SNS 352: Generator Rack Repairs

[Music] all right guys i'm getting ready to do a little bit of maintenance on the front of the kodiaq here not on the actual kodiak but one of the accessories that i mounted so some of you guys might remember last year it was last summer i want to say around july august i put this trailer tray on the front of the kodiak here it is a complete bolt-on unit it comes with all the brackets these tubes everything and it's a modular type piece so it's made to mount on the front of any type of travel trailer like you see so it's adjustable with different bolt hole locations the front brace right here all right the main reason why i had bought this and mounted was to haul the honda generator on the front i got the generator right after that and i got a video showing that this works excellent to hold that honda generator i made one mistake whenever i mounted that up here and i've got to do a little bit of repair to this thing now to get it back in proper usable condition so let me show you what happened i actually drilled this hole right there let me get you in there you can see it i drilled this hole in there because i was using this for a a cable system a cable lock system all right so these holes are already there these are made so that you can you know hook a bungee cord or a ratchet strap or anything to that to hold your cargo up on here so i drilled this hole here and i drilled that hole right there and actually had a cable lock going through there holding the generator on so we're probably going to go a little different route this time i'm still working on that in fact they make a lock down plate that bolts to this bolts to the bottom of the generator and then mounts that you know sits in here i've actually uh went to try to buy that a couple of times and i i guess they're out of stock right now maybe because of the covid thing everything being backlogged the people that sell those don't have them in stock but anyway what we're gonna do is fix this okay so i'm gonna actually weld this back up we're gonna grind that crack out just tig weld this up and then what i'm gonna do i've got a piece of angle iron that we're gonna mount to this and i haven't decided if i'm going to weld it or just bolt it on or what so we'll put a piece of angle iron across the back right here it'll go all the way across and that'll stiffen up this area right here in the middle where i where i weakened it you can see that crack started working its way on down and this happened fairly quick because i noticed it whenever we had whenever we were in wichita with my buddy andrew is when i noticed that the generator was shaking around a little bit more than it should have so i started inspecting found out that that thing was cracked right there so it started weakening it i mean you can see you can see it moving it'll still work but you know that's unsafe to let it continue to crack so we're going to fix it so we're going to get this thing unbolted all it is is as it's got a set screw it's got a through bolt on each side same thing on this side i've already taken that set screw out right there and then we've got to loosen up this center support here unbolt that and then this is just going to come off i'm going to take it in the shop and uh working on it in there all right we got all the bolts loose from here in the center support it should just yep start coming up just like that of course i'll have to use both hands that's it right there it'll just lift right off at this point we're going to go right into the shop with it there we have it off i'm just showing you guys this so people can see how this thing mounts up i'm actually going to take this guy off right here and slot these two holes in the miller machine because i didn't have the proper amount adjustment up here and i had this i had this piece tweaked a little bit it wasn't perfectly straight so i need a little bit more fine adjustment out of this so i'm gonna i'm gonna mill some slots in this guy right here so i have a little bit better adjustment on that once we bolt it back on there so so so so just test fitting the angle iron to it using the clamps it has a slight bow to it so we're going to use the clamps to pull it down nice and square and flat against the actual tray and i'm going to take them off here and show you what what i ended up doing these were punched by a dimple die so it so like the bottom of it's raised up so in order to get these clamps or the angle iron to be able to sit down flat the way i want it to i actually had to grind the bottom of those dimples off there so just use a grinder clean those up and like i said there's just a slight amount of bow to it like that from it just getting warped you know over the past year so i'm going to go ahead and put the four holes in the angle iron because i do use these holes for strapping things down we're just not going to put the one in the middle anymore so the ones out here on the outer end will be just fine i'm just going to clamp that on there like that i'm going to reach through there with a sharpie and mark the holes and go to the miller machine and just drill those four holes out and then we'll clamp it down like this i'm going to finish dressing that paint off here and then we're going to clean the mill scale off of this real well and then we'll go we'll go through the bottom here and we'll just put some stitch welds across the bottom and that'll hold just fine and also across the back side here we'll put some stitches across the top there as well [Music] [Music] there's the holes drilled we got it all deburred real well so there's no sharp edges went