Thursday, January 28, 2010

Pleasant Air is good Air


Earlier this week Dakota and Aaron went to Pleasant Air to get the Freon removed from the truck. Everything went smooth and we can now start to get parts off the truck to further our conversion.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Under pressure




We are very close to beginning our conversion, so it is always good to have a clean vehicle to work with. Brian from Cape Fear Pro Wash generously donated his services so we could get rid of all the dirt and grime from the truck, especially the chassis. It is exam time, so the class met after the exams were over to help remove the bed to expose the dirty undercarriage. Arik even got to try his hand at pressure washing. The process took about an hour and now the truck is clean and ready for our first step in the conversion process, evacuating the freon form the air conditioning system.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Weigh in


We are in the beginning stages of our conversion process with the Ranger. One of the first duties is having to determine the curb weight before all internal combustion and non essential parts are removed. We called Larry Hall and he graciously allowed us to borrow his set of scales for the weigh in. The truck weighs a hefty 3247 pounds at this point. Now we can remove the engine and other parts such as gas tank, muffler, radiator etc. and then weigh the truck again. This process is crucial so that we can determine how much weight we can add back to the truck during the conversion process and still weigh less than the gross vehicle weight as determined by the manufacturer. We should have no problem since the GVR is around 4600 pounds.