There's a kit...

Nate, you have this?

Looking good Don.

That setup for the carrier works good. I made one just like that about 20 years ago. Front had a rake to hold the front tire, rear did the same but also folded down for loading. I still found I needed a brace in the center for driving around though. Was on my 77 Jimmy lifted 6 inches with 36 inch Mickeys.

Cool JR
I plan to use 4" X 4" X .250" tubing
Plan to make the hinge out of some pins off my Case (28,000lb) Track Loader.
I don't think that will flex, and it will be supported and captured on either end
Think that will work?

Hello and welcome to Real-Man TruckWorks and Survival.com! I hope you find this a healthy place where you will find good information and a positive feeling of encouragement and fellowship. Ah, yes used that church word, fellowship. Well I do that when I refer to hanging out with other people, much the same as we do here.

My name is Don. I am a former US Army soldier of some 25 years. I was an enlisted guy there for a few years operating main battle tanks, but changed all that when I went to flight school to become a pilot and an officer. Along the way I was pulled into a classified unit operating highly modified aircraft and what I learned there and did there shaped a lot of the rest of my life. Special Operations is a wild and crazy place and that’s where I lived. After that I flew for many more years as an Army Chinook Helicopter pilot overseas and in the 101st Airborne.
 
When I retired, I became an airline pilot for Comair, a cool place to work where I flew 70 seat Canadair regional jets, perhaps I flew you somewhere. After some 5 years of jet time, one day I was flying when some awful people flew a couple jets into the New York Trade towers and started the wars. When that happened, something happened to me as well, the warrior was not gone. It wasn’t long before a company, BlackWater asked me to fly little birds with all my former customers from the spec-ops days and keep State Department folks more or less intact. After much thought and prayer, I went to Baghdad.

I believed I was sent over there by my creator as while I was wrestling with the decision to go, two women whom I never saw before prophesied over my life making what seemed to be a crazy prediction. A few weeks later in Baghdad, when I flew into an IED explosion, that prophesy was fulfilled. I wrote some about that in my book, “Distant Thunder” but feel compelled to write more of it in a Christian book I have yet to write.

One thing led to another and I moved onto Afghanistan where I settled into flying gunships and CSAR (combat search and rescue) helicopters out of Kandahar. Over three + years of flying those aircraft, later from Kabul and ranging into the foothills of the Himalayas, conducting Combat and combat support missions.

Taking a break from that so to speak, I returned to Iraq where I flew Bell 412 helicopters supporting the US State Department from Kirkuk airbase in the north. That lasted a few months then it was back to Kandahar.

I was selected to be the lead pilot of a bunch of civilian helicopters being put in place to support the US Army and Marines as well as some other folks. My wife and I reveled for the weeks we spent near Milan Italy, where I trained to fly the AW-139 helicopter. This Italian sports car of a helo was made to fly off shore and wisk the super rich off their yachts onto skyscraper rooftops in any weather. As a combat pilot, I could help but notice that they were very roomy and had more power to weight than even the huge and mighty Chinook I had once piloted. This would be a magnificent combat aircraft as long as it could hold together…my guys were not be going to be flying them as smoothly as the designers had envisioned!

I remember flying the very first mission in Kandahar in the AW139…what a day. We continued to fly very long days in the heat and the cold, in the deserts, onto frozen mountaintops, in the north, south east and west. I can’t say I enjoyed all that, but with some guys flying an unheard of 250 hours in just 6 weeks (Thanks Dave O), we were moving a lot of men and cargo to every nook and cranny the Army was creating. And we were getting shot at…

I was away from home too much, I was leading the operation there, and I was flying when I could as a line captain, and unknown to me my body and mind had simply seen too much. It all ended for me in early June of 2010 when an incoming 107mm rocket missed me and the guys, but found its mark hitting the bathroom of a troop billets near us. A female troop billet…and ladies seem to spend a lot of time in the bathroom. I never think about that with shedding tears, it was awful

Well, that was the proverbial straw. That night my heart stopped beating normally. The doctors couldn’t do anything so they medevac'd me home, I was done. Done with combat, done with flying, done with soldiering, done with everything I always knew. But God had a different plan for me, and in taking away my good healthy heart, he protected me from that place.

Why all that? To show you I have a soldier’s heart. I have one’s eyes as well, and I think like one. Having said all that, how did we get here? Well, allow me to continue.

