After dialing in the rear yoke base on the driveshaft and tacking the thing in place, I pulled the unit down and took it over to a larger more powerful welder in order to do a final weld that would overshadow anything the flux core could ever do. I did have to grind down the shitty flux welds in order to finish off the areas with strong welds. Afterward I ground down all the way around the weld bead in order to ensure the bead was even and uniform so I can have a remove chance of maintaining balance. With the weld all done, I reinstalled the driveshaft on the car. This is not where it ends though. I still have to balance the thing, if that's even possible on this shaft, due to the fact that it does have some dents in it (junkyard junk). The process of balancing the shaft involves jacking up the drive wheels, having someone engage the driveline then run it up to the point that vibrations are evident. The unlucky soul (me) goes under the car with a piece of chalk or something similar to mark the shaft as it wobbles, I place the chalk just close enough that as the shaft wobbles outward as far as it goes, it touches the chalk, leaving a mark, hopefully in the same spot every time it rotates. The same is done at the front and back. Next, I take hose clamps and install them on the shaft at the marks, setting the screw/clamp body at a point opposite the chalk marks to hopefully offset the imbalance. The driveline is engaged once again and as vibrations are noted, the clamps are clocked from one end to the other in an attempt to eliminate the vibrations as much as possible. It will be this point that determines whether the job was either done correctly or if it was possibly doomed from the start due to variables outside of my control. On a side note, I managed to do some serious land clearing along the northeast corner of the whole clearing around the shooting range area, cutting up weed trees and fallen branches along with blackberry briars and other trash. All of this detritus was stacked on several occasions and burnt. The next thing I'll have to do is come back over the area with the zero turn to grind down all the blackberry stumps and other trash that is littering the ground, as most of this smaller stuff was cut with the hedge trimmer versus cut whole and staged on the burn pile. As these areas are cleared hard, I may come back over these areas with gravel, as the intent to this area clearing was to open the area to allow vehicular traffic to move around the north fence line and into the east clearing, same as on the south fence line, which is wide open enough for anything to come through, save for the fact the ground is soft as hell. Speaking of the soft ground along the south fence line, the gravel path is making progress towards the southeast corner. However, just like in the early days of spreading gravel in the Midway, I will have to come back over most of this area with more gravel as I drive over the gravel covered soft ground, mashing the gravel into the mud. More gravel will have to be laid until the ground can't absorb any more and I can be able to drive over the ground comfortably with the largest vehicles and rolling stock, which is obviously the point of this little path, since all rolling stock is staged in the east clearing area. Little by little I get closer to getting Truckstang complete, its technically able to be started now, just need fuel. I still need to add an oil pressure sensor and gauge set so I can at least know that vital status of the engine while trying to run and tune the thing. Once I do get the engine running and dialed in, I can move on to checking the driveshaft to see if my work was good or if I'd have to go back to the drawing board. As for the landscaping, I cleared enough area that I'm happy, just gotta wait for the ground to harden so I can safely run the zero turn over the ground to grind up everything. As for the gravel spreading, well, I'll be doing that for the foreseeable future...
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