ahead and dressed all the mill scale off the areas that we're going to be welding and it should mount up nicely put our vice grips on there and it should square everything up good pull it up nice looks like all of our holes are lining up perfectly oh yeah that looks good they all lined up nice i'll put some a few more clamps across here we got these cant twist that we will uh use to kind of just pull the you know the shelf and the new angle iron against each other nice and tight i think i'm gonna go get a couple more of these put a couple more get everything pulled in real good there and then we'll start getting it stitched on there so [Applause] so [Applause] [Applause] so [Applause] [Applause] okay we got the welding finished up now i think it turned out pretty good got our stitches on that side it stiffened it up really nice and then flip it over here we've got it sewed up on this side as well so that's about it for this guy right there on our repair just got to get it mounted back on but as i said that other bracket that mounts this right here i need to get it do some slotting like it is here i need to slot the other bracket so i can get that and make sure that it's leveled up right whenever we go to bolt it back on there so all i'm going to do for here is i'm going to use some the crc rust converter and paint on here where it's bare metal and i'm going to get some rattle bomb paint and just give this thing another just a cheap paint job you can see where it's already trying to fade anyway so i will uh clean it up scuff it and give it a paint job we got the honda generator inside i wanted to go ahead and set it on the tray here and do a couple modifications maybe try to improve the way that i mounted it over over last year but one of the things that i'm doing is replacing the rubber feet that's on the bottom of it and i'll flip this up and show you this is one of the rubber feet right here it is a very soft rubber and it's designed to uh you know give a little bit of flex and allow this thing to kind of move around and absorb the vibration whenever this is running creates just a very soft foot i wanted to go ahead and replace these because the way that i mount this thing down here with the bars is that it squishes this rubber okay i'm remaking them this is one of them right here i've already made two of them just kind of testing this out i think this is going to work fine i don't recall what grade of plastic or rubber this is but it has a very uh very soft durometer to it i remember this was this was used years ago in our shop to make some parts for somebody but it has a very it's very soft and it squishes not as much as this rubber right here but it does have a lot of give to it and i think that these will work better so let me flip this up i got it where i can just lean this right on back all right and it'll sit right there nope let me fix it all right there we go so here's the one i've already mounted in place right here all right it's uh it's it's pretty tough to machine this stuff and get a really good finish so you can see the tool marks in it but i really don't care how they turned out so turn the od we counter board the idea i used i used the same six miller six millimeter bolt to hold that in there but that just shows you the difference between the two right there i just made mine a little bit bigger all right you can see how that flexes there so it just didn't work that well trying to you know bolt this down to the tray it worked but it still was a little bit loose so i think that these feet right here see i can squeeze it and move it just like that so it's going to be a little bit more stiff and i think it's going to work a little bit better for the way that i mount this thing down i made these uh this is some stainless steel flat board that i had in the shop two different thicknesses but it didn't really matter and all i do is just slip these guys through here and i got some holes drilled in here and that secures it down to the tray right there where it's not going to go anywhere all right so i'm going to continue working on these other feet these little mounting pads here and get two more machines and get them replaced there and i'll show you guys what it looks like once we're finished up [Music] cool [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] foreign i set it back up and face this side out because it leaves that nub right there so we'll just get a clean face but that's the uh process right there to make one of those nothing elegant pretty or anything but it's the size shape and it'll work all right we got all all four of our feet finished up i'm gonna go ahead and put them on there i'll show you it's uh can't be easier just a bolt that holds these guys on there so the one thing that i am going to have to do i do need some longer bolts i don't have any other side this is a six millimeter bolt so i'm going to see if the hardware stores got what i need but we're going to go ahead and put them on there just so that i can finish out my testing and tuning going on right here it's got enough thread to where i can screw it on there maybe i'm lying to you because that one's not going on there now i don't want to face any more off of it or counter board any deeper than it is because i want that amount of material right there so these are just going to go on there temporarily just so i can finish doing what i'm doing here i can finish fitting this up make sure everything's going to work there there we go all right given just a little wiggle test right here i can still see some this is a little bit low because it's not supported with the bracket right