I thought I’d say a few words to let you know how all this got started and why I think it exists. Some years ago while building up my brand new 2011 Chevy Duramax 2500 Silverado, I thought I’d just share what I was doing with others to help them along as well. I wrote and started “My Build Thread” on Duramax Forums.com with the installation of a Glock 9mm below the steering wheel as my first modification. That was followed by all manner of modifications which over time developed into quite the thread with a pretty healthy following. While that thing grew, people began to come into my life who supported what I was doing. The nightly dose of write-ups with the many photos created a magazine like environment which some described as being somewhat addictive.

But there was more, much more. I only had a small inkling (idea) of what was going on at the time when that thread grew to one hundred thousand views, then two then three. The momentum increased as we crossed half a million, three quarters, then came the magic million views mark! People were coming now not only to share in what was going on with the truck but also to socialize. I coined the term D.O.T. for derailleur of Threads to describe all the sidebar stuff that was going on there. But it was all positive, it was encouraging, it was real and it was devoid of the secular world’s harshness, and cursing and porn. Nope it was rated pretty much G and getting along quite nicely.

I make it no secret that I am a Christian. I am not a good one as I fail many times, more than you perhaps, but like always, I get back up, dust it off, come back to the throne of grace through Jesus, my real king, and I ask for forgiveness. God is a part of my life, he actually is my life except for when I am off being Don, and during those times, please suspect something is amiss. Well in everything I do, he is there and so it went with my many interactions with my fellow bloggers over at D-Max.

Folks were seeing something, something I can’t explain very well, but my bible talks about planting seeds. So I guess we were planting some seeds. Then some of those seeds started to take root and I started getting PM’s from guys asking and talking about read stuff. They had identified some of through our actions as believers and they too were seeking. It was quite the day when a member there phoned me, and we talked, and he ended with asking Jesus to come into his life. BTW, he is a moderator here.

I then started the CIEMR (Coffee Induced Early Morning Rant) thread to try to get the chat moved over and it became a place of political exposition. I have copied that thread from there and moved it here so you can delve in or stay away, your choice.

Then while developing my personal survival strategy, I purchased land here and there to use for those purposes and that necessitated me purchasing a Gator. Well Mr. Gator begat, the “Gator 825i Build Thread” which I also moved over here! But it didn’t end there. Realizing I needed to bring down the Silverado for a while to install a solid front axle, I actually needed a back-up truck. That was the beginning of Square D, a 1991 Dodge W250 Cummins truck I found under a couple trees! The simple clean up/oil change project on that truck became a parts replacement, which became a teardown and total restoration, which became a major modification and change up of everything on that truck. It now is the premier build and is found along with the Chevy build here in all its glory.

Charity

There will be a donation tab here where you can give money if you feel so led. Every red cent you give will be given away, I don’t want any of it! Right now I feel the Widows and children out there in need are door #1. Personally, I have a real heart for my brothers in arms who are walking around with prosthetics or internal wounds. I want to help them, so expect some of the money to go to them.

Personal Conduct

I understand that most folks are used to the “Normal sites out there that allow cursing, pornography, flaming, criticism, temper tantrums and the like. Gentlemen, we will not be doing any of that. Hey it’s my site and I wish to honor God with this place, so let me make a fundamental change right now, let’s make this HIS site. So if you understand the “WWJD” thing, then you understand how to conduct yourself here.

Corrective Action

OK to make this fair, this is how we will handle things. I believe almost everyone will conduct themselves as, well, real men. But in some cases, there will be that guy. OK I’d rather be looking straight into your Mark-1 eyeballs when saying this, because I believe real men ought to conduct themselves that way. For you, if you break the rules, I have a great collection of Moderators. These men are wonderful and truly a blessing to all of us. But they will notice, and they will ask you to refrain, all in private. I’ll let them decide how many times they do that to “Teach” you proper behavior. But when they decide enough is enough, you’re fired my friend. You’re off the site, You're gone! I think the good men here will appreciate you being gone anyway, so that’s how I’m going to do it

So, in closing, I want RMTW&S to be a fun place, a positive place where we share information, get to know each other, help one another and grow together. It is not an over bearing in your face Hard core Christian site, but rather a place where everyone is welcome where God will not be a stranger. I hope to honor him with what we do here and if a prayer would be appropriate I would have it say something like Father make yourself much and us little in all we do here, Amen

Soldier-On!

