Patrick Tipton

Super job and thanks for the great pictures.

I am a "newbie" when it comes to the Weasel construction, but agree with you. I have a really ugly M29C parts machine and am seriously contemplating removing the front and rear "tunnel" pieces to form the basis of a new hull once the T24 is finished. The rest of the hull is just bent sheet metal with a bunch of gussets and lots of spot welds. Thanks for sharing all of these pictures. They are excellent!

Very nice John. I am thinking we should take some of these mods and turn them into a "Tech Tips" set of articles so they don't just end up buried in the topics.

I posted another YouTube video this morning. I can either embed them here or provide a link. Any opinions? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZhdJInBakg&feature=youtu.be

That is a great looking repair. Well done!

I worked a bit more on the bow patch and area on Sunday before the Super Bowl started. I am getting close. One thing that was recently brought to my attention is that the bracket for the front tow bar/yoke is not factory, but rather a field mod. I am sure it is useful, but it is coming off. The left side was already removed so that is one less thing to do. The welds on the bracket are nice but did distort the area quite a bit. I have a little more cleanup work to do on my seam (particularly right side near this bracket), but don't want to try and do any more work until I remove the bracket and start fixing this distortion. The welds are hard to access in this area so I need to pick up a carbide grinding bit for my angle grinder/Dremel to finish removing the bracket. There is also a nice? dent on the front ride corner of the hull. The backside of the dent is blocked by a stiffener/hat channel so I have a couple of options to fix it. I have a little pin resistance welder ($50 used 😉 ) that is made for use with a slide hammer. It works fine, but on this heavy of steel, you have to use heat too because there is not enough strength at the pin weld to really move the metal. I just played for a few minutes and saw some improvement. My other option is to use a screw and put some holes in the area to use with the slide hammer. I may have to do this, but am trying to avoid more welding.

Welcome aboard Frank and thank you for sharing your project. For some reason, your pictures are not showing up. Check to make sure you tagged all of the pictures....it should have given you a warning message if you did not. If you continue to have problems, you can also email them to me at sales@portrayal.com and I will get them posted for you. Patrick

I too am in search of an original looking track/band solution for my T24. Dave, you may be right about how big the demand will be, but I am hoping we can find a band solution/technology that could be built at home with a little bit of home grown tooling. My design thinking is as follows: 1. Original appearance and function. 2. Modern materials (belting, nylon inner bands, stainless, silicone, etc.) For me, anything goes here as long as final result looks correct and has decent wear properties. 3. Target price under $2500 for a complete set of bands. 4. We stand a better chance of success if we can adapt the technology to produce bands for all of the various Weasel tracks. It means three or four times the headaches, but a much bigger market. To that end, does anyone have blueprints of any of the tracks? As I understand it, there were quite a few track changes, even beyond the versions that are generally discussed. These changes in spacing etc. had a big impact on wear patterns and keeping the tracks on. I am planning a trip out to Indiana at some point in the near future to hopefully learn more about the tracks, but in the meantime, I am guessing there are folks out there who already know a good deal about these issues. If there is enough interest, we can create a subgroup - The Track Project - and try to divide, share and conquer. Patrick

OK - so my comment about restoring the other T24 seems downright silly in light of this post. What a Herculean effort! Beautiful work and thanks for posting all of the wonderful reference photos. Is this Weasel running at this point? Patrick

Thanks for joining and for taking the time to post these pictures. That T24 is an amazing piece of history - good for you for saving it! It would be a hell of a project to restore it as you know, but it is doable. If you aren't already, you would be the world's best welder and grinder by the time you were finished! If you get a wild hair going, parts machines are around here in the US for not crazy money. I assume that is the biggest problem being in Australia besides all the work. It costs in the neighborhood of $4k to ship a 20 ft container from LA to Australia.....so I am imaging that a couple of pallets of parts could be shipped for less. Just a thought, but I imagine it would not take too much of a push to get an international effort underway....... Patrick

Thanks for joining Jeff! There is a lot of good stuff going on out there on tracks and other parts - hopefully we can spread the word and the work and get'er done. Patrick

Wow - that makes my restoration look like a paint job! Nicely done.

#4 I started adding sheet metal to the front bow section of the hull. I originally thought about forming the sides and tunnel bends and leaving enough metal to patch the bow area where it had rotted out by the front most hat channel. After a few days of mulling over the logistics, I decided to install a patch and then install the floor as one piece. I started here. Originally thought about patching the hat channel but I decided it was too hard to get a nice end product. Somewhere in the past, someone had sprayed something into the hat channel. Not sure what it was but it held water and made the situation worse. So I cut it out, bent a section with an approximately 45 degree angle and started welding in. I ran out of shielding gas and had to go get a new bottle. It was late and the supplier gave me straight argon. For what its worth, straight argon does not work well with MIG. I made a bunch of ugly welds and scratched my head before figuring it out. The other benefit of doing the patch as opposed to the entire floor is that I have good access to the seam to hammer/dolly and grind. I am getting close here. I have to do a little more work, but the panel is nearly flat and dent free. The weld will disappear with a little more work. I am heading out to the shop in a bit and will get this finished so I can think about getting the right side floor in next week. I have a little press brake attachment for my shop press and will attempt to bend up the hat channel. Preliminary tests look good. The seam is under the hat channel so I am not under a lot pressure to make both sides perfect but will try anyway. The outside is very visible so it needs to be done well. I do my best to stay away from everything but high build primer to remove deep scratches. Patrick

Welcome aboard and thanks for sharing your restoration. Look forward to following along! Patrick