[TUNNEL PORT]

First let me say I hope everyone had a great Christmas & a safe New Years celebration.

I spent my Christmas moving my shop & home out of state because I had lost my home. I was instantly faced with trying to find a place for my family or use the family shelter. I have no credit to get a place so this complicated things. Also since I had been paying the shop expences & not the home expences it was a wise decision to get a place that had a shop. So after weeks of searching for a place that:

1 no credit checks
2 had a shop
3 was ready to move into
4 accepts pets
5 reasonably priced around the same as my current shop

Well I found a place finally & started the move. It took 5 trips & weeks to accomplish but its done. I purposly didn't want to mention any of this because of the basic fact that one or two guys would most likely panic & make more out of it than what it really was. So of course it would be best to do after everything was in place. Not to mention there wasn't much time for anything else anyway.

As a few of you already know I have a guy that tried to scam me out of my business by pretending to help me. In the end it turned out his only real goal was to get me to do nothing but new orders for his own pocket book & some other rediculous things that would side track me from completing my goal of getting all orders finished. Even though I held true to my goal & kept working on the older orders along with any new orders on a 1 to 1 basis. At one point I had four sets near ready (needing only to be welded). He went into a total pissy fit when he saw that the four sets lying there were for older customers & not for new orders. He was yelling "Fk the old orders!! We will get to them 6 months, a year or 2 years. I want nothing but new orders done! The old can wait!!" I told him that there is no way I will let that happen. He did the usual thing & threatened to leave again (about the 7-8th time & was getting old fast) I was tired of it & made sure he wasn't to have anything else to do with me, Tribal Tubes or any other thing that could keep me from doing what needed to be done.

He trys to convince people including myself that the old orders were not in the deal. This clearly wasn't so & any of my posts on PY showed clear time lines that he never disputed with any post of his own in the same threads. Im sure anyone can see that to be true from reading them. I even have the emails that cearly show my intent was & always has been to make things right & he has gone the total opposite direction.

He has posted here (may have been deleted by the mods) & elsewhere on the web about how no one was going to get there headers as a fact from his self proclaimed infinite wisdom. Only to have posts from myself & the guys that had just received there headers within days (or was it hours?) of his misleading posts. That clearly showed his misleadings.

He was then banned from PY for posting misleading info about me & my statis. Also for border line threats. Since then he has tried to bully me, name calling & threaten me. He even tried to come to my shop to illegaly get anything he wanted & was escorted away by he cops.

In the end I have kept true to the goal I set out to do & kept it in mind in my latest crisis of moving. Rest assured you were never on his list of priorities & never would have been. Now he is bashing me on the web & thats my reason for posting this. He has NO real facts other than his own warped veiws perhaps brought on from his home grown meds he boasts about on the web.



So here are the facts from me on the status of the shop as it sits today. Its a far cry from his genius estimate of over 60 days to set up & I cant believe anyone could even believe that BS statement.


All equipment is moved in & on site

All the electrical is now ready at the shop. I got the power to the air compressor. So the collectors can be made. Also the power to the welder.

I have my phase convertor wired up to the bender. I needed to get power to the phase converter which requiered a little rigging but it works & will be upgraded soon to be more suitable for the task.

The bender is in the area it needs to be to be most efficient & will be bolted to the floor today. I can turn the bender on but had a hydrolic fitting damaged when we off loaded it from the truck. Luck has it that we traveled 100's of miles over icy roads with this close to 8000 lbs bender & 700+ lbs convetor safely. Only to have it touch the metal cab gaurd when lifting it off the truck.

Looking at the fitting it looks like it didn't damage anything other than the fitting on the mandral ram. Its an easy fix I just need to find the replacemet part.

I have the rest of the shop organized with all racks, benches & power tools in place.


I made sure to bend as much tubing as I could before disconnecting & wraping up the bender weeks ago before for transport. Sorting through them it looks to be enough to work with until the bender is able to be used. Which was my intent for them in the first place.

