DIY

Loose Rack Attachments Fix feat. REP Fitness J-Cups 2.0

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I previously made a video about my REP Fitness J-Cups 2.0 and how I don’t recommend them because the UHMW pads that are used in them are very inconsistent and poorly sized, that the J-Cups sit extremely loose on a rack, even the PR-5000 that REP makes. The looseness of my J-Cups is pretty much in every direction, so it rattles basically anytime the bar touches it, and because it moves from side to side so easily, it’s much harder to re-center a bar if you rack it unevenly. I pretty much completely gave up on all my REP J-Cups and decided to get something else. That is, until it just randomly came to me that I can just shim the UHMW pads and make the fitment much more snug.

The UHMW is just held in place by a couple of 4mm hex bolts. If we remove these bolts, we’ll have access to the pads. I decided to take some ani-slip anti-scratch self-adhesive pads that I already had leftover from my Rouge Matador project and attach them to the back of the UHMW. Attaching to the back of the UHMW will give you a cleaner look and make it impossible for the self-adhesive pad to fall off because it’s sandwiched between the UHMW and the J-Cup. From there, I just trimmed along the edges of the UHMW, and if you use a sharp blade like I did, then you’ll be able to cut through the self-adhesive pad like a hot knife through butter and get some clean results. Then I cut out some holes for the bolts. You really don’t have to be careful or exact with this step because the bolts will completely cover the hole up. Lastly, we just have to reassemble and check for fitment.

Because the J-Cups and UHMW pads are inconsistent, you may need to shim more than one of the UHMW pads. I would recommend doing the back first because it’s a smaller pad, so it’s less work and less material needed. If that doesn’t make things tight enough for your liking, then shim the front too. From my experience, doing these two pads makes the J-Cups pretty snug.

Again, the UHMW is inconsistent, so you may notice that even after shimming the pads, some J-Cups are going to be looser or tighter than others. My left J-Cup, although snug, is nowhere near as snug as this right one. But that’s fine. Because I know the right J-Cup is super snug, I know to pull the bar towards that one when recentering because there’s less of a chance of it moving than if I pull towards the not-as-snug left J-Cup.

Overall, I’m very happy with the result of this project. I don’t think I can ask for more. I’m so happy with this that I’ve actually cancelled my order for the J-Cups that I was going to replace the REP J-Cups with. So, if you have some loose REP J-Cups 2.0 or really any other loose rack attachments, give this project a try. It’s cheap, easy, and can give you some great results.

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Harbor Freight HAUL-MASTER 1720 lb. Capacity 48 in. x 96 in. Super Duty Folding Trailer Build

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I recently finished up my build of the Harbor Freight folding trailer and I wanted to go over some of the things that I’ve added to it in case it helps some of you who are interested in this trailer, considering that it seems to be pretty popular.

First off, I want to preface that for this build, I was going for lightweight and minimal. I bought this trailer because it can fold and be stored away. I didn’t want to have a trailer sitting outside 24/7 ruining my house’s curb appeal. That means, that I would need to make everything be able to easily be put together and broken down for storage. As few things bolted in place as possible and some sort of quick connect is the way to go. I also needed this thing to be lightweight because I’m pulling it behind an average-size crossover that has a 3500 lbs max payload. The lighter I can keep the trailer, the more weight I’d be able to haul.

After assembly, the first thing I added was the flooring. The trailer is 4’x8’ in size so standard size 4’x8’ sheet goods work perfectly. I went with 3/4” pressure-treated plywood. This was something that I was on the fence about. I went with 3/4'“ for the added strength and rigidity but I wasn’t sure I’d actually needed pressure treated considering I never plan to hual in the rain and this trailer is stored inside. Pressure treated was more than twice the price of not but at the end of the day, I went pressure treated as a just-in-case thing since there might still be water on the road that gets flung up or something. With all the other wood, I went non-pressure treated.

Next up are the walls. For these, I went with standard construction lumber 2”x4” and 19x32” plywood. This size plywood was the cheapest, thinest, and lightest that they had at the store. Again, lightweight is important for me because I plan to take these walls on and off all the time. I originally planned to use 2”x10” but as I was loading them onto my cart for checkout at the store, I was telling myself that man this is already a pain in the ass here, I’m going to hate my life having to move these around all the time especially when it’s all screwed together and get even heavier. But that all depends on how high you plan to make your walls.

For my trailer, from the bottom of the brackets to the floor, it’s about 4”, and each plywood slat is 16”, with about 2” in between. That means that this 2”x4” is 38” long, but what’s actually functional above the flooring is 34”. I made all the walls with (3) 2”x4”x10’ and (2) sheets of 4’x8’ plywood.

