We cranked out a lot of work yesterday. We have 2/3 of the tail up in the truck and welded the last hydraulic attach plates to the tail yesterday. Monday we’ll add the third section of the tail to the truck, it will be so exciting to see the tail on the truck!
The other big piece we worked on was the arm connection to the truck. Because of the length of the arm we’ve added a huge air bag to dampen the arm movements. One side is setup and the other side is about half done. Once the two air bags are attached there will be a 4×4 tube that connects the two sides.
We had a lot of challenges last year with the Mantis airbags. Chris Coleman and I had to redo the airbag connection three times before we got it right. There won’t be any rework this year. It also helped that I got technical help directly from Firestone. Last year I learned that the distributors don’t know anything about the airbags except if they have it in stock or not.
