The White Whale Work Truck: A Work in Progress

I had a momentary break from the Work Truck to sew a wheelchair bag, but it's back to getting my hands dirty again. When it comes to working on this truck it never ends.

The White Whale (as I like to call this truck) has been taking up all our time and energy so that I have not been able to get back to the sewing machine.

I thought I would show you some photos so you can see what we're working with. I did talk about the truck a little bit in this entry on T &T, and I've been keeping friends updated on our progress on my Facebook page. Just friend me if you want to follow me on Facebook.

Here is the truck Mr. Sprocket purchased the day after the Spector verdict was read.


In these type of trucks, the body is aluminum. That gives you an advantage of a lightweight truck that you can load up with product. However, it also means that there isn't an internal shell for mounting anything like shelving or toolboxes.

So what we've been doing (ever since Mr. Sprocket rebuilt the rear transmission and brakes)


is getting the inside of the truck ready to mount his toolboxes, shelving, equipment and various other items, like a worktable.

But before we could do any of that, we had to remove the inadequate shelving brackets that were welded on the inside of the truck.


That involved taking a drill and grinding down the rivet in each side of the bracket you see above, so that the weld came apart. There were about seven of these shelving stanchions on each wall, and about six welded brackets on each of those. Once we got those removed from the truck we started installing "C" channel, deep strut.

Here is the truck with the old shelving brackets removed and before we started installing the C channel.


And here is one side of the truck with with the C channel mounted to the side of the truck.


This heavy metal strut comes in 10-foot lengths. Each piece has to be cut, and then the burrs on the end ground down and smoothed before it can be installed. Here is Mr. Sprocket grinding down the burrs.



My help would be to stand on the strut while he cut it with a metal cutting blade. All while we were working on this phase of the truck, we had a family of nestlings in the bird box high on the peak of the house.



I tried to get a photo of Momma Bird feeding her nestlings but she would not perform for the camera.


The babies have all left the nest now, and I think Momma Bird has laid another batch of eggs.



Here you can see where we have more cross bracing strut installed. In this photo you can also see the strut up close as well as what are called "strut nuts" and a metal strap with bolts that go into the strut nuts to "tie" the pieces of strut together to make a more rigid framing inside the truck.



Yesterday, we got the wood floor of the truck completely installed. Over 225 screws later, it's tied down pretty solid. Here is a current photo of the inside of the truck while we are working on getting the toolbox situated.


The problem with the toolbox is the fact that it's actually four separate boxes resting on top of each other. Each one has to be bolted to the other, and then everything mounted to the wall of the truck. The problem is, the place where we want to place the toolbox is right behind the door pocket panel, and you can't drill into that. So, we have to work around that and devise solutions.

One solution is to add strut to the bottom of the toolbox and from that strut, bolt it to the floor. Below you can see a piece of the shallow C channel strut that Mr. Sprocket added.



And here is the door pocket with a piece of foam board over it. The foam board is to cut down on the noise.



And here is the toolbox that's going in this space.



The toolbox will be bolted to the strut pieces on either side of the door pocket. Once we get to that phase, I'll upload some more photos on the progress.

Tonight, we have to do some prep-work on the kitchen floor to get it ready to lay the vinyl down. We have to make a template of the floor and fill in all the nail holes and seams with "Bondo." But at least the kitchen is coming together. The walls have been repaired today and hopefully on Wednesday, the new floor will go down! Then, I'll be painting, painting, painting the kitchen white, and eventually the cupboards red for a black and white and red kitchen!