I finally got the Ingersol Rand compressor and 3 in 1 sheetmetal brake, shear, roller home!

This was quite an ordeal to aquire...... All started back when I loaned my extra 3.4L engine to Brian, so they could use it to mock up an exhaust header. That was last summer.... then he contacted me in December to let me know that they were almost done(need to use it for another project). While on the phone with him he informed me that they had a few extra pieces of shop equipment and wanted to know if I was intrested in them. Since he knew I wasn't gonna take any monetary compensation for the use of my engine, Brian offered to give me the 2 pieces, but I'd have to come down and pick them up as well as the engine when they were finished, of course I agreed.

About 4 weeks ago I called him to make the arriangments to pick up the equipment, at the time they were being held at their old location, where he sub leased space at International Motorsports, mainly because he didn't have any place store them. Brian then called the owner Martin to set up a date for me to come down , that was 1/21. Brian told me Martin was a bit of a flake and he'd call me satruday morning to make sure they were at the shop. I got a call around 11 am, got a trailer from U-Haul and drove 2 hours down to Huntington Beach, traffic was bad...... When I arrived at the shop, Martin acted surprised and ask where Brian was, then proceeded to tell me, he told Brian that the compressor wasn't at this location and was in a storage unit a few miles away and would take 4 hours to pull out. Needless to say I was a bit dissapointed, left a message with Brian, when he called me back he said Martin was a liar and would take care of things.

On 2/8 our job was shutdown for a funeral for one of the company owners that passed away, this gave me the perfect opportunity to go down and have lunch with Brian, Joyce (tour4fun) joined us and after lunch we went over to International Motorsports. Martin wasn't there, but the service manager told Brian the bender and compressor was in the shop. We had to wait because they had the doors closed to paint a car, so we went next door to chat with the owner, Steve of Honda Heaven, that Brian was friends with. While there the manager of International motorsports came over and said one of his employees needed to talk to him(can't remember the guys name), so we all went into the shop, while back there I noticed the compressor. Then this moron claimed Brian owed him a $1000 dollar bonus for completing a exhaush header project on time when he worked for URD. Brian was shocked and said that was bull, besides the header he build fell apart, due to being poorly fabricated. Things started to get out of hand when he raised his voice with Brian and told him he couldn't take the compressor til he got paid. That's when I stepped in, got right in his face yelled back, hoping he would start a fight, then he did something much better and told us to leave the shop. I informed him that I wasn't leaving unless I leave with the equipment, he threated to call the police and said we were trespassing. I was giving the guy such grief that he finally called the cops, to make a long story short the police told him that he'd have to take Brian to small claims court and couldn't prevent us from taking the equipment. Since I didn't have a trailer with me the Owner of Honda Heaven, said we could store them in his shop til I was able to pick them up, that was yesterday..........







As for International Motorsports, the owner is a con artist and rips people off all the time. The short conversation I had with him, was more than enough to confirm this. He arrived after we got the equipment out of the shop and was very pissed off, my guess he was gonna try and keep it for himself and probably would have gotten away with it.....

 

Who's on first?

Nice new toys!

 

Okay Bruce
It is time to start cranking out those rear bumpers. I want to be first in line!

 

Actually Charles gets the first one, I'm using his to test out the jigs I'm building, once this is done it shouldn't take that much time to go into full production....

 

That is what I'm talkin about Brother!

Hope to see you at Tierra Del Sol

 

All I can say is wow.....what a bunch of fuitcakes.
Glad you got the items after all.

BTW that is almost the compressor we used to have in the shop when I worked as a mechanic, nice unit.

 

Hey Bruce

Sorry I missed this thread . It was quite an entertaining day, I was waiting for Jeff to throw a punch at you.


Thank you very much for loaning me your engine. It made the work of making new headers so much easier.

Not sure where you're going to store the new stuff since your garage looked a "little" full the last time I was there . Looking forward to all the new toys you're gonna make

 

Ive got the same 3 in 1. dont expect to much out of it, but the roller works real well.

 

I haven't built a table for it yet, but figured it wouldn't handle 11 guage, but for smaller brackets and such it has worked out just fine.

 

how about some front skids?

 

Very good question!

SOOOOO?

 

One thing at a time, I made a few changes from the original design on my bumper, so the templates needed to be modified just a bit. The jig to cut the 2 x 4 works perfectly and cost for materials is within the budget. I still need to build a jig to drill the holes in the frame mounts and a few body templates to insure accuracy. Once I get all the jigs done I should be able to crank out 1 or 2 bumpers a day, but they are time consuming to get built right. I also still need to wire in 220v to my garage and do a bit of spring cleaning.

Once the other jigs are ready, I'll build another prototype to test it out, but this time, I'll complete the entire bumper before test fitting.

Another note, there won't be one bumper that will fit all, the side wings for the limited need to be a bit wider, also if you have a body lift this changes things as well. I could make them all to fit an 1 1/2" body lift, that way they'll still look right with 2" and the bumper can be spaced down for 1" or none at all.

I'm thinking about getting a plasma cutter with my tax return, this will speed up the fabrication time.