty good though the speakers had come to the end of their lives.

While Eduardo finished to tune the engine I took out the superior dashboard that contains some of the instruments. The inclinometer was broken since I bought the car and I wanted to fix it. I disassembled it and found that the delicate plastic frame was broken in pieces. I repaired it using cyanoacrylate glue, with a lot of faith but not knowing if it would hold. It worked, but it took me two days of patient and delicate work. I then repaired the vents, also broken centuries ago, the seats and many other neglected aspects of the old Mitsubishi.




Once all I could do to help the Montero for him to regain his allure was done, I turned again my attention to the Merkabah. It was not possible until January to work on the frame but probably I could do something with the cabin. For the moment there was nobody I could trust to help me to flatten out the tunnel of the engine, so I decided to do it myself.

First of all I secured the rear to the trolley with the same chains I used to stabilize the roof, and then used everything at hand to put the hydraulic jack in the right position to push the tunnel from below.




It was a learning process, a quick one, but in the end the defect was barely recognizable. The persisting details were dealt with hammering, lots of patience, and ear plugs. The pictures just show the preliminary results that were not bad at all considering the initial state of damage.





I felt again that enthousiam it is used to prove when things go right so I planned to do the passthrough in the back wall of the cabin. I marked a 70x70 cm free entrance/exit, but I felt that it was too large just by the way it looked and decided to do it smaller. I don’t know if you can perceive the difference between both pictures but it is 10 cm less wide.

[pairospam]

The passthrough is necessary to comply with the inspection to change from truck to motorhome, and for emergency reasons, but not the principal way to go out and into the cabin so it had not to be too big, at least in the particular case of the Merkabah.

In any case, I have asked everyone with a truck and all coincided that it is seldom used. I thought also that maybe a sleeve like the one of Jago’s Tatra could be the best and the simpler way to unite both entrances to the cabin and the Box instead of a more complicated kind of bellow.

As I was enthousiastic again, but still with double watch and lots of regular work, I went on dealing with the cabin. The dent that made it look so ugly had always been something I wanted to attack and destroy, and it seemed to be the right time to do it.



There was no way to reach the dent from inside to knock it out so I decided to cut a little window under the dashboard to get it. I used a slightly modified pushrod from the old and faithful Spare and carefully hammered until I considered it was enough. Unfortunately I discovered that this was a scar over another scar; there had been two previous repairs, and mine would be the third one. There was a steel patch and the plaster work, tough pretty fine, was not negligeable. I feared that the artistic work would be harder and longer than originaly thought, like everything with the Merkabah.





To make a good job I would have to experiment and practice with plaster. Where the hell were you, Edison!? I left the dent and focused then on the rain gutter, something I could fix at that moment without having to deal with plaster.



I flattened out the whole door frame and then I cut the portion of the gutter that could not be repaired, just a little. I replaced it with a post formed ad hoc piece of metal sheet and did the welding and sanding thing I feel very comfortable with, and the result turned to be not too bad.





Some nasty careless guy had welded the superior hinge and I profited to powergrind the unconcluded job, just for the fun of it and to be sure that everything was perfect... or almost.

[pairospam]

Verardo and his priceless pile of discarded steel pieces supplied some short tubes to experiment with the frame of the passthrough. I worked with them with the welder and the powergrinder to get the appropriate lengths and then joyfully fabricated the frame. I like to weld because it gives a real feeling of making something.





I presented the frame and, of course, there were some details that I did not take into account, especially regarding the inner lining and the way I wanted to make the borders coincide. It had to be modified or redone.




With these thoughts I went to work, and then... Christmas came.

[Pirx]

The passthrough is necessary to comply with the inspection to change from truck to motorhome, and for emergency reasons, but not the principal way to go out and into the cabin so it had not to be too big, at least in the particular case of the Merkabah.

In any case, I have asked everyone with a truck and all coincided that it is seldom used. I thought also that maybe a sleeve like the one of Jago’s Tatra could be the best and the simpler way to unite both entrances to the cabin and the Box instead of a more complicated kind of bellow.

Mauricio,

we haven't talked about that, but we use the passthrough very often. There have been intensive discussions here on the forum about the pros and cons of a passthrough from the driver's cab to the living box, but most of the people use it a lot. Not for the safety aspect, which is not so important in reality as one might think. But just to get from the driver's cab to the box without getting cold, wet or blown away, without having to unfold the ladder for a short stop or just getting the camera that was forgotten in the back and so on. It is a piece of travelling comfort!

