What to Do When Far Away

The Toaster is half a state away and I am in working land. Yesterday at 5:30 pm, I managed to remember to order aluminum. I called Airparts, referenced the many people who referred me and ordered a combination of alclad and utility aluminum sheet goods. It was confusing, but it's on its way and I think I'm cool. They are also having a cleco sale (clecos being the rather cool "temporary rivets" that are really useful)--so I ordered 50 of them. The lady who helped me (I wondered if it might be the woman standing in the aluminum roll in the photo on their webpage) was reassuring. I needed that. I was totally confused by the options for shipping, specifications, etc. She fixed all that. It should arrive next week, so unfortunately, I was too late to get it for the weekend. It's ok. I still have to fit in ordering paint and the switch--the latter seems harder to figure out, so we may just head out shopping on Saturday.

Meanwhile, a quick shot from last weekend--our proposed tongue configuration...

The concept here is to have the bottle carrier up front, then have the tire behind it. To support the tire, I will weld a piece of steel lengthwise to the tongue, then attach some kind of holder that we can bolt the tire into. Getting the spare tire mounted will be a huge convenience--there really is no convenient place for it either in our truck or trailer (it ends up something we are constantly trying to accommodate).

We haven't quite figured out what we want to do with the old battery box traces (immediately behind the tire). There's a hole (for the wires) and that bit of molding--I'm thinking a patch may be needed, but maybe we could turn it into something functional. Are there any innovative ideas out there?