Saturday Night Chop & Weld Shop

This will be an attempt to write a diary on a goal I have to use my welding/fabricating skills to help elect Democrats.

A little background of how I learned to build objects. I was 14 when I started using power tools because I wanted to be in
autoracing. I was introduced to auto racing at the age of 9 in 1963. By the time I got out of high school in 1972, racecars were all I wanted to do. I met a driver my age that had a race car & a few weeks later it got wrecked & the car was junk. So a group of us built a new one. This was my start at learning how to start & finish a project. I went on to build many racecars trailers & support equipment.

In 1987 someone asked me if I could build a billboard trailer. I told the person let me draw what I think it would look like & write out a material list so I could give a ball park cost. Long story shorten I built the trailer. It's one of the many things I built that I wished I had taken pictures of. I've wanted to build these trailers for political candidates ever since. I just never did the PR work to do it.

Follow me over the jump & I'll try to give a visual of one of these billboards I'd like to build.

I'm sure all of you have seen the big trucks with the 8' x 20' billboards on them that go to events & drive in the traffic.
I'd like to build several different versions of these mobile billboards. The one I'm going to write about is going to be a smaller version. It will be built using a midsize front wheel drive vehicle. To get the vehicle I'd go to those auctions that sell crashed cars from insurance companies. I'd pick out a decent 2004 or newer car that's been crashed in a rearend collision. Something I can cut into behind the drivers seat.

So now I have half a vehicle. The car has to be taken completely apart so when it's complete it can be painted properly. I would spend the time before I took it apart to get the tread width of the front of the car so I could macth the back of the vehicle up. This is when you decide the wheelbase your going to end up with also. I'd want enough room behind the 2 front seats to be able to put some luggage or stuff like that. Then I'd want the extention to be 10' long. I'm building a 5' x 10' biilboard to put a message on.

Next would be to measure to widest part of the body at the back of the doors. This will be how wide the vehicle is from there to the back panel that will have the tail lights in it. I'm going to guess this will be 66". Now I need to start thinking how I'll connect my tubing chassis I'll build to the car front half. I would use a 2"x 4" rectangular tubing with a .083 wall. I would slice the undercarriage of the car upto the front of the door to start my chassis of the vehicle. I'll guess again and say these 2 new rails that will be welded in are 62" outside to outside. I call this part of the car a rockerpanel. I'll gues again & say that from the front of the door to the back of the car compartment behind the seats will be 80" long. so I need 2 80" 2" x 4" pieces. The I'll need 1 2" x 4" x 62" for a crossmember to connect the 2 new frame rails. From this crossmember to the back of the vehicle it will be 10'. My plan is to have 30" of room behind the seats.

Now I need to build a rear axle. I need to know how wide the rear frame rails are. I'm going to guess here again .Each tire & wheel is 7 1/2" wide X 2 = 15". 15" - from 66" = 51". Then you need 2" a side for tire clearence. That gives us 47". This will be the outside wide of the rear chassis. I'm going to make the rear bottom rails out of 2" x 3" rectangular tubing. These rails will be higher than the axle. I don't have my scanner set up so no drawings sorry. All corners are mitered fits. That's the fun part of fabricatng. So I myself have the picture of this chassis I'm building. I'll use leaf spring & they will be hung the width of the chassis rails to make mounting easy. The axle will be built with a drop so I can get clearence & strenght. I'll build a top rail of the Chassis out of 2" x 2" x .065 tubing. It will be 47" outside to outside also. This top rail will have a finished high of 32" from the ground to the top.

The rear suspension as I said will be Leaf springs. I'll also put air shocks on this vehicle to make it easy to get the vehicle to sit level. In this rear chassis I will build room to mount a 60 - 70 gallon gas tank. it will go in front of the rear axle and between the 2 chassis rails. Now we have a frame built that will connect the 10" bed for the billboard to the front section of the car. I will leave the details out of how to tie all the rails together. You'll have to trust me to say that when I build something I build it to last & be strong.

Now To finish the body. the rear axle will be centered 42" from the back panel. Look at the vehicle from the rear, it will be 66". The billboard will be 18" wide. This leaves 2 flat surfaces 24" wide to fill in on the top of the bed. That works out well here I can get a 4" x 10" sheet of aluminum plate .120 thick. In front of the tires there's room to build compartments on each side for more storage if that's needed. Also the vehicle should have a generator built into it so you could run lighting for the billboard if needed.I stopped while I was writing & made a drawing of what I just described. There is lots of panels to fabricate to fill in the body. Also the top of the billboard is 2' or so higher than the roof of the vehicle in my mind this will be filled in & made aerodynamic looking. the billboard will split the back of the car where panels will fill in. I'd make these panels out of .049 I think. That would make the stuff tough. A car is probably .028 these days

There's new wiring harnesses to fabricate, brake & gas lines to do up. Of coarse it would need a spare tire hanger. New exhaust & muffler to fab up. Lots of other detail stuff.

Then there's the billboard frame to build. I haven't decided if I would change over to aluminum yet or not. This part I haven't worked out yet because I'd like to talk with someone about the decal that would be the message. I'm not familiar with how those wraps work. How hard they are to remove. I'm still going thru the details of this part of it. I want it so it's easy to paint. I really don't want to rivet the skin of the billboard on. it's only 18" outside to outside. I'm not sure how to paint the frame work if the panels are not removable. So Yes I still have some details to work out. But I was trying to lay out an idea I've had for a while.

See I can picture Larry Kissell driving this all over his NC-08 district over the next 2 years.

Hey a guy can dream.