Circa 2002?

Click the picture? :rick:

 

tos. Band!

 

Bumnah your garage is too clean. I'm worried about you man!

I needz a bigger garage. It's full. Workbench is burly, partially obscured, mostly-cleaned-off, and not impressive. It's had things burned into it, smashed on it, welded on, glued on, grinded on, etc... There's still plenty of room on the non-epoxy'd floor for burnouts.

This was from this passed weekend when I rolled the Colt out.

 

It gets dirty don't worry. There was a cocktail of transmission fluid, brake fluid, brake cleaner, power steering fluid, ATF fluid and soot from my exhaust caked on the floor for 3 months while I did my brake conversion.

I try to keep it clean now. I'm forcing myself to put back sockets and screw drivers as I work on projects. Roll up the air compressor hose and win up the electrical cables. I don't know how many 10 12 14 17 and 19 mm sockets I've lost. Plus a clean garage makes it so much easier to work on cars. No climbing over stuff, not hunting for small parts or tools.

I'd tell you to do the epoxy coating right away if you do a lot of work in your garage, but your garage is packed in tight.

If you're in the mood one weekend pull that crap out and coat the damn floor, best investment I've ever made in that garage. Hell if you're close by I'll come over and help you that's how happy I am with the floor.

I hope to put in a nice 80 gallon air compressor, and wire in new outlets for a mig and tig welder. I'd love to get my hands dirty and fabricate a few parts.

All in due time....

 

i need to epoxy my floor. i used to have some thin tile on it, but got removed and now there's tile lines everywhere. it looks terrible.

 

My MIG works on 110V and welds up to 1/4" steel. I doubt you'd need more than that.

Burly Miller TIG's use 240V circuits... and you can probably find a 240V 80 gal compressor. Just use one outlet for both because you don't need the compressor while you're welding, and it will store enough air to last you until it gets plugged back in.

As for the floor... The concrete's pretty rough, and I wouldn't want to do that without having it sanded first. I'm thinking about knocking down the garage and building a 2.5 car jibbity. The slab is twice as wide as the garage that's built on it, and framing a new garage would be a piece of cake if I had 3 friends and a weekend. EDIT: But I have no friends. /EDIT It would also justify the cost of running better power (only have a 50A circuit) out there. The only thing stopping me is the cost of 2 new garage doors.

 

What kind of epoxy did you use? So it's held up to the jack stands? That was my only concern. Epoxying the floor is one of my 2009 projects

 

Yeah the welding equipment purchase is all up the air as of right now. The plan was to purchase a nice powerful MIG welder that could do both steel and aluminum. Later on get a nice TIG welder. The issue is just to get parts you need to setup a MIG machine to weld aluminum is expensive as well. So I'm thinking about picking up a cheap MIG to do steel with, and nice TIG to do aluminum.

I have to upgrade the electrical wiring in my garage no matter what. There is only 1 electrical plug in the whole garage. Since the walls are drywalled putting in new 240v plugs is not going to be cheap, plus running the wiring back to the electrical panel is also more work. I'm going to have to spend some money to get it to look pretty and functional. Drywall and painting isn't an issue for me, but the electrical will be. So I'm going to save up some $ and then start getting quotes. The way I have the garage laid out in my mind, multiple plugs would work better. Secondly, just putting in 1 plug will be expensive, any additional plug will probably be cheap in comparison. So if I go in, I'm going to go in with long term usage in mind. Obviously with the work I'm planning on putting in to the garage I don't plan to buy another home any time soon.

The epoxy coating holds up to everything! Bleach is not a good idea obviously.

I bought it from www.epoxy-coat.com

Here's my garage build out.

 

I want to add an electrical outlet in my garage as well but the it's drywalled and I already have it painted in the color I want :hs:

I put all my garage improvements on hold until the crap in the garage gets cleaned out by that guy you all love to hate on HAN h:

 

Brilliant plan, mah man. That's the way to go and it's a great addition to your capabilities. You can probably save a ton of money by getting a Lincoln, or you can get what you pay for at Harbor Freight... The welder's brand-of-choice is Miller and I've never heard a complaint anywhere except that it's Canadian. :canada:

This is my Mig welder, and it's more-than-adequate for just about everything I'll ever do with steel. All you need in addition to this is the bottle because it comes with a Argon/CO2 regulator and the M-10 gun. For a 110v unit, it's really hard to beat, and it's really compact for what it does. For the TIG, compare this chart to what you need if you want Miller equipment (it's probably list pricing)... but before you settle on anything, make sure you're looking at one that doesn't exceed your house's AC service capabilities. I have a friend with a Miller TrailBlazer and 3-phase power in his shop, so I will probably never learn to TIG or need to buy one.

Drywall is cheap! Like under $10 a sheet. You shouldn't have to do more than 1 wall. You could even cut out and replace sections instead of re-doing the walls. I wired my 220V 30A circuit for $80 including 50' of 10/2 Romex wire, staples, conduit, conduit box, outlet, breaker and a plug for the compressor. 12/2 wire for 110V is a lot cheaper and so are the outlets. If you did an additional 110V circuit with 3 outlets and a single 220V outlet yourself, I can't imagine expanding all that would be more than $300 in materials including paint. If the breaker panel is close to the garage, then probably less. But yeah, you'll make a mess, and it takes a lot of motivation or need when it already looks that nice. :thumbup:

Do you guys have room on your breaker panels? Any blanks left?

BTW: You can adapt the Millermatic 180 to weld Aluminum, but it will look absolutely hideous compared to what you can do to Aluminium with a TIG. You just have to buy a different gun and feeder.