Forkliftfred's Quarantine garage. Cleaning, painting etc

No worries, I know the feeling. Just had a week off to completely strip out the home office, lay new floor, paint, put in skirting etc.

Had one of the lads from the farm come round with the telehandler to move a pallet; the garage door was open and he couldn't believe there's a mini buried under/behind the stuff you can see piled up. One day I'll get it cleared enough to get more work done on it!

Love a reward beer.

Bus is lovely.

Well done on all the stuff you got done.

I find it quite therapeutic. Unfortunately I don't keep on top of it.

Not much of a garage progress update, the work on the house extension is still on going, family holidays and overtime at work all getting in the way of rapid progress. I get the odd hour here and there, nothing worthy of sharing so instead you'll have to make do with a few belated Goodwood Festival of Speed pictures.



















As for the Mini, I'm undecided as to sell it or keep it. I loved Mini's when I first learned to drive, I don't feel like I have fell in love with this one. Consequently, I emptied the kitchen off cuts out of the Caddy flat bed and have jacked it, drained the fuel tank (petrol came out red coloured BTW), and started offering up the swirl pot and fuel pump. I have some space between the leaf spring mount and the back of the cab in which to mount it. I'll get some more detailed pictures. Brackets need to be fabricated and fuel hose needs to be purchased. Small steps. 

On the plus side, my mental health is OK at the moment, I have lost even more weight and am feeling quite positive and I am sleeping