camp4x4
Adventurer
Think it will be done by 2023? For her 50th Bday.Congrats on the house. Sounds cool.
Probably We'll have to do an anniversary run out there in AZ!
The Camp 4x4 Bus - 1973 Suburban 8.1 Swap & Build
- Thread starter camp4x4
- Start date
Probably We'll have to do an anniversary run out there in AZ!
camp4x4
Adventurer
Thanks, we're loving it so far. So nice to be out of the insanity of the Bay Area housing market...
Thanks, yeah I'm excited to explore up here more.
Here is a tease for you. My avatar is at the exit of a couple lakes a little higher up than you.
My wife hates it, but I think its cool. Name hidden to protect the innocent
I'll have to keep an eye out for it.
camp4x4
Adventurer
Whoop whoop!
Well, I finally got the truck out of the shop down in Gilroy and into my driveway in up-country Sutter Creek. While it was awesome having a great place to work on this project, I'm really excited to get the truck in my own garage!
I almost didn't think it was going to happen for a moment though! I'd hired a guy to trailer the truck for me instead of having to deal with renting a trailer myself. It wasn't until we started loading the thing that we considered how the wider wheels and tires would fit... which is to say they wouldn't.
Fortunately there were people working a couple shops over and they happened to have a couple scrap wheels with tires on them in the same bolt pattern. We got those bad boys bolted on and the truck fit just enough to load up and tie down safely.
Otherwise the rest of the move was uneventful. At the moment the truck is in my driveway. I'll be pulling the RTT off and dragging it into the garage this weekend.
To do that I've come up with a plan. I'm curious what you all think of it. My driveway slopes up to edge of the garage, making pushing the truck in impossible. And, since I'd be blocked in by the truck and all the stuff already in the garage, I can't drag the truck in with another vehicle.
So, the plan is to use my wife's Tahoe, with a shackle mount in the hitch receiver, to pull the truck up hill (the driveway extends past the garage and up around to the back side of the property) to a point where I can attach the Warn PullzAll that I just got (toys!). Then I'm thinking it'll just be a bit of a dance of her backing up while I turn the Burb's wheels to get it more nose-in to the garage, then pulling with the PullzAll to get it in. I'll be mounting the PullzAll to a D-ring secured to the concrete floor with concrete anchors. My only concern is the sheer and holding strength of the anchors... I figure since the anchors are being pulled in sheer the concrete should hold them in place just fine. One table I found online shows a 3/8" bolt should have a 1200lb pull-out strength and a 3200lb sheer strength. I figure since the truck is basically rolling free there really shouldn't be a massive amount of weight on the bolts to begin with. And since the winch has a 1000lb rating, I really couldn't even reach those numbers to begin with... Am I figuring that wrong?
Here's a diagram of the pulling...
Well, I finally got the truck out of the shop down in Gilroy and into my driveway in up-country Sutter Creek. While it was awesome having a great place to work on this project, I'm really excited to get the truck in my own garage!
I almost didn't think it was going to happen for a moment though! I'd hired a guy to trailer the truck for me instead of having to deal with renting a trailer myself. It wasn't until we started loading the thing that we considered how the wider wheels and tires would fit... which is to say they wouldn't.
Fortunately there were people working a couple shops over and they happened to have a couple scrap wheels with tires on them in the same bolt pattern. We got those bad boys bolted on and the truck fit just enough to load up and tie down safely.
Otherwise the rest of the move was uneventful. At the moment the truck is in my driveway. I'll be pulling the RTT off and dragging it into the garage this weekend.
To do that I've come up with a plan. I'm curious what you all think of it. My driveway slopes up to edge of the garage, making pushing the truck in impossible. And, since I'd be blocked in by the truck and all the stuff already in the garage, I can't drag the truck in with another vehicle.
So, the plan is to use my wife's Tahoe, with a shackle mount in the hitch receiver, to pull the truck up hill (the driveway extends past the garage and up around to the back side of the property) to a point where I can attach the Warn PullzAll that I just got (toys!). Then I'm thinking it'll just be a bit of a dance of her backing up while I turn the Burb's wheels to get it more nose-in to the garage, then pulling with the PullzAll to get it in. I'll be mounting the PullzAll to a D-ring secured to the concrete floor with concrete anchors. My only concern is the sheer and holding strength of the anchors... I figure since the anchors are being pulled in sheer the concrete should hold them in place just fine. One table I found online shows a 3/8" bolt should have a 1200lb pull-out strength and a 3200lb sheer strength. I figure since the truck is basically rolling free there really shouldn't be a massive amount of weight on the bolts to begin with. And since the winch has a 1000lb rating, I really couldn't even reach those numbers to begin with... Am I figuring that wrong?
Here's a diagram of the pulling...
bigKlittlecar
Member
I’ve done similar moves, to make it easier just strap some old tires to the back of the burb and push it with the other truck slowly. That way if anything goes wrong you have brakes to stop it from rolling away there’s always a risk of an anchor or cable failure when pulling.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
there’s always a risk of an anchor or cable failure when pulling.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
camp4x4
Adventurer
I’ve done similar moves, to make it easier just strap some old tires to the back of the burb and push it with the other truck slowly. That way if anything goes wrong you have brakes to stop it from rolling away
The Tahoe will stay as taught as possible until the last minute as a backup anchor point... but it's a REALLY nice Tahoe... definitely not gonna be pushing anything with it.
camp4x4
Adventurer
That's a great idea!
camp4x4
Adventurer
It is definitely tight, but with the RTT off the rack should clear by a couple inches. If need be I'd definitely be able to get it in with some normal size wheels and tires like we did to get it on the trailer.
Those are both ours, but they're just overhead covers with gravel underneath.
