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Sometimes somethings need enhancement. In fact there's whole industries built around this concept.
Well I got called on to do a little of that myself.
As you can see "Pete" is rather flat back where most of us have, well, a bulge or two.
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Pete's shortcoming was a birth defect. His creator sent him out into the world with a shortage of bulging area which causes him some discomfort.
So the first thing we had to do was lay out where we were going to cut to begin the surgery. Of coure removing the rhino skin was next.
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It isn't laser. But it's just about as slick, plasma cutting.
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Free at last! Free at last! Them big ole boys are free at last!
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This is the reason for the surgery.
These big boys had only two inches of clearance when the bags (air) were full. When they (air bags) were dumped the bed sat on the them.
Needless this made things awkward to say the least.
I guess we could call it too much of one while not having enough of the other. Or poor planning, well, maybe we'd better not put it quite that bluntly.
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Here's the material to fix (enhance) the situation. Give ole Pete that bulge that separates, well, a bulge.
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There was a lot of measurements taken. Customer's a jet mechanic and they do like measuring three times before considering cutting once.
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First we measured the clearance with the enhancement in place and airbags up.
Then we measured it with the airbags dumped.
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Here's one of the bulge enhancements doing a trial fit just before the great fire.
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Yup.
We had a fire.
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And that didn't include the sixty dollar kiss from the road service to remove old smokey and place the hickey where it belonged.
What happened was I made sure the Rhino lining surface was protected and used the fire blankets I'd had on the tire not thinking that a MIG dingle berry (little ball of fire that finds the neatest places in the world to cook) would slip through the gap and set a tire on fire.
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This will all be covered with Rhino lining. But the customer didn't want to use bondo if we didn't have to anywhere.
So the enhancements were welded in. Welds were ground down. And any cavities or divets were filled in with weld and re-ground.
It was a lot of work.
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Like I said, a lot of work.
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But the Rhino will cover any left over flaws hopefully.
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We'll get some pictures with his enhancements or augmentations complete in the morning.
I wanted to finish it up tonight. But I ran out of get go before I ran out of job tonight.
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This is what Pete looked like leaving this morning.
BTW the customer is a TBN member but wasn't familiar with me or my constant hogging of TBN's bandwidth.
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The enhancements worked out just fine. Customer's happy and I'm happy.
The world is a wonderful place.
Here's Pete getting his finished but unfinished washed off.
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Of course we couldn't do Pete a little augmenting without doing something for the trailer's self image.
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When the trailer got there the roll over bar (to keep it from ripping something when bottoming out) was bound up and didn't work. So we added bearings and now it won't take squat off of anyone or thing.
Customer wanted a receiver hitch for towing his jeep.
So we made this.
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It was a fun project, this augmentations stuff. Cosmetic surgery isn't that tuff, really.
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