Eben built the 212 body from pictures, as you may know. His metal work and sculpture are fantastic – that’s why we insist on taking him away from his art – to work on ours. Here’s his website showing other projects he has been working on besides the damn Ferrari.
Here are a few more panels that Homer worked on.
Clear coat tint
Tinted clear on aluminum
Last night a friend called me to take a look at his newest obsession, creating a water effect with sheet metal and paint. These panels are beautiful to see in person and I am impressed at how great they look in photographs. The technique for painting the fish is amazing.
Clear coat is not intended to go over bare metal, it typically needs primer or some sort of surface prep but the stuff is so high quality and hard, I have a feeling it will hold up great.
Fish in Clear
Water panel
I brought this up from Florida for a friend of a friend. Cool.
Alligator
After going through every last little part, we finished the Oliver 77 Diesel. This tractor was purchased new by the current owners father and when Henry passed away, we were asked to fully restore it. As we got to the end of this project it felt similar to completing a car restoration where every little screw, clip, fastener needed to be correct which means multiple runs to the hardware store, industrial catalogs and lathe!
Row Crop Diesel Oliver
Eben wanted to display his art work at a recent show in Burlington so decided to hammer out another Rhino. This time it took only a fraction of the time because the form in which it is hammered out on was sculpted and ready to go. To make the display at the show more dramatic, his wife painted the form orange to have hanging next to the completed copper sculpture.
In many areas on the finished piece, the copper has been stretched so much that it is thin as tissue paper, delicate enough to poke your finger through.
Rhino Mold painted in oil orange
Rhinocerous in 1/1 scale
The burning man Art Car works! My part of the development, the diesel engine, hydraulic pumps, motors and hoses actually made the thing self propelled and the carousel clockwork is smooth and silent. It would have been fun if it was noisy and scary but it moves with precision and ease!
The machine is in Nevada right now, hopefully it can be re-assembled after the breakdown to transport it 3000 miles.
Burning man complete
Hydraulic/Diesel
Here is a photo of Homer’s Ford Taurus Station wagon. It used to be his wifes car, now it is his to beat on!
Just dont get into a head on collision!
Ford Taurus Loaded up
Homer helped me finish up the disassemble of the Ford CL-35 Skid Steer Loader after work the other day and after a 6 pack of my favorite beer, Otter Creek Brewing Copper Ale, we yanked the hydraulic assembly out. I was not sure how to get these components out of the machine independently because you cannot get to the hose ends with a wrench so I decided to take the motors and the pump out as a unit.
We found that the RH drive sprocket had broken the key way on the motor and someone did a terrible job repairing the damage. They went through the effort to replace the key but did not tighten the large nut or the brake disc so to our advantage, that side came apart easily. The LH side was a different story. We grappled onto the 1-5/8 nut with a 3/4″ drive breaker bar and had to come up with a way to keep the motor from spinning. We could not do anything to keep the motor fixed so we let the compressor charge up the tank and used our biggest air-impact gun which got her loose. Next we had to remove the sprocket with our huge 3 jaw puller. We had tons of force on the puller and the sprocket would not budge. Now is time for the heat!
I managed to get the sprocket red hot and the puller maxed out and let me tell you, that sprocket popped like a canon when it let go. Thankfully it did not drop in the chain oil bath because it could have started a major fire.
The pump is EATON Cessna and the motors are EATON Char-Lyn. I have been looking up different hydraulic components and guess that EATON factories make the parts and the Char-Lyn is the town that the factory is in? Another EATON hydraulic division is Vickers, when I get a chance I want to look up the meaning of these names.
Ford CL-35 EATON Components
Eaton Cessna and EATON Char-Lyn Hydraulics
Homer is really closing in nicely on the burning man time machine art car, he has the clock like gearing nearly finished for the carousel and the 20′ tall wheels that can be broken down for shipping to the event are outrageous. Ruby, Roman and I stopped by after a swim in the river to see the progress and were blown away by the size and strength of the wheels. David at Mainly Metals has a water jet cutter and is making all the gears so they can get just the right speed of the carousel, one turn to every 7 turns that the 20′ wheels turn.
I have volunteered to come up with the propulsion and was toying with having a diesel engine run a generator that would run electric motors but this seems a bit much for me. We settled on hydraulics to get her moving slowly in the desert and pawed through a number of catalogs to come up with the components necessary to get us rolling.
After looking at all of the components individually and seeing the huge variation of gallons per minute rates, pressure capebility and overall compatibility of hydraulic pumps to valve bodies to motors I had a great idea, cannibalize a skid steer loader! Someone else engineered the relationship of engine to pump to valve size to motors. Even the hose size and fluid reservoir are thought out for the flow and cooling capacity that we need.
Jeff used to work at our shop but now works closer to his home at a farm equipment sales and service place. I called him to find out where I could buy a cheap skid steer. He had me call Jon in Bridport and for under $3000 we had a operable machine that I began to disassemble right away. The 3 cylinder engine came out easily, in fact I slid it out of the machine and right onto the hydraulic lift table by myself. Now I have to find a way to remove the pump and hoses without having to undo all of the lines so the system stays clean and I can identify the scavenge side and the pressure side.
I am excited to work tomorrow to strip the motors for the wheel movement to see what we can use for the art car. With the chains and jack shafts that are in the drive housing maybe we need to do very little to hook the motors up to the wheels.
Burning man sculpture part
Here is Roman standing near the wheel
3 cylinder diesel engine
Hydraulic pump to be used in art car
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