Eventually I'd LOVE to put a concrete pad down and make one into a proper shop... #goals.
camp4x4
Adventurer
Alright... snug as a bug in a rug!
It looks tight, and it is, but there's definitely space to work. There'll be a fair amount of junk moving out of those storage racks in the next month which will make things a bit more open.
Overall the process was pretty easy. It took a little bit of figuring once we got my wife's Tahoe hooked up via Bubba Rope to get the approach angle right. Those small wheels and tires up front really don't like turning by hand on the pavement. And I realized once we got started that trying to winch while turning was going to be harder than just going straight in. Fortunately we have a nice bump out in front of the RV parking area that lines up almost perfectly with the garage. I also found the front wheels turned WAY easier on the gravel than on the pavement. So, we ended up pulling the truck pretty far up the gravel part of the driveway, cranking the wheels hard and backing the truck down so the back end was hanging over the hillside on the edge of the driveway. This got the truck lined up nearly straight into the garage. Then it was just a matter of winching in, swapping tow straps, winching in some more, rinse and repeat until the truck was in.
A quick note about the PullzAll. Having used it a bit now I'll say that it was definitely worth the money. However, there's a one thing I find annoying about it: there's no free-spool. It is power-in and power-out. This makes for a terribly tedious amount of time spent spooling it out on longer pulls; it takes about 1 minute to spool out. That may not sound like much, but it feels like forever. For getting something that doesn't move on its own up on a trailer one spool is probably the perfect length. For anything longer it is annoying. I found the best thing to do was hook the rope end to the static anchor and the body end to the load. This way you can spool and unspool with one person, keeping tension on the rope as you unspool by just walking back towards the load.
The only other minor quip is that it is on the heavy-ish side. I have found there's a synthetic rope replacement kit for $60. That'd probably only save a 1lb or 2 but I also just like dealing with synthetic better. So I'll probably do that.
Setting up the floor anchor point was pretty easy in the end. I popped over to Lowes and found these concrete screws as an alternative to the wedge anchors. I like that I'll be able to unscrew these when/if I want to remove the anchor. They also seem to have better pull-out and sheer numbers than the wedge anchors. Drilling the holes went pretty well. I initially used my hammer drill, but when I got down to the last couple inches it couldn't seem to make any more progress, and I needed at least another 1/2 inch to get the screws in. I switched over to my impact driver and that made short work of the rest of the length of the drill bit. I'd specifically picked out the Bosch bit, with my impact driver in mind,because it had the hex mount on the end and was "Impact Tough." Turned out that was a good call.
[
Next up I plan to get the last of the parts and tools from Gilroy tomorrow, then figure out what to start on first. Likely I'll get after the last of the fuel line, then move on to building the set frames then on to electrical work. Lots left to do, and the probably of wheeling with it this year is dwindling... But, this truck WILL have it's day in the dirt eventually... and it's going to be AWESOME when it does.
It looks tight, and it is, but there's definitely space to work. There'll be a fair amount of junk moving out of those storage racks in the next month which will make things a bit more open.
Overall the process was pretty easy. It took a little bit of figuring once we got my wife's Tahoe hooked up via Bubba Rope to get the approach angle right. Those small wheels and tires up front really don't like turning by hand on the pavement. And I realized once we got started that trying to winch while turning was going to be harder than just going straight in. Fortunately we have a nice bump out in front of the RV parking area that lines up almost perfectly with the garage. I also found the front wheels turned WAY easier on the gravel than on the pavement. So, we ended up pulling the truck pretty far up the gravel part of the driveway, cranking the wheels hard and backing the truck down so the back end was hanging over the hillside on the edge of the driveway. This got the truck lined up nearly straight into the garage. Then it was just a matter of winching in, swapping tow straps, winching in some more, rinse and repeat until the truck was in.
A quick note about the PullzAll. Having used it a bit now I'll say that it was definitely worth the money. However, there's a one thing I find annoying about it: there's no free-spool. It is power-in and power-out. This makes for a terribly tedious amount of time spent spooling it out on longer pulls; it takes about 1 minute to spool out. That may not sound like much, but it feels like forever. For getting something that doesn't move on its own up on a trailer one spool is probably the perfect length. For anything longer it is annoying. I found the best thing to do was hook the rope end to the static anchor and the body end to the load. This way you can spool and unspool with one person, keeping tension on the rope as you unspool by just walking back towards the load.
The only other minor quip is that it is on the heavy-ish side. I have found there's a synthetic rope replacement kit for $60. That'd probably only save a 1lb or 2 but I also just like dealing with synthetic better. So I'll probably do that.
Setting up the floor anchor point was pretty easy in the end. I popped over to Lowes and found these concrete screws as an alternative to the wedge anchors. I like that I'll be able to unscrew these when/if I want to remove the anchor. They also seem to have better pull-out and sheer numbers than the wedge anchors. Drilling the holes went pretty well. I initially used my hammer drill, but when I got down to the last couple inches it couldn't seem to make any more progress, and I needed at least another 1/2 inch to get the screws in. I switched over to my impact driver and that made short work of the rest of the length of the drill bit. I'd specifically picked out the Bosch bit, with my impact driver in mind,because it had the hex mount on the end and was "Impact Tough." Turned out that was a good call.
[
Next up I plan to get the last of the parts and tools from Gilroy tomorrow, then figure out what to start on first. Likely I'll get after the last of the fuel line, then move on to building the set frames then on to electrical work. Lots left to do, and the probably of wheeling with it this year is dwindling...
But, this truck WILL have it's day in the dirt eventually... and it's going to be AWESOME when it does.
camp4x4
Adventurer
Probably be one of the last things to go on... lots of electrical to do and that'll be a lot easier with it off...When is the front clip going back on sister?