As I mentioned, there are quite a lot of threads concerning the passthrough, but let me just link to one of them, including a poll about how often the passthrough is used on a voyage:
http://www.allrad-lkw-gemeinschaft.de/p ... 35&t=18789

So, maybe you rethink your plans concerning the size and usability of the passthrough?

Saludos,

Pirx

[pairospam]

Pirx:

You are absolutely right, we didn't even talk about your truck when we were together! We talked about any other subject, life, work, love, travels, etc, but very little about trucks except that Bärbel did one by herself. My love to her.

Translation sucks, but it is clearly understandable that any opinion is valid about size and use of the passthrough, and mine is just one more. But I think that the size I chose, 66x70 cm, is enough for anyone not needing a wheelchair to go through to get the forgotten camera or the beers while waiting your turn in the row for customs. In fact, I made a test with Alejandro, the supersized argentinian, and he went easily through the frame. It was enough test for me.

Anyway, this is the best of having the thread up to date. I really apreciate your words on the subject, as always.

Today I worked a couple of hours and decided to stretch the frame instead of doing it all again. I was not on the mood nor have the time to go to buy a whole tube, 6 meter long, or go to Verardo's machine shop to search for more pieces in the scrap pile.

I cut the 4 cm pieces I needed, cut the frame in two and simply welded it all together. Unfortunately the pieces were not exactly the same size and the minimal difference was clearly visible. I sighed and thought that the frame would be barely visible from any side and thus it really did not matter. A little plaster work?

Maybe I am becoming too much tolerant.




Cheers.


Pairoa

[pairospam]

Saturday; good day for working a little more on the Merkabah. After the morning homeworks I went to the shop, set up all the tools I needed and held my breath before doing the first cut. It really hurt, at the beginning, then it was pure fun. No, not really.



Some efforts and a couple of thousand sparkles and then the cabin had lost her virginity, again. Good for her.



No matter how perfect you think your calculations and your markings are, there is always some little mistake. In this case, there was a nearly 2 millimeter gap between the left aspect of the frame and the sheet, hmm… I wanted not to fill it up with welding because the deformity would have been not acceptable. I cut a strip of the piece recently extracted and tacked it as a supple. It worked well, but the final look of the welding was questionable. I could not find the right voltage to work, and that was pretty frustrating.




I went on anyway, trying to do my best with the welding, and after a couple of hours the frame was quiet solidly integrated to the cabin. I also worked a lot with the powergrinder, enough to make my epicondylitis hurt again.

There was obvious need of some plaster work but I have decided not to be too demanding a few days ago, so, it was okay.

[Uwe]

Hi,

don't mind the gap

Do you plan to close the old windows with metal sheets or with smaller pieces of glass (and reuse the cut away window frames)?

Cheers
Uwe

[pairospam]

Hi Uwe:

There is no more gap, he, he.

I still don't know what to do about the rear windows. I need to know how to deal with the interior lining before deciding because I would like to seal the windows from the interior without trace of cutting and bonding. Does anyone know? Glass fiber to bond the pieces?



Greetings.


Pairoa

[pairospam]

After a few considerations and drawings (I cannot think without drawing) I decided to recycle the window frames cut out from the rear wall and to put two smaller windows instead of closing with metal sheets. It was my first choice, some months (years?) ago, until I thought about not making life more complicated, but everything changes and the suggestion from Uwe was the last push.



I made an exhaustive but fruitless research on how to repair and graft HDF lining panels. I asked my father, as he knows a lot about wood craftsmanship, and he would help me to find the best available method. But that could wait for later.

I marked and cut the pieces from the extracted rear wall and then I cut the correspondant of the cabin. At first I wanted to stick on some pieces of metal sheet to guide the grafts, but then I went the old way: helped myself with the presses and I welded freely thereafter. It was a good moment and made me remember when I stuck together both 4x4 when doing the 6x6 conversion.




Some stitches and then the new windows frames were almost ready. I burned my head with the sparks only twice this time. Excellent.



The only problem was that the profiles for the windows did not match exactly, as expected because of the essentialy curved design of the cabin. I only hoped that the defect could be dealt with the weatherstrip, otherwise I would have to use silicon glue or some other type of glue to fix the problem and make sure of the waterproofing.