Something that I want to note is that with the brackets, although they look like they were made for 2”x4”s and I’m sure they are, they’re actually just slightly too small on the sides. So you’ll have to trim the sides of the 2”x4” to get it to fit in the brackets. I used a jigsaw and found that if I removed the round-over edge on one side, that was pretty much the perfect amount to make things fit properly.

To hold all the 2”x4”s in place, I use these 3/8”x4” hitch pins. These allow me to lock the walls in place but still quickly and easily remove them for storage.

Once you get all the walls up, you’ll notice that they still kind of flop around and move pretty easily. To fix this, I used some trailer corner brackets. This is a pretty simple product that essentially just act like tongue and groove. One side slips into the other and locks them together. Very simple but absolutely does the job.

Lastly, my tied-down points. For this, I went with something called E-Track. This is a pretty widely available system that’s made by a bunch of manufacturers and comes in different lengths that offer a lot of tiedown and adjustment points. I personally went with single-slot tracks because I knew that I only needed a few points to tie down from and didn’t want an entire track sitting in my trailer for no reason. I just don’t need a million different possible tie-down locations. The nice thing about the E-Track system is that it offers you a quick release tiedown system. With the track, you use a connector that has a little trigger on one end. When the trigger is pulled, it allows the attachment to slip into the track and holds it in place when released. I have a ring that can be used with traditional tie-downs but there are other accessory options. There are even straps with these attachments built in which saves you on extra step. This is an extremely convenient option that still offers you thousands of pounds of tiedown force.

Lastly, I painted all the wood black in some exterior paint. For this, I just went with the cheapest option available because again, my trailer is sitting inside most of its life. The paint is really just for aesthetics.

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Weber iGrill 3 Install on Genesis II E-335

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Cleaning, Burn In, and Seasoning a New Grill feat. Weber Genesis II E-335

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I just picked up the Weber Genesis II E-335 and with a new propane grill, there are a few things that can be done to better your enjoyment with the grill and to help prolong its life. These things include the initial cleaning, burning in, and seasoning. I’ll go over what I did to accomplish these things and although I’m doing my demonstration on a specific Weber, these steps apply to almost any grill.

First, let’s start with the initial cleaning of the grill. From the factory, the manufacturers coat the grills with various oils that can affect your food and possibly make you sick so we want to clean up as much of that as possible. For all the removable parts like the grates, flavorizer bars, and warming rack, I clean them with old-fashioned dish soap and a sponge. Since the grill and I were outside, I just used the garden hose. To me, this part is going to be most important with the parts that actually touch your food. So more attention should be paid to the grilling grates and warming rack. It’s also important to note that with many grills, the various parts are going to be made with some sort of ferrous metal, and for our purposes, that just means that they can rust. So you should not get the parts wet and just let them sit there. You should dry them off somehow. I just had a roll of paper towel nearby to dry off my grill parts.

Once everything is clean and dry, we’re going to reassemble the grill and perform a burn in. This is done by turning the grill on high and letting the intense heat of the grill burn off any residual manufacturing oils. I’ve seen people do this in different ways. Some say to leave the lid open, some say to close it. To me, it makes more sense to close the lid so you can reach higher temperatures and you can let the heat hit everything to a greater degree. The length of time for the burn in is also debatable. The Weber manual actually says to close the lid and burn in for at least 20 minutes. 30 minutes seems to be a pretty standard recommendation so I went with that.

Now that the burn in is complete, we’re going to turn off the grill and let it cool down. At this point, we can season the grill. This means that we’re going to apply a coat of oil to the various surfaces. This will help make things more nonstick and help to prevent rust. For this step, you want to use some sort of high smoke point oil. I’m using avocado oil, but there are plenty of other options. Canola oil is a pretty popular recommendation. Grapseed oil is another good one. Some people just use a potato or onion and rub that around. It just comes down to what you’re comfortable with. You can do your own research on what’s best. If you’re going with an oil, something to consider is liquid or spray form. As you can see here, I’m using liquid oil and am spreading it around with a paper towel. This works, but it takes significantly more time to apply than a spray oil.

With the seasoning, you can basically apply oil to anything on the grill. I’ve seen people oil the entire interior and exterior of the grill. At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of what you’re comfortable with and how much work you want to put in. Oiling up the entire grill will absolutely help to protect it from rust, but what grill you have is going to play a bigger role in that. If you have some super cheap sheet metal grill, it’s likely going to have some rust issues no matter what. With seasoning, I would say the most important parts to cover are those that food is going to touch. So it’s important to season the grilling grates and the warming rack because seasoning will also help prevent food from sticking. Another good place to apply oil to is the inside of the lid as this is one of those places that sees build-ups. Then like I said earlier, everything else is kind of just the cherry on top. The more you cover, the more protected your grill is going to be. Once you’re happy with the coat of oil that you’ve applied to the grill, we’re going to turn it back on high and let it sit for another 30 minutes or so to really bake that oil into all the surfaces. Once that’s done, the seasoning process will be complete and you’re ready to start grilling.

