With the days getting shorter, the garage needed a lighting upgrade for fall and winter workouts. I installed four of the same LED lights I had put in my basement workshop. Huge difference!
New Garage Lighting
DIY Plant Stand
The next phase of my new home office was a plant corner. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.
Modifying/Upgrading a DP Ultra Gympac
On August 15th I bought the DP Ultra Gympac, a piece of fitness equipment from the mid-80s.
It was missing some of the original parts, but it had the weight stack and pulley system, which are what I cared about. I had made my own pulley system, but I’ve been fighting with it for several months. Having something dedicated with it’s own weight stack was going to be a big improvement. Here’s what the equipment looked like when I got it home.
This awesome machine was sold at Sears for $499.99 back in the day!
I paid $100 for this one and it also came with a small barbell and weights, which I’ll sell. The unit did need some work. I moved the bench and curl attachment to storage because I don’t plan to use them. Then I disassembled the unit. Most of the weight stack plates had cracks. By a stroke of luck, I came across a Facebook Marketplace listing for 14 of the same weights and I paid $25.
The base of the Gympac had quite a mess where something nasty had spilled a very long time ago. I got that taken care of and cleaned the pulleys really well. The main top and bottom pieces got fresh black paint. I bought new cotter pins for the pulleys, replaced nuts and bolts, added washers and made a cable. The hardest part of the rebuild was replacing the guide rails with longer ones to allow more travel length for the cable. A couple of eight foot pieces of 1″ aluminum square tubing ran me about $30 and I drilled holes for the various bolts. On my bandsaw I cut the original logo out of the cracked plastic case.
Making room required a big reorganization of my gym space. After that I moved the unit in place, put everything together, and bolted it to the wall. The final touch was labeling the weights. I wasn’t confident in the numbers on the original stickers, so I bought a small luggage scale and sure enough, everything had previously been labeled six pounds too heavy. I made some new labels.
I love it! The great thing is it only uses about two and a half square feet of floor space. Rethinking the entire organization of the gym space ended up making the rest of my equipment a lot more accessible as well. This was a really fun project. If you have a garage gym and some extra space, try to find one of these.
My New Office: Lighting & Furniture
One of the next steps in the new office project was lighting. The room didn’t have any, so I installed a ceiling light today.
I hadn’t posted about the furniture yet, which came in a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always wanted a brown leather chair in my office but didn’t have space for it. Now I do. White seemed more fitting.
I also have some top down bottom up blinds ordered, but I won’t get those for weeks because it took forever to get some samples. The air conditioning install starts tomorrow morning, so I’ll be able to move in my desk very soon!
Mtn Dew VooDew 2020
Tastes a little like Skittles. This gets 8/10 from me.
DIY Rack/Band Pegs
Titan Fitness hasn’t had their band pegs in stock for months. This is what they look like.
I got sick of waiting, so I bought a four foot length of 5/8″ steel round rod from Home Depot for $15 and made my own.
- Cut the rod down to four 12″ pieces with a cutoff wheel on an angle grinder
- Taper an end of each piece and clean up the other end on a belt sander
- Drill a hole near the non-tapered end, using a drill press and vise
- Insert a nail and cut it so about 1/4″ is left sticking out
- Flatten and/or bend the piece of nail so it can’t escape
- Soften any remaining sharp edges on the sander
- Spray one coat of primer, two coats of black, and two coats of matte clear
They turned out great and I really like how the matte clear finish feels. It’s already getting scuffed up from moving the pegs around a few times though, which I figured would happen. In reality they’re too long and buying a three foot rod would have been better.
So what are these used for? Pegs are the proper way to use bands and things like Crossover Symmetry on a rack/rig. People tend to wrap bands around the J-cups, but that ends up cutting through the bands over time. Nobody like taking a snapped band in the groin! Pegs are round, so they play nice with bands.
DP Ultra Gympac Commercial
I’m the new owner of an amazing piece of fitness equipment. If this commercial from the 80s doesn’t get you fired up to exercise, I don’t know what will.
I’ll post more once it’s set in place and I make some modifications.
From the Tips
We had a light turnout for golf, so Don convinced me to play all the way from the back at the black tees. It was a lot of fun. We got to play a lot of different shots and see the course from a different perspective. Helps that I scored well. 🙂
Mtn Dew Frost Bite
This flavor is an exclusive to Walmart. After the initial taste it starts to sink it’s teeth in. I like it. Solid 8/10. I’d buy it again.
Mtn Dew Spark
This has a nice lemonade taste to it and is a good summer drink. Gets a 7/10.