It was already late and so we had to leave. The job was far from conclusion, but at least a decision had been made and the work had begun. Better than still making endless turns around uncertainty.

[Jerrari]

looks perfect to me.
Thanx for all that writing and posting. One of my favorite blogs. You made my day.
Alec

[pairospam]

Happy new year, guys!

[Arend]

Hi Pairoa,

All the best for this new year.
Hopefully your project is going strong and you're able to drive the truck this year.

best regards, Arend

[pairospam]

Thanks, Arend and Jerrari. I wish you both the best for this year, and lots of travels.

Well, the New Year came, and along with it my colleague back from his holydays. It was nice to leave the double shift. We went to the beach to spend the afternoon with the dogs and a couple of friends. The dogs were pretty happy to run and get wet in between hundreds of people. I did not. All in all it was a very nice promenade and the fish at dinner was deign of it.



And I continued working on the cabin. I dedicated a whole afternoon to knock out lots of tiny and medium sized dents of the roof. The truth is that I had forgotten the grinder, the earplugs and the safety goggles at home and I wanted not leave the shop to take them, so I hammered a lot knowing that sooner or later I would have to do it anyway.

When my ears started to ache I took the welder and reinforced internally and from the outer side all the weldings I had done before. I hoped that no hole would had been left but, nonetheless, some prevailed. Nothing that could not be dealt with plaster and silicone, though.

There are no photos because it was not very notorious, of course.

Saturday, one more time. I made sure to take back to the shop all I may have needed and wore the dirty overall, or what was left of it, for another welding and grinding session.

I had decided to work out the way to repair the front pilar or whatever its name must be, because the rust had badly affected the metal. It had to be repaired, yes or yes, and it seemed to be the appropriate moment.



As usual, the first approach was very conservative, just to explore the damage. As usual, as well, I found that the metal was badly compromised, worst than previously thought by seeing from the outside. At some moment there must have been a leak and water came in between the folded sheets and, pooled by the silicon gum, it ended up rusting the steel.




I made wide open surgery to expose all the rusted surfaces to be able to clean it all for good. I was confident that Spare had the right donor piece of shaped sheet with which the defect would be repaired. Later, when watching some old pictures of the old and faithfull truck, I realized that there had been some problems in the same area of the old truck before. Ops.




Confident, and ignorant, I kept up and cleaned some more rusted areas. The result was not bad when I used the aggressive metallic mesh, and the rust was superficial, fortunately.



I also worked a little more the front dent, and this time it was decent enough to be left like that and finish the job with plaster. I wanted to be able to replicate Edison’s work, but I knew it was going to be hard.



Sunday: Dirt-riding day. It was some weeks that the Yamaha waited for some little use, but my spine did not agree. This time there were no excuses so the mountains near San Felipe offered some interesting challenges to the Japanese 450 cc and to the subscriber. The view from above was, as always, spectacular, even if the dryness of the slopes testified the lack of rains that both the Putaendo and the Aconcagua valleys suffer since many years. The midmorning sun almost melted the brain under all the gear and the helmet.




I always cared about the erosion caused by the bikes on the slopes, but watching the tremendous damage caused by the farmers, surely preparing the soil for planting some avocados, I will never care, not anymore. These guys make a terrible damage and, in comparison, the bikes just a minimal scratch. And the poor mountains have to hold on.

[pairospam]

A new week started and I was not sure if to continue working on the cabin or to begin with the frame, but still I had not all the pieces at hand to assemble the front axle. I decided to go on and grinded a little some exhuberant welding lines, including those of the passthrough, and other ugly weldings around.



There was a lot to do to clean and to repair the rusted areas of the front, so I removed the support of the wipers to have complete access. The support itself needed also some restoration work; the never-ending work.



I sanded a lot, trying to focus only where it was needed, but it seemed that probably would be necessary to make a more spread and profound approach. The space below the dashboard, where the fan took the air to heat up or cold down the cabin, was completely open and thus there was a lot of dust and rust that had to be removed. It took me quiet a while to leave it partially clean, and I decided to make up something to prevent the dusty air to come directly into the cabin.




