Friend loaned me an end loader to build my backstop
 

I grew up working summers at my best friends dad's business where my friend and I at the ripe old age of 13 learned to drive end loaders to load fertilizer spreaders. I also worked there in college running heavy equipment and drive semis.

20+ years later I mention to my old buddy (he now owns the family business) that I was thinking of paying a local guy to put a stone drive behind my shop building and also have him tear out our MX track and use the dirt to build a shooting backstop....... A couple days later my old buddy shows up with a big front end loader on a semi trailer. He says I can play with it for a week or so and will be hauling me as many quad axle dump truck loads of stone as I need next week for my new driveway. He muttered something about appreciating the times I had hauled him over job sights in my airplane over the years to take pictures.

He claims he won't accept a dime for fuel or stone and his business is over an hours drive away. :eek: What a great friend!

After spending this weekend digging clay and sod my new drive is ready for the stone. It only took me an hour or so to get re-accustomed to running the loader proficiently and I now have a 10' tall by 60' or so long backstop for practicing shooting the Glock. :) On top of that my wife is happy that she won't have to mow around the old jumps in the side yard MX track. ;)

My "shooting range" before
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During
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After
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The driveway in progress
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sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttt!!!!!!!!!

Now THAT is a fun toy. I used to have a maintenance job that required backhoe use. I used to look for excuses to dig holes.:D

Wow that makes my dads new tractor look like a play toy... He just got a little 35hp tractor with a front end loader and a backhoe.....

The CEO of my company is a HUGE heavy-equipment guy.

Other CEOs have boats and airplanes. He has bulldozers, front-end loaders, excavators, and scrapers. He lives not far from my house and you can see him out "playing" on weekends...

nice, but you scraped up the top soil tho...

I'd have moved it over, then used subsoil to build the backstop

then spread the topsoil back on the yard

When I worked for his dad, they had two end loaders but both were a tad smaller. This particular one is much nicer than what I remember. I have an old small Bobcat skid steer, but it is no match for our hard clay ground and well established sod. The loader is not really the ideal weapon of choice for peeling sod from clay and excavating to a perfect grade, but I am comfortable running it and it has done a fine job.

Much buddies company also owns two huge "long arm" excavators, several end loaders, several dozers and a fleet of semis and dump trucks. When I worked for them over 20 years ago, the business consisted of hauling the City of Toledo's sewage sludge to farm fields in semi dump tailers then loading it into five wheeled Terra-Gators with the loaders and spreading it on farm fields as fertilizer. It was a great business at the time because the city paid a substantial amount for them to haul it away and the farmers then paid to have it spread as fertilizer. Eventually the eviromentalists/EPA made land application too difficult. Now they typically get city contracts to remove and haul spent lime from dewatering lagoons.

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I put all the sod/clay mix from my driveway excavation down first in the back stop, then put all the dirt from my motocross track jumps on top of it. I built the small motocross track about ten years ago from a few loads of free dirt from a local company that cleans out ditches along farm fields. That ditch dirt is pretty nice stuff. Ultimately it matters not as it is simply a backstop. I do intend to do some work on each end so that when I get the urge, the backstop will also serve as a big tabletop jump for my dirt bike. ;)

Screw the frontloader....I want a tour of the shop/hangar.

Now's my opportunity, Tim. Over the years I've seen snippets of your shop thru the many fascinating projects you've undertaken. How 'bout giving us a grand tour of your workstations, neat tools, projects in progress, restorations, aircraft, motorcycles, cars etc.

Purdy please?

We know you have no hubris...but share with us so we can feel inadequate:D

tim.... will you adopt me?

i would be happy to play with your guns\airplanes\dirtbikes and guns..

My shop is disaster area at the moment..... I have crap stacked all over. Need to spend about a month of free time re-organizing and cleaning..... If only I did not have to work for a living... I have collected over the years enough projects cars/bikes/planes/tractors etc to keep me busy maintaining/restoring for the rest of my life. ;)

Some would view this as a bad thing, but to me it is heaven. :)

A few pics showing the inside of my shop. It has a large main storage area along with a small workshop, a paint booth/auto repair area, an office and a bathroom.
Some day I will hopefully take the time to construct a large lean-to over my new stone drive to get back some space in the main storage area of the shop.



View from small workshop looking out into storage area
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View from paint booth/auto repair room looking into small workshop
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View of storage area
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View of front of shop and most of my high mileage fleet of future german resto projects. :D
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If the saying "He who dies with the most toys wins" is true, I am up near the front of the pack. :D (only problem is my stuff is mainly older relics that I am too much of a pack-rat to part with ;))

Nice shop.... Only problem I see is that he needs a taller lift...http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1257784724.jpg

Dollar wise, probably the majority of those in their mid 40's on this site own way nicer homes and own several higher dollar toys. I just happen to enjoy all things mechanical in life which results in my large collection of "junk" to tinker with. Other than my one airplane and a workhorse ATV, all my "toys" were bought cheap with "issues" that I "enjoyed" fixing. Someday my kids will curse me for accumulating so much "stuff".... That much I am sure of. ;)

I would feel right at home in you're shop Sidney. I like my mid rise lift though as I can roll out of the way or move it to other rooms in the shop. I have yet to come across a job (including putting a clutch in both a 944 Turbo :eek: and a BMW 325i) that my lift did not handle easily. It has a fairly open structure under it and removing exhaust systems, driveshafts, transmissions etc is not a problem. I have a small roll around chair to sit on when working comfortably under a car.

I am gearing up to do a 944 clutch on that lift...
I have to plan when I do something major like that b/c that shop is my dads and also serves as the main production facility for his sign company....

Good luck..... 944 clutches are a PITA because you have to drop the exhaust (usually rusted), the rear mounted trans and then the drive tube prior to being able to get at the clutch. A turbo is even tougher as one must remove more exhaust components. It would probably take me a solid weekend provided I had all tools required and the new components ready to go back in.

The good thing about it is that once you replace the 20+ year old rubber centered clutch disk with a newer spring type unit, you will probably never have to do it again to that car.

I think you have too much fun :)

Very nice!

Very nice setup you have there!

Art, the next time you go to Tab Tanner's you will have to stop by and throw some lead at the new dirt pile.:)

Ohhh.... I would LOVE to drive a front end loader!

Red hair, estrogen and a great big earth moving machine - I would have sooooo much fun! :p

Also, very, very nice shop!

angela