Now, the burn in process is a one-time thing that you only need to do with a brand-new grill. With seasoning, that’s more of a once in awhile, as-needed thing so I can’t give you a time frame. However, it’s probably a good idea to season if you perform a good deep clean of the grill because you’ll probably strip the seasoning after. Aside from that, it’s also good practice to apply some oil to your grill grates before and after cooking to help with the nonstick and rust protection. Especially so if you’re going to be storing the grill for a while.

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Building a DIY Wood Slat Privacy Wall

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I used to near a farm with the next house being far enough away that I didn’t have to look at anyone. But that changed when a bunch of new development and duplexes went up. Two of which are like 10 feet away from my fence and when I go out my front or back door, I can literally look into their master bedroom.

Well, this isn’t exactly appealing to me especially considering that I want to use my back patio with some privacy. So I’ve decided to put up a privacy wood slat wall. After some thought and planning, I’ve come up with something that works for my situation and I’ll lay out how I’ve done it here. I would say that my situation is a bit unique considering the size that I needed to cover and if it were smaller, I would’ve gone a different route but I’ll get into that later. This blog is more so just going to cover some of the things that I discovered as I did the project, tips and recommendations that I want to share, not so much and exact how to because your situation is going to be different from mine.

Now, this project can be fairly simple and straightforward but it can also be quite complicated depending on how you want to put your slats up. I essentially went what I thought was one of the simplest ways possible and that was to put up two backer boards that I screwed all of my slats into. I did this because I knew that I was going to have to put a bunch of holes into wood. But I didn’t think that this was going to be a long-term or permanent feature of my home so I would rather put the majority of the holes into the backer boards, rather than the pillars of my home.

For my project, I went with 1”x2” sticks for my backer boards. I did this to keep the backer boards as slim and minimal as possible so they’re not super in your face when you look at the final result. I wanted people to focus on the slats, not the boards they’re attached to. However, if you go with the 1”x2”, you’re going to have a very narrow surface area to screw into which can be somewhat difficult and I myself did have a few screws blow out at an angle because I wasn’t holding the drill straight. If you want to make it easier for yourself, I’d recommend going with 2”x2” backer boards. You’ll have a much easier time and more screw placement options. With the 1”x2”, you’re basically screwing into the edge of the board.

For my slats, I decided to use dimensional construction lumber because this was essentially the only option that I had. I needed 10’ long boards so 2x boards were realistically the only option at my local big box stores. I went with 2”x6” because I thought that that would best match my surrounding wood. Had this area been 8’ or less, I would’ve probably gone with cedar fence pickets because that would’ve been available and they’re thinner, lighter weight, and more manageable to work with than trying to put up 2x material. Dimensional lumber also sucks in the sense that it can have a lot of inconsistencies. On the day that I went to buy wood, there were a bunch of bowed and twisted boards so I just got the best that I could and that definitely made things a bit harder as some of these slats just did not want to align properly. So keep that in mind if you’re going to use construction lumber. Pick the best, straightest boards that you can to save yourself some problem-solving time.

In terms of the spacing between my slats, I used pieces of the scrap 1”x2” that I had left over. Of course, the 1”x2” is actually 0.75”x1.5” so my spacing was 0.75”. I would say that this is the maximum gap that I would personally recommend if you’re actually using this slat wall for privacy because even with this, if I really focus on what I’m trying to look at behind the wall, I can shift around and totally make it out. If I were to do this project again, I would probably go with a 0.5” gap, maybe even a 0.25” gap for really good privacy but still having a gap.

Now, I did paint my slats black to match the house and I would say that painting the slats perceptually gave me more privacy. It’s just harder to see through the black slats for whatever reason than leaving the wood raw. So in my situation, having the 0.75” gap ended up not giving up too much privacy,

Speaking of painting, this is something that you should definitely think about when considering gap size. The smaller the gap the harder it’s going to be to paint or apply whatever coating you choose between those slats. If your gap is too small, you’re basically forced to apply the coating before putting all the wood up. Keep that in mind so you don’t have to take everything down, paint, then put it all back up again.

And that’s basically it. Again, a fairly simple project that could be completed in a day. This is a project that I can recommend to DIY rather than paying someone to do it because it’s a fairly easy one to accomplish.

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