My cab

[shmokes]

Hemi, Home Depot is an enormous, national chain that employs hundreds of thousands of people.  The vast majority of people working at a Home Depot have no special skills or interest in woodworking/home repair.  They're just regular joes.  I think that's the point.  If you go to a local cabinet shop or something like that, though, the quality and abilities of the workers there will be vastly superior to the average Home Depot worker.  Nobody said it's impossible to get someone great at Home Depot.  Your chances are just not very high.

[javeryh]

The last time I was at Home Depot the clerk got into a debate with me whether a J-Roller actually existed or if I just made it up in my head.  At that point it was time to leave.

[DaOld Man]

When dealing with Home Depot, I have found:
That it is best to check Loews first to make sure they dont have what I want.
If not, then I print out a picture of the thing I want from the home depot website, along with stock number.
Even then I sometimes have to find it myself.

[ChadTower]

Hemi, Home Depot is an enormous, national chain that employs hundreds of thousands of people.  The vast majority of people working at a Home Depot have no special skills or interest in woodworking/home repair.  They're just regular joes.  I think that's the point.  If you go to a local cabinet shop or something like that, though, the quality and abilities of the workers there will be vastly superior to the average Home Depot worker.  Nobody said it's impossible to get someone great at Home Depot.  Your chances are just not very high.

I'd be happy if I could get someone there that knew their own job properly.  They can't figure out how to process special orders properly... then you come in to get it and the customer service person can't find it in the system... then they send some guy to get it and he never comes back... then they try to make you pay for it before you leave even though they required you to pay for it when placing the order.  And yes, these are all things that have happened to me in the last month.

[shmokes]

Okay . . . I promised this last week, so I'd better at least give a mini-update.  I finished the gas/brake pedal unit today and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  It interfaces perfectly with the cabinet base -- exactly how I imagined it. 

I think I mentioned that I had a shape cut out of diamond plate on which I mounted the gas/brake pedals and a couple of 2x4's.  The whole thing is on heavy-duty drawer slides so it can slide under the cab and hide-away when not in use.  Here it is without anything permanently mounted.  The 2x4's are most cut and shaped, but not painted yet.  Also, I left the piece of metal outside for a while after I moved to Florida.  I was used to living in the desert.  It started rusting pretty quickly.

[shmokes]

The rust was curable with a bit of cleaning and a fresh coat of paint.  It looks A LOT cooler now.  I also attached the 2x4's to the base piece with three big hex bolts in each.  I attached the pedals using the existing holes.  I just tracked down longer versions of the screws that originally held the base together.  I drilled holes through the metal base-plate I made to match the factory holes on the pedal unit, and just went right through into the pedal unit.  It's really sturdy.  I also ran the screws through some magic slider thingies, which makes the thing slide super easily, almost like it was on wheels.

[shmokes]

Here you can see the drawer slides installed, as well as its mate on the cabinet base.

[shmokes]

And the bottom of the unit, with the magic sliders.  As I mentioned, the odd pattern is a result of using the original screw holes on the pedal unit, which were already laid out in an odd pattern.

[shmokes]

And here it is hiding in the base.  If I take a picture from an angle that allows you to see the pedals, it looks like they are sticking out the front.  I took a top-down shot to show that they actually slide all the way in and are completely obscured inside the cabinet base.

[shmokes]

As you may have noticed from one or two of the pictures, I severed the cable that connects the pedals to the wheel.  I'm almost sure that it wasn't long enough, but regardless, it has a DB25 connector on the end, which is too large to route into my control panel because of my particular setup.  I'm thinking that I'll punch the gas/brake pedal cable down to a CAT 5e jack and mount it to the base, and crimp an RJ45 to the other end of the severed cable.  That way the pedal base will remain modular if I need to pull it out for any reason.

Well . . . that's all for tonight.  I know it's still the base, and I promised more, but I'm not quite ready for another big update.  I have been making lots of progress, though.  I routed the t-molding slots today, which means I should be able to get the side-panels laminated tomorrow.  It's a-comin' together.   

[patrickl]

Nice work. Love the pedal setup.