Projects, Past and Present

This is my Mur-Tis tiller.  I originally had a Mantis tiller, but after many years of hard use, the engine wore out and I was told it would cost as much to rebuild it as it would to buy cheap tiller.  Bought a Murray tiller about the same size, after a couple years the gears wore out, but the engine still ran good.  So I married the two of them.

Connection between Murray  engine and Mantis tiller.

The clutches were different size, so I welded the cup parts together and made spacers out of pipe to bolt it together.  Still works, but since then found another Mantis tiller for 50 bucks which was like new, having only been used for one season.

One of my latest projects, a tailgate ladder.  I'm getting to old to jump up into the box and it's awkward trying to get up on the tailgate by stepping on what little of the corner of the bumper is there with the tailgate down.  Saw one at Tractor Supply, but I thought I could make one as I have angle iron and other parts from an old hide-a-bed and a wire welder.

The tailgate ladder in the storage position with a pin to hold it in place.  Need to clean it up and paint it.

I have several of these clamps where one end broke off.  I could probably have waited until they were on sale at Harbor Freight and got some new ones.  Two things come to mind, 1. there is no Harbor Freight store anywhere close to where I live and 2. what to do with the broken ones, throw them away??  Strikes me as wasteful when I figured I could fix them so I could use them some more.

This is my fix.  I got some 3/4 inch square tubing and made a new end.  I cut slots in the tubing to slide on the bar of the clamp and drilled a hole to bolt it in place.  This is the first attempt and now that I got it figured out how to make them, I have plenty of material to fix the other broken ones and any that break in the future.