I didn't have internet access until yesterday at the location & have had to drive to the local Starbucks to connect my own cp or library to use theirs. Those funds needed for the internet hookup was better used for setting up shop.

Thank you all for your continued support.It is MUCH appreciated.

Ron Watt
Tribal Tubes

[roadrage david]

Ron good to see your set up now..

[75cancup]

Ron , When will you be taking on new orders ? I am interested in a set .

Mike.

[TUNNEL PORT]

Thanks David,
Yes it is!!
I just notified one cust that I'm off to Fed-X in a few hours to send a set that was just finished. I'll be picking up a few needed supplies while I'm at it. Theres a lot of unemployed guys around here too so I'm hoping to get a little help. Its good to be getting to work again instead of all the time used for moving.

[Region Warrior]

Wow, like a Timex watch.
And ulcers the size of basketballs...

[TUNNEL PORT]

75canup,
there always needed to keep things going just like any other business. My main goal is to make sure everything gets done as soon as possible without cutting corners.

[TUNNEL PORT]

Originally Posted by Region Warrior

Wow, like a Timex watch.
And ulcers the size of basketballs...

Yeah Mike I hope I made it clear enough that nothing is going to stop me from getting things done.

[455GRIN]

Ron,

Thanks for the update...I'm one of the guys waiting on headers. I saw some new designs coming out (RAV and 1st gen FB) and kinda questioned in my own mind why you were doing those over just cranking out the 2nd gen FB\A-body design. Glad to hear that you will be focusing on getting the old orders done.

Keep plugging away Ron, and I hope you have a great New Year...and I have a great new set of headers before the end of the year....hahaha

[ERIC AULL]

Good luck! Sounds like you had a bad year.....Eric

[arrowem]

I'm so excited to see these beauties! No worries mate.

[aronhk_md]

Details Jan 19, 2011 5:46 PM In FedEx possession

Headers are enroute.

I will say this right now, and it will be my only statement on the matter. Ron Watts wants to make good on the orders he took previously IN MY OPINION. I have taken the opportunity I had to get a set of Tri-Y headers I needed, and Ron has lived up to his word thus far to get them to me. I hope this helps him deliver to you guys waiting on old orders as well. His business arrangements with partners past or present is not really my business, and I am NOT going to take sides. Business partnerships are a very tricky thing under the best circumstances, and miserable under the worst. Having recently done business with both Ron Clark and Ron Watts I have to say that they both were good transactions. I wish them both good health and success.

I'll post pics of the headers when they arrive, though I will likely be shortening them and doing some modifications for my turbo app before hopefully sending them out to be ceramic coated.

[Larry Navarro]

hmmm......maybe mine are on the same truck.
Let us know when you get them.

[TUNNEL PORT]

Here's what was done today. There ready to weld up after I make the collectors tomorrow. I have a few A-body headers in the works 1 O-port & two D-ports & I hope to have a few sets ready for the welder first of the week. So Mon I should have notices sent out to the guys on those sets.

Its nice to not have to drive 40miles a day for work & the $300 in gas
[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]

[TUNNEL PORT]

This is the part that was damaged when we off loaded the bender. luckily Its not an expensive fix. Just the threads make it a little harder to find. There's a few ways to rig it for use for "plan B"

[TUNNEL PORT]

Ok the threads on each end of this hydraulic fitting is about 14-15mm of threads or 9/16. So that much of the threads are damaged in the ram for the mandrel. I may be able to thread a new fitting that is the same but would risk the damaged threads not holding. Since this is the opposite end of the bender is where all the work is done from I could be spewing fluid out for mins or hours before it would be noticed. There's nearly 1 1/2" of good threads left inside the ram I can use. I was hoping to find a hydraulic fitting that had twice as much treads on one side to reach & use the extra threads.