i got a jack underneath there just to try to help support it but i can still see the rubber feet squishing like the other rubber but not like the other one did so it's going to provide some vibration dampening and work just fine i'm real happy with that so that'll allow me to put my other mounting bars through here and pull this down a little bit snugger without squishing this thing completely and having you know sort of loose bolts in there so i think i think these are going to work fine there's another shot of the whole thing i can't remember if i if i showed it in this video yet or not but you know the eu 3000 is from honda i've got this from northern tool that's one of the places that sells it around here it works really well for our for our needs our travel trailer has one air conditioner and it runs that unit just fine i already did a test on it a couple of times last year left it running for several hours with the ac running and it did great you will not be able to run this or use this for a for an rv that's running two air conditioners you're gonna have to go up to i think they suggest at least 5 000 watts if you're going to be if you can be running two ac's but for our unit it does good so a couple reasons why i invested in this unit is uh you know we're here in hurricane central right and it seems like we're getting more and more storms every year and i wanted to have this since we keep our kodiaq parked right here next to the house i wanted to be able to have this if we lose power because of a hurricane or a tropical storm or any kind of incidents where we lose power because it does happen sometimes and it's hot muggy we can take this out of the garage fire it up and run the kodiaq and you know we can sleep comfortably in that if we uh if we need to if we need to weather out some power outages and then of course the other reason is like i mentioned i want to have this thing i like having it mounted permanently on the front of the camper whenever we're gone on our long trips and have this ready just in case we need it if we're going somewhere that does not have power because you know there's there's going to be times where a campground is the same thing as a city maybe they lose power for whatever reason because the storm comes through knocks out some power lines we'll be able to you know have this and run our uh our camper keep the battery charged and run the ac and be able to sleep comfortably or what i would like to do at some point is find one of those campgrounds that is you know that don't have any connections that's kind of off the highway maybe next to a river somewhere a place designed for rv camping not out there amongst the people that like to tent camp but an rv camp and be able to have this to run our ac or keep our battery charged whatever we need so it's an investment that i made for this you know lifestyle that we like to live with our with our camper and have it as a backup here in case of a storm coming through so this is uh this makes me a lot more happy with the way that the feet are mounting on it now so that is good to go the only thing i need to do is take that bracket that i mentioned before that goes right here i need to bring it in here and slot it so that we have more adjustability when i get this thing mounted up that i can come up and support the center of that shelf properly i do run a cover on this all the time that's actually the cover right there for it and it works great it just it fits around tight goes all the way to the bottom and then when we're traveling i have two bungee cords that i run over it just to secure it make sure it doesn't try to blow off so i always keep it covered that's why it still looks brand new try to take care of this because it was an expensive investment this is that l bracket that i told you we got a we're going to slide it so we've got a 3 8 mil in there and i'll take both these holes and slide it both ways so so that was the last bit of machining there we got the two slots milled so that will allow me that goes this bolts up right there on the bottom side this will allow me a little bit of movement up and down so that i could get this part of the tray bolted in nice and level there before it was kind of pulling it down because i couldn't get this thing up just a little bit further i've also relocated the i've got a cable lock system on this right there and we've got that i've been playing with that tweaking it and getting it set up in there the way i want and we actually have the lock itself is underneath the uh the generator there which is you know bolted down so all this is is a deterrent it is not going to you know keep someone from um being a thief if they want to be a thief on this but they're really going to have to go through some effort to figure out how to uh you know remove it from the tray and then have to uh cut that cable there as well so i think with all that there i'm pretty safe but all it does any kind of lock system all it does is keep an honest person honest that's all it is if somebody wants to steal something from you they're going to figure out a way to do it but i have high hopes that we're not going to have any problems with this this is always going to be you know we're go when it's in the campground you really don't have a whole lot to to worry about i mean i know anything can happen but generally speaking most campgrounds rv parks are pretty safe places to be and all the ones where we've been to we really don't have to worry about somebody taking our things it's never been an issue when you're at a campground and then you know when we're on the road kind of park somewhere