OK, got a lot done today.
The main project is to install a second battery, a deep cycle unit, which is protected and can be manually isolated from the battery used to start the vehicle. This battery will charge off the main circut, but will be electrically isolated when winching. That way if I kill the battery doing a couple long winches, I will still have a battery to start and drive off.
Before I started on that, however I wanted to get a couple of small things done. First as promised, I painted the bright yellow fiberglass axe and shovel handles OD green.
I also glued some protective rubber over the aft axe handle mount to prevent injury to the passengers

Here's a shot of the seats and axe mount completed after I painted the axe mounting brackets. I placed the head of the axe behind the seat where it could not possibly injure a passenger, then aligned the handle to run roughly above and inline with the existing bed rail. This serves as an occupant hand rail and helps retain body parts as well while romping in the wilds of the tucky.

And here it is with the axe secured with the wingnut

Here is the seat assembly all put together and ready to drop in the bed. I don't have to drill any holes or make any changes to the stock Gator to run this seat assembly.

Got the seats installed today. I welded the frame yesterday and painted it last night. After letting it dry overnight it was ready for assembly this morning. Here's the frame painted

I used some kool stainless button head screws, nylon lock nots and large stainless fender washers to mount the dried parts

I have also learned to soft mount anything that could vibrate onto a rubber base to prevent buzzing from harmonics. You get the shovel vibrating the same frequency as say the tire tread at 35mph and you will no longer be having fun. It's the helicopter thing. Buzzing is always bad!

Here it is temporarily mounted on the back of the poly roof out of the way. The fit was good and my only concern is for the left seat occupant. There is possiblity of head contact to the shovel blade, but the knuckleheads will be wearing OD green Pro-Tec helmets so bang away

I had just washed the floor so welding on the seat frame was a no-no. Therefore I decided to start mounting the pioneer equipment. First to get tacked on is a shovel. I will carry a shovel, an axe, and a jack as a minimum along with the rest of the recovery gear that I'll throw in when I bolt on the winch.
I started by bending up some steel strap to form two stud base mounts.

First to go in were three M4 30 round double mag pouches. Not sure if they will sport double mags, but they sure as heck will fit something!

Anyway, I'm done for the day, here's the "state of the mess" at the moment!

From Shawn:

Next came the knucklehead retention system. I went to summit to get some lap belts and shoulder harness made of 2" webbing which I vastly prefer over the way over done 3" stuff you see. Heck I flew most things that can produce lift and they all had 2" shoulder straps, so me thinks, ya know, that must be good enough!

I tacked 4 legs of 3/4" square tubing to the plates affixed to the seat's undersides, then tacked them into place on the front and rear frames

I then laid in a piece of box tubing connecting the two sides

That didn't take too long so I moved on to fabbing up the rear seat mount. The bottom of the seat has 4 bolt holes which used to attach to a steel plate. So me thinks if a steel plate was good enough for the deere, then by golly, its be good enough for me!

Next I assembled the base unit and then bolted it to the roof

I wanted to fit it to the inside of the roof above the passenger's head, sort of out of view (since it's orange) and yet easily accessible. So I held up there and picked a spot, then laid down some tape, and marked through the opening to get a reference,

Originally Posted by KensAuto View Post
Can't wait to see those new gas cans installed to give me an idea for my ranger....not to worried about extra fuel (right now i can run 2 days on 9 gal in the stock tank) but i always carry water in the desert...and shovel, high lift, tools, icechest, etcetc

I bought one of everything they had so I could evaluate them on the Gator. I plan to rack out the truck and will have a half dozen or more of them swinging around back there somewhere. Here's a peek at what's coming:
Orange is the first aid, red is gas, OD is storage, white is water, drinking type...

I bolted the rear shocks on then lowered it to the ground. I had almost a 1.5" rear lift before doing an aggressive test ride. I loaded up my two biological dead weight units into the bed, then went tearing off across the countryside. In summary, I am amazed! Fear nothing except for the neutral zone and a Romulan bird of prey with these suckers bolted in place. I can generate just about any speed I want cross country and the suspension just soaks it up!
Now I feel the need for speed!!!!!!!!!

The stock ride height was 31 5/8" to the center of the fender guard. I cranked the shocks some to get me a little over 32"
I neglected to show these pics of the nifty spanner/combo tool and the resevoir mounts that mount to the frame and hold those cool Fox resevoirs out of harms way.

OK, got the Fox coil overs installed today. They are great quality, high tech lighter and mo-spiffy than the factory units which BTW rode very well themselves.
Here's the stuff in the box:

Here is the approximate location for the factory seats. I plan to build a square steel tubing frame to mount the seats onto and a console in between with a battery under one seat and something under the other (Aux fuel?)

Stock and Sport seat