TM Upgrade/Rebuild

I doubt there will be any issue with vibrations. They are being used in diesel trucks and those paint shakers are worse than any tm.

Cool look and makes me want to change my gauges now....dang you and your toys.  

Tonight I just finished my new threw van floor exhaust flange, v2.0 lol for the Kohler engine exhaust routed under van to muffler.   



This is much simpler than what I came up with the first time, which was just made from off the self stuff from the local industrial supply warehouse.  But there was a couple probs with that setup, complicated with an upper and lower flange, that required perfect alignment of small section of pipe between, which never happened. LOL And the heat transfer to the van floor was honorable with it!  I also thought I could temporarily get away with bolting it down on top of the plywood now covering the van floor, until I pulled out the TM frame for painting, and then figured I'd remove the plywood being much easier to access. But the plywood did start to disintegrate with the heat, no, it didn't catch fire, but just scorched away until I end up with an exhaust leak there.   

Moral of the story, the EZ way isn't always the best way. LOL

So,  I've now removed the plywood in the area, and what I have now is one piece tube going from inside to outside van, with a single flange welded to it that will bolt down from inside the van. I will use some think high-temp material between flange and van floor that should keep heat transfer to a min now.   



How it will sit, made to fit between the high areas of corrugated van floor, so it sits flush.  

It sure is nice when you can just custom fabricate what you need.

I'll have it bolted down and up n running again tomorrow......more pics to come   ......

Looking good. Nice wield job. Yea I didn't realize that the other one wasn't a metal to metal fit. What size is the flang pipe. If it was big enough to put another pipe through with a small air gap around it there would be less heat transfer. Looking forward to hearing how it works. It's cool seeing what you guys do to mod. Your machines gives me ideas for my customers.

Eddie,

It's 1.5" from the 2into1 header, all the way threw to the directional tail pipe..........I made the tail pipe directional, so I can point it anyway needed, usually away from the house/job.   

I've used this new flange setup two days now and it's working great!.......So I AM Happy!   

The van floor still gets a bit warm right around the flange, but not enough that's it's a problem at all.   
This time I used several layers of "Pipe Wrap" between the Stainless flange and van floor.......I figured I'd use the wrap until I found a better insulating material to minimize heat transfer, but the pipe wrap seems to be working great, so it's looking like I don't need anything else.   

Check it out.................







I just snugged down hose clamp around the blue silicone hose so the 90 deg tail pipe won't fall out, but it's just loose enuf to easily rotate by hand so I can point it away from the job.

Looks heavy duty enough to withstand the ride. The muffler looks like the one on the TNT. Did you insulate the panel?

Mo wrote:Looks heavy duty enough to withstand the ride. The muffler looks like the one on the TNT. Did you insulate the panel?

The muffler is a Walker OEM replacement for a '95 Honda Civic!   


I haven't yet put the DynaMat on the inside of the front panel, cause I've been busy redoing lol the exhaust, and also hooking up the remote system for the pump clutch....which I used for the first time today, and it works excellent............I was able to turn on/off from almost 300" away inside of a condo on the 5th floor!!     
I'll post more info and pics on that later tonight. .........

K, so last night I got my Remote system hooked up to remotely control my pump clutch............so I don't have to run out to truck to turn off pump if I get a call, Am pre-spraying grout, talking to customer or whatever it is that means I won't be running water threw the pump for a few min.  Used it today, and it worked great, with the external antenna mod I added, it worked perfect from almost 300' away inside of the 5th floor condo I was working it.

The setup I bought is RF rather than IR, so you don't need to be in the "line of sight" for it to work.  And I wired in a magnetic stick-on cell type antenna to the antenna wire to increase signal strength and range.

Also, I wanted to be able to use the remote and still turn on/off the clutch from the panel on the TM, so I added a toggle switch so when it's flipped up it gives the control to the remote, which is the same small type used for car alarms, when I flip the switch down it gives control to the existing switch to turn on/off pump clutch..............so I can still manually control it standing at the machine, or flip switch and remotely control it.     

The switch to the right of key switch is the original clutch on/off switch, and then the one to the left of key switch is then new added one to give control to either the remote or panel switch..............





Upper Left of Pic, you can see the mag. stick-on antenna stuck to top of van to increase range.   

if you had an alarm you can do this off the second or third Aux channel nice idea to turn your pump on and off i really do not need this my pump has a temperature relief valve that will release water when it gets 140 degrees to recirculate fresh water
nice good job ....

New Chem Jug, used a 5 gal. water/gas type that will hold up much better than the usual thin plastic 5 gal. jug we use.