we're generally just parked temporarily because maybe we're at a gas station or rest stop or something like that so we're usually near by the truck and the the camper too just to kind of keep an eye on things but anyway that's really all i got to say about that i know people are gonna suggest you should do this you should do that i really wanted that lock down plate that somebody builds for this guy because it bolts to the bottom of the generator bolts to the tray and then it has a sort of hidden lock system on it but i tried to find one and nobody had it in stock so we're just going to roll with what we're doing right here here's what it looks like with the cover on it also i grabbed the gas can and brought it in so you can see how it fits perfectly right there next to it so this cover is just a cheap inexpensive cover that i found off of amazon designed to fit the honda and they have some other ones there as well whoever makes this but in fact when i was putting this on i noticed that it does have a couple of little pinholes up here probably from when the bungee cord was riding on it for you know 7 000 miles i'm probably going to go ahead and order another one i think they were around 20 bucks or so maybe even less than that so i'm going to go ahead and replace this this is a very uh inexpensive investment to help keep the thing covered keeps the sun the uv rays off of it from weathering it keeps the rain off of it and it also hides a little bit so you don't know exactly what it is okay but there's the gas can all i do is i got a couple of uh rubber bungee cords that i use and hook to these holes here and go across it in an x pattern and it holds it there just fine so this is fuel that i have on board for the generator if i need it also for the honda monkey as well this is the uh the extra fuel i actually have it completely drained and empty because uh probably about a month ago i still had a little bit of old fuel in there just a little bit so i just went ahead and ran it completely out of fuel quiet that thing is man until it shut itself off and leave it just like that i'm not going to run it and i'm not going to put any fuel in it until i know that i'm going to need it i'll have some you know some fresh fuel right there and i have it ready for whenever we decide to use it all right guys we've got our repairs finished up on the trailer tray and we've got it mounted back on the front of the kodiak and it is good to go it is ready to be put to work there i went ahead and uh gave it a fresh rattle bomb paint job on it just to protect it you know and cover the bare metal back here where we had uh welded the angle on so it is ready to go i've got some set screws ordered to go into these holes right here you have a you have a bolt that goes in that works as a set screw on both sides including down at the bottom there you can see it's right here so i'm going to take those bolts out we've got some stainless steel set screws that's going to go in there and and replace those bolts so that should be showing up today i've also got some more hardware ordered for the bolt down we've got some stainless bolts that's going to be holding the generator on i went ahead and uh tweaked to this this lined up better had to put a little bit of a bend in that bracket right there just to get everything to line up like it's supposed to so it's working pretty good it looks good the fresh paint looks good and now it's not sagging so it's got plenty of strength i believe this thing was rated for 500 pounds but you know you can see it now if you hit it to the side a little it's got a little bit of lateral shake there to it but overall this thing is just sitting here riding it doesn't matter how fast you're going or whatnot this is the softest place on the rv you know whenever you're pulling it so it rides real good and i'm just happy that we have that crack fixed and we've got plenty of support back there to support it there it's going to work out real good i do have a new the propane tank cover this one is a couple years old and i'm surprised that just how cheap it it was it did not last very long so we've got a new cover order should be here today i believe a little bit more heavy duty than that this one i've already replaced this just protects the plastic for the electric jack there keeps the uv rays off the plastic and the rain off of it so we are we are ready to go and this uh mounting the generator up here on this is one reason why i wanted to go ahead and build the um try to remember what it's called now the uh the hitch crane that goes in the back of the the trailer hits of the uh the truck i wanted to build a hitch crane so that i can back the truck up right here to in front of the kodiak pull the uh the generator out here and be able to safely and easily pick it up and set it on that tray i'm trying to get to that project i really have had other things going on and i don't know if i'm going to have that completed before we go to mount this up to leave for our big trip later on this year but i'm certainly going to try to get it done but if not i'll just have a buddy come by here and help me and we'll pick it up and get it mounted up on the tray so there we go this this repair project is now finally complete [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Abom79

Views: 69,389

Rating: 4.8878069 out of 5

Keywords: Trailer tray, Strongburg trailer tray, rv shelf, generator rack, generator shelf, Kodiak, Kodiak travel trailer, tig welding, Honda generator, generator, generator mount

Id: ciJX6eVLuH0

Length: 33min 47sec (2027 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021