Northern's Not-A-Car Thread

[Northern]

No crazy update, but I was sick of having two final spots unfinished - meaning I was hanging onto some scraps of vapour barrier, sonopan, and drywall, plus some 3' platforms and an 8' ladder I've been borrowing from a friend. With the 10' ceilings, these little platforms have been insanely helpful for doing anything with the ceiling or upper walls.

Just finished these two small spots above the door this evening:




I originally wanted two bench-height toolboxes but most of those are not very drawer-dense and I already had these spread across the basement. I added a second of the Husky 3-drawer mid boxes and pulled the wheels off, probably will give the same treatment to the left box as well because those 3-drawer units are cheap.



When I used to work outside, I had a plywood wall inside the basement door, and all my sockets, ratchets, wrench sets, etc. were all on hooks to be easy to grab. I'm having a hard time setting it all up in the box.

Hoping to get some collapsible workbenches set up on the plywood wall, then I have to figure out what car I want to work on this winter.

[2mAn]

When I used to work outside, I had a plywood wall inside the basement door, and all my sockets, ratchets, wrench sets, etc. were all on hooks to be easy to grab. I'm having a hard time setting it all up in the box.

Hoping to get some collapsible workbenches set up on the plywood wall, then I have to figure out what car I want to work on this winter.

Trying to get an organized tool box/ workbench is harder than it seems, at least for me. I am really struggling with the organization of tools inside the box. I plan on getting some of that foam organizer thing. Sh3rpak!ng has the setup I dream of, no idea how he got it so perfect other than the fact that he is insanely OCD with that stuff... Im terrified to invite him to my chaos.

[McGyver]

Your garage looks awesome, congrats on it! A garage was non-negotiable when we bought our house in Philly (either part of the house or a 2nd building bought at the same time). It's my first time having a lockable place to work on my car outside of the weather and I'm stoked to be almost done prepping it to move the tools in.

I know they're stupid expensive, but I bought some Magrails from VIM tools. It's really nice to have all my sockets stuck to the track, so I can just toss the appropriate rail into a bag if I need to bring my tools somewhere.

https://vimtools.com/product/mr16jp/

[Northern]

Re: Tool organization, I use the 4-pack of super cheap anti-fatigue mats. I haven't shadowed any tools because things are jam packed, but some drawers are tool shadowed from when I worked in aviation and needed my own box/tools when they temporarily lost the contract I was working on.

I have been using these:

https://www.princessauto.com/en/3-pc-socket-rail-set/product/PA0002919611

They're as shitty as they are cheap, but they work. Bigger sockets are easy to knock off, and smaller ones can be hard to remove.
For whatever reason I don't use the 1/4in rails.

For me it's the wrenches that take up too much space. I keep them in the trays they come in, but I can only fit like two per drawer unless they're stubbies.
Still not sure if I rip off the band-aid and use different trays at the expense of portability (maybe?), or if I just dedicate like 3-4 drawers to wrench sets.

Still trying to organize stuff in here but not making much progress. Priority for the past week has been filling a dumpster with my old fence/retaining wall, and after that's done, I need to organize all my parts and tools that are currently in the basement.

[2mAn]

TV is up. This is an old 40" I've had forever. Ideally a cheap 65-75" eventually.



Temp computer setup to run the TV, Sound wired up. Watching whichever F1 race was on in early June with the little one... the only race I watched this season, as is tradition.

I have a 55" (I think) TV thats getting ready to go up in my garage with a similar idea of a potential WFH, man-cave setup. Any tips / suggestions since you're a few steps ahead of me on this?

Cheap amazon junk that fit between the window and breaker panel. Works well enough, but could use a third set if there was space for it.

Link? I need some of these!

[Northern]

(snip)

For the drill holder setup, sorry for the .ca link lol.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CBHKSG5J

For the setup, I basically bought a well reviewed, articulating Amazon TV mount to be future proof, so I think it's good up to 75 or 85 in, and tried to look at some TVs to see what sort of height the VESA mount holes were to plan the height. It comes with 4 lag bolts to attach to studs, but the garage has an extra stud down the centreline of the back wall so I fired 6 lag bolts into 3 studs.

I have power, 6 pairs of 14ga speaker wire, and an HDMI port going to a 3-gang box behind the TV. I also planned to run a dedicated 3.5mm jack but I didn't end up buying the wire.
I tried to offset the box to the side so I didn't have to reach far behind the TV for it, but with the 40" it's super exposed and looks like hell lol.

TV spits sound out to the stereo via the optical port (So I need to make sure any future TV also has this...)
My main concern about all the wiring is that I have a terrible track record with HDMI cables dying, and I fully expect the one buried in the wall to die on me at some point and need to just live with one dangling down the wall



My current setup is that same 8' Ikea countertop on a set of Ikea Alex drawers/mini fridge.
Above are two Ikea IVAR cabinets in that pic, with a ~13in gap at the end, where I made a shelf for my desktop, with room for wires to run down behind.

I then fired a ~4x1' piece of plywood to the wall under the cabinets, and have 2x 27in monitors and a 32in portrait monitor.
Add camera, speakers, headphones, wireless charger, and some USB3 extension cables to come down to the desk to easily plug shit in.
Costco's cheapest and ugliest "Gaming" chair, UPS, 4' LED light behind the monitors to shine light on the wall to diffuse some light, and that's basically all.

I will say the audio setup can be a bit shit sometimes. There are definitely weird zones around the garage where it sounds very reverb-y with some music.
I think the whole idea of putting a 5.1 in here was flawed, and I should've just fired two nice speakers and a sub at the end and called it good.

Also being in the corner of the garage is convenient but I'm surrounded by construction - a school down/across the street, 2-3 apartment complexes behind me a street away, and someone building an in-law suite two houses down the other way. Jackhammers and especially steamrollers make some head-pounding reverberation specifically in this corner, but as soon as I take like 3 steps, it's gone.
So if there's an imminent long term construction project near you, or a railroad track, airport, etc, pop a squat where you're thinking about putting a desk and see if there are any fucky acoustics when those things are going on.


Otherwise, 1: fuck I need more workbenches, and 2: 20' wide is not wide enough for two cars unless it's storage or you for some reason don't need the walls for workbenches (And I have a kind of half-solution for this, but it should at least work.)

[Northern]

It's been a while. Mostly just spamming pics I took in the garage for other reasons.

$20 marketplace find for the little one. Battery is dead and motor has the wiring pulled out of it.



Disaster zone, but I moved the E30 to the other side and started making some workbenches.



Old Ikea 8ft countertops cut in half, door hinges, and some 2x4s. Strong and cheap.





Bought an LR4, I was looking for a local/cheap/minimally clapped one for close to 2 years now.
Happy with this one - rusty underneath but well optioned and in generally good shape.
Needed some love after I bought it, so it spent almost a month and a half in here for a handful of things.



20ft width is not ideal. Very narrow with 2 vehicles and things against the wall. The other side is worse, I think I had maybe 2ft maximum to the wall, so it was sketchy to manoeuvre.
Car is filthy from sitting outside/inside/sawdust.



Hellaflush (aired out, I have a leak)



This shows the general arrangement a little better.
Maximat lathe position, WFH setup, a ton of junk, and new car dollies so I can play with moving the e30 around to make room to work on other stuff. Should've caved and bough these ages ago, but I'm stubborn and tried a bunch of dumb other things first.

Not sure which side makes more sense to push the E30 to to work on other things, the whole 20' wide thing, garage placement due to bylaws, and door placement is all suboptimal for having a second car in here.

[econti]

I have a Maximat V10-P except in green. Missing the drawbar for the mill, but that's a one-day job.
The most important rule of machining safety is to have fun.

[Northern]

You probably already found this, but there's a google doc that some people made with a bunch of V10P specific info:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16f1qJO6IyKsYaG7cqB9ENW1RSm2ESB_gVwz-TQxSRJU/edit?usp=sharing

They've got a lot of background/machine info, but lots of stuff on replacement parts, sources for parts, quickchange toolposts, etc.