After a lot of sanding this was the way the front looked like. The area for the lock of the grille was dented and I would have to make a reverse impact instrument to undent it, but the most important thing was that I needed to remove both paint and primer and the rust more easily because sanding was pretty much time consuming.



I grabbed then the hot air gun and went to buy some spatulas and worked the paint with them. It was better by far, less dust, less physical effort, a little faster also, but the temperature on the street, in the shadow, was 40° Celsius. You can imagine the temperature in the shop, near the hot air gun, and the amount of sweating. Terrible.

Anyway, it was worth, and it exposed the myriad of tiny rust spots that were hidden under the apparently healthy paint.



The next day I just continued to sweat and to remove more paint. Christ, it was really hot!

I profited of a lazy morning at work (almost everybody in holydays) and before midday I went to Santiago to make a visit to the official Mercedes dealer. It was a very hot day too, and the capital was almost as disgusting as San Felipe regarding the temperature.

The goal was to get a spare of the exhausted left brake drum of the front axle. There was none on stock and if there were it would have costed more than 650 Euros each. There was a chance that some Brazilian-make drums could be useful so I took with me the old one as sample and crossed the fingers.



After only half and hour and two capucinos later, got from the free expending coffe machine, the seller came out from the warehouse with a brake drum that had the same dimensions, number of holes and shape… well… almost. They costed just a fraction of the original ones so I took two and loaded them in the Montero, with the promise from the seller to get them back if they were not the right ones.



I then scaped from the big city, avoiding the traffic of the rush hour. Good.

Back in the shop the drums were immediately tested if they fitted inside the rims, and they did. The only difference was that the lanes for the brakeshoes were 2 centimeters wider than the originals; nothing too bad to worry about… I hoped.

[pairospam]

The hot and slow removal of the paint continued, and I found that the plaster job for the big left dent was bigger than thought, so I left it alone until I could make my own plaster work. The borders and the corners of the cabin were also plenty of rust spots that needed to be peeled off. Nothing too dramatic, though.





I started to remove the paint from the right frontal side and it looked pretty fine, until I found that there also was a dent that had been repaired with plaster. I truly hated the idea of doing it all again, but someone had to do it.




Saturday morning I borrowed Eduardo’s generator and went to the cattle to visit Spare’s cabin. It was hot, really hot: 41° Celsius on the shadow. The place had been filled with firewood from the old peaches of the orchard and there was dry grass everywhere, the right recipe for a disaster when working with the powergrinder.



I cleared the area where I was going to work and started to amputate the piece of steel I needed as graft for the Merkabah. I had three fires that started to burn almost four meters away from where I was, even one against the wind. Never underestimate the power of the tiniest spark. Got sure to extinguish every single flame before going on until the piece of metal was out.



I profited to remove all the plastic caps and the screws and the bolts I could unscrew to have them as spares, and also removed the reservoir and the pipes of the brake fluid circuit that were in far better shape than Merkabah´s.

Waited half an hour under the burning sun before leaving, to be sure that there were no hidden fires waiting for me to go to get loose, and then I went back to the shop.

When first inspected, the graft looked pretty bad, but after a few hours of cleaning, flattening out, cutting and reshaping, the piece of metal matched pretty well with the defect on the cabin of the Merkabah. Enough for a Saturday.




Sunday morning was too hot to go out on the dirt bike so I stayed at home and did some domestic job, don’t remember what, but surely something pretty boring. Oh yes… lawn mowing. I told you.

[pairospam]

Monday. How many until now? I got my gas torch back and made a test with it to remove the paint. It allowed me to work faster but I did not like pretty much the amount of heat delivered to the steel. Anyway, I had to remove the bloody paint so I went on as carefully as I could until I got mad of it and got sick of the heat of that afternoon in San Felipe.

Slowly, though, the cabin was being peeled, centimeter by centimeter, but I was done with it for that day. Patience, just patience, I repeated to myself.



I already mentioned that the fan of the vent/heater sucked the air directly from the outside into the cabin, and I wanted the air to be filtered, somehow, before getting in. I looked for some materials and figured out how to put a useful filter and to force the air through. I just needed a flat sheet and some piece of grillage, and both were at hand, coming from Verardo´s pile of metal trash and from a discarded air filter.



Got the grinder and the powerdrill and made the rough part of the job, but it was late so I took the piece of metal with me and finished the details at home with the Dremel tool and a cold beer at hand.