As I had guessed they don't make one of these fittings with longer threads on on side. So "plan B" is on now which is to make my own fitting. I have one piece local here that is a common piece & I have to order the other piece I'll be using which is a M22 x 1.5 bolt with 50mm of threads. It seems the only place that has these is on the other side of the US. I will need to cut it down to around 1 1/4" long & drill a hole through it & then join it to the common fitting I can get anywhere after removing a section of that one. It will only take about an hour to fabricate the piece once I get the delivery. Its not the first time I have had to fab a tool or a needed replacement part. I was just a pain to find that size bolt though. When all is done it will turn out to be about a $30-$35 custom one off hydraulic piece. If the part was available it would have been likely around $10-$15.

I could take the ram to get tapped but would not only cost more but would risk debris from the tapping getting in the ram. I wont risk that because it would then be a long delay. Also its not that easy of a task to remove the ram & transport it.

[aronhk_md]

Ron.....not sure what the ram looks like, but I did this once before with a hydraulic ram on an old tractor........... had about 1/2" of screwed up threads where the fitting went in. I went and got a grade 8 fine thread bolt that fit and screwed it in so it reached the good threads. Then I just took my angle grinder and slowly removed half an inch from the end of the ram housing. I just went slowly so I didnt heat things up too much, and kept measuring with a caliper how much I had left to go. Since the whole thing was one solid chunk of metal I wasnt concerned with weakening anything. The bolt in the hole was to guide me and protect the threads once I reached past the bad area. When I knew I had gone far enough I stopped and removed the bolt. The remaining threads were perfect.

Another option might be to take that fitting you have and throw it on a lathe...........turn down the center section (hex where you put your wrench) so that theres only a little left. Grind yourself a thin wrench to use the small area thats left......but the fitting itself will now fit deeper in the hole.

[TUNNEL PORT]

Yes Aron there's most likely more than enough metal there to do that "BUT" if yo look at the other end of the fitting it still has the washer on it. The washer for the damaged side is sitting on top of the ram housing in the pic & is what actually seals it once the fitting is tight. I would have to have a totally flat & smooth surface for that washer to seal. I would have to have a machine shop mill it to do it that way. Lets say thats "plan C" & isn't an even tie with rethreading it. Which would both require removing the ram & a machine shop to get involved. So by that time I'll let them tell me which one of those ways they want as plan C.

The lathe would maybe have worked but you cant see in the pic that it's also bent. So the thread surface is turned slightly from the flat surface that would be milled. I also dont know if that compromised the fitting so that under pressure it could split open from some unseen crack or stress caused from bending.

[aronhk_md]

So you could possibly do the 2nd idea if you had a new fitting......which I'm sure you can get somewhere locally at a hydraulic supply place, or online.

Your original idea of drilling out a bolt could work too.....except I'm not sure how you "connect" it to common fitting that comes after? A bolt would have threads on one side and then a head.....unless you plan to cut threads into the head after?

I would think the ideal solution would then be a LONG M22 bolt. Drill out the center as you planned but then CUT OFF THE HEAD. Thread on 2 nuts and then lock the 2 nuts against each other on the outside of it.....like you do when trying to remove a length of threaded rod that is too tight. This would leave threads in both directions...toward your ram and toward your connector...but give you infinite adustability as to how far you thread into the ram.

If you do this perhaps it will be easier to find a long M22 bolt locally? If you still need the M22 x 1.5 though I read somewhere that Jiffy lube has these as drain plugs for cars.

[aronhk_md]

If these are 90mm then thats 3.54 inches....give or take. Am I reading the ad right? Not sure if thats what he means by M22 x90. They are in Illinois....16 for one price, so if you mess up.....Hell....email and ask for his phone # to verify the exact info.

If they are too long you can still put nuts exactly where you need from the ends. If the nuts are easily available? lol

http://cgi.ebay.com/M22x90-Grade-8-8...item3a5057a5ba

[TUNNEL PORT]

The common fitting has the M22 x 1.5 threads on one side & a non metric AN connection on the other side. Ill cut that side off leaving the M22 side looking like a bolt with a hole all the way through it. Then I will back the two bolts head to head & weld them all the way around together. Once thats done I'll use the hole on the fitting side as a guide to drill through the bolt side. It should look just like the fitting that was damaged only it will have a longer threaded end & the hex portion will be twice as thick.

drain plugs would be way to short.