I want people to see what goes on behind the scenes with putting this event on.
The rally owns a bunch of surplus handwashing stations. They were used when we got them and we've had them for awhile. And Durhamtown has stored them for us in previous years. But last year when we showed up, most of them were non functional, due to less than ideal storage conditions. We fixed what we could and dealt with it, making plans at the 2017 event to take them home and store them ourselves to keep this from happening again and refurbishing them.
I took them apart about a month ago. My Father, whose health has been less than ideal for the last couple of years, wanted to get out of the house and offered to help and luckily, felt up to it.
We stripped them down to their core components and found dirty tanks, broken foot pumps, damaged 90° fittings, cracking hoses, etc.
At this point, we decided to go all in and get them as good as we could, since new ones are $800 each and we have 7 of them. So at a replacement cost of $5600, we needed to make these last a little longer.
First, with them stripped down (no easy task, lots of bolts broke due to corrosion), I cleaned out all of the tanks. There's a fresh water tank and a grey water tank. I filled the tanks up with cleaning solution, put them in the bed of the truck and drove them around for a couple of days (as I couldn't get a brush inside them due to how they're shaped). Once they'd soaked, I thoroughly washed them out, then stuck the pressure washer nozzle in to try and catch anything. Once all 14 tanks drained clean water, I pressure washed the heck out of all the exteriors until they were spotless. I replaced all 14 foot pumps with new units, using new hose, new hose clamps, new screws, etc. Every fastener got anti-seize to try and keep the problems of stuck fasteners from happening the next time.
Due to changes in the production items since these were built, I had to trim the ends of the 90° fittings and one of the straight fittings on the foot pumps. Very time consuming.
The hoses are held in with clamps at the top and the clamps are riveted in, so I had to cut off 14 rivets and replace them with screws and nuts.
With all of this done, I had to put all of this together.
All told, I have about 3 days in this. My Dad has 2 days and one of our friends helped the last couple of hours.
I hope people understand the monumental effort that goes on behind the scenes, all throughout the year to make all of this happen. There are volunteers doing an immense amount of work, throughout the entire year, doing things to make the event go smoothly.
This year, there will only be one waiver to sign at registration, instead of two. This took a lot of time on my part, going back and forth from D-town, our attorney, etc. To get two companies to agree on a legal document is like getting congress to pass a budget.
SCSG-G4 has to do a literal mountain of work to get the MKTs (X2) and deuces that pull them (X2) to the event. Preparing two MKTs (cleaning, loading, etc.) and two deuces (PMCS) is a lot.
RustyJunk draws t-shirts and has to come up with something clever, then draw it, then deal with the t-shirt company to make sure they can reproduce it in sufficient detail. He also begs local vendors to sell or donate something for us to raffle.
In order to try and make the cost of the t-shirts cheaper, RustyJunk and I did a bunch of yardwork for the guy who owns the t-shirt company. I don't like yardwork.
Recovry4x4 has to create a functional and efficient high speed, low drag office to process 200+ attendees who show up, sometimes in groups.
There's a lot that goes into this.
Thanks
C
Here's the before. Skanktown.
washing (yes, I used the dishwasher-all my cats said their food tasted like rally dust and they aren't happy about it)
Reassembly