And the other nice thing, I tapped the pickup into the top of jug rather than the cap so when refilling it's easier.   

nice! would be cool to have a remote on an electric hose reel. so when your getting close to the front door and you move a lot of hose outside you can hit it and have it pull it all in to keep walkway clear.

maybe with the right guides and corner guards you could do it while you clean? might be too risky

ACpower1 wrote:nice!    would be cool to have a remote on an electric hose reel.    so when your getting close to the front door and you move a lot of hose outside you can hit it and have it pull it all in to keep walkway clear.  

maybe with the right guides and corner guards you could do it while you clean?  might be too risky

The remote system I got will work on anything that's 12v dc, but I can't help on what you're talking about...........nor I'm I responsible.   

Finally making some progress again.   

Here's a couple things I've done lately, and I think I'm about ready to finally pull it out of the van and have the frame LineX'ed.....as soon as I feel like I'll have a break from jobs, to be down for a couple days to do it.  

Blower exhaust run threw the floor of van, so its no longer exiting front of TM......helps make it quieter.






Installed Dynomat (or in my case FatMax) installed inside of front panel to help with noise also.



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And tonight I got the Kohler header painted to protest from rust, and heat wrapped.

These are some well-planned out upgrades.  Even the simple changes to the chemical jug were smart.  I swiched to a Jegs fuel bottle a year ago as my chemical bottle, but I didn't think about tapping it into the neck instead of the cap....I am just not that smart, but now that I've seen that, I will be smarter.    

I really like this group, must have learned at least one new thing per day since joining!!

http://www.jegs.com/p/Pit-Pal/Pit-Pal-5-Gallon-Fuel-Jug/1995279/10002/-1

Is the header stainless steel someone mentioned that if is not, wrapping isn't recommended because it will rust and break quick

Looking good. Can't wait to see it when its completely done.

gtech12v wrote:Is the header stainless steel someone mentioned that if is not,  wrapping isn't recommended because it will rust and break quick

If it happens oh well, I have to make some new ones.....I'm just tired of being burned by hot pipes, so I'll take that chance! You know, there's some serious varying opinions on pipe wrapping, so without my own experience I really don't know what's fact or not. ....Also, I have a couple very good coats of very high temp baked on paint under the wrap, so that should help to prevent rusting.

But yes and no being SS lol.............the original Kohler header pipes are mild steel, but from where I added the 2into1 and all the way out from there IS SS.   

Dave I am very impressed. It is incredible that you got more than 9000 hours out of
that Onan 20HP engine. Back when they were building those they must have done it
right. My new EZ TM has a Kohler Command 20HP with a 3L / 36 vac blower. A 25 HP
Kohler will hardly be working with your truckmount.  Really like your gauges and just
a great job on refurbishing your TM. Also running your exhaust underneath truck into
a big muffler is cool !

Thanks, Jan!

Everything has been working great, I'm now approaching almost 300 hrs on Kohler eng and mods I did.

I still haven't got it really finished tho. I had planned to remove the TM from my van to have the frame sand blasted and Line-X coated, but have just been too busy running it this summer.

Mo wrote:Looking good. Can't wait to see it when its completely done.

It may actually happen soon!  At least that's my plan, now that things are slowing down. I'm hopping to be able to do it all in a weeks time in mid-late January. I'm in serious planning mode now, so I can be well prepared, I hope.  

It's a lot of work to do in a week, but I can't afford more down time without a running back up at this point.

The list is long, so wish me luck.

Here's my list of things I've thought of in the last two days, and I'm sure there will be more added as I think of them.

Fabrication....
Move pump forward, weld pump brackets
Move Eng back so coupler to go on further
(Slot holes in frame)
Remove rusted and Fab/Weld new frame legs
Fix rusted van floor

Replace blower front seals

Cut out plywood under machine
Install rubber flooring

Clean up/replace wiring

Bolt down TM closer to step

Sand blast and Powder Coat or Line-X.....
TM Frame
Water box
Front panel
Hose reel
Chem shelf

gtech12v wrote:Is the header stainless steel someone mentioned that if is not,  wrapping isn't recommended because it will rust and break quick

I wrapped my stainless steel header from John's and it still broke. I think the wrap holds in moisture and causes this but also keeps the water hotter. Name your poison.

I'm now thinking about having my header Ceramic Coated to help reduce the radiant heat rather than using the wrap.

Headers are made of thinner material this allows them to dissipate heat better, wrapping them causes the metal to not be able to get rid of the heat causing premature failure, ss is still subject to this even though it resists rust it still rises heat to the point of metal breakdown. On race cars and such replacement of these parts is worth the gain in what ever performance they are trying to get.
Our TM's not so much, yes it provides better heat but we are not taking our tm's out after every day of use, or replacing parts like race teams.
There is a lot of talk about this but a lot of people think it rust but it is also heat causing metal to break down faster.

If the wrap will reduce the chances if getting second degree burns I naybgive it a shot