Spent most of last Monday at the sawmill to make sure Joel's (BFR) locust would be sawed. They had actualy done a load of white oak instead and insisted that the locust they had wasn't any good. They finally gave in and I got my locust.
Today I brought the deuce to the sawmill and picked up the lumber. The wood doesn't look terribly good (normal for locust), but there is twice as much as needed to make up for bad yield.
The sawmill is about 50 miles from the house, so it's a fair drive.
Problems noted:
1) Severe shimmy at about 45 mph! I'm not surprised since the front tires were "flipped" a week ago to get the worn/cupped edge in and the almost "new" looking edge out. These tires must be very unbalanced at this time. I moved the crane boom over the bed to reduce the weight on the front axle and it helped some, but I didn't drive much over 45 the whole trip.
2) The far right brake drum got burning hot and was smoking when I arrived at the mill. I prodeeded to take it apart, but still couldn't free up the forward brake shoe. I suspect that the wheel cylinder needs to be replaced or rehoned. I put everything back togerther and it got hot again going home, so I stopped and did some grocery shopping on the way to let things cool off a bit. The work itself was not a problem with air tools and I even had the wheel bearing socket packed.
Below is an image of the deuce back home again.
Note that one salient feature of the crane is to be able to use it to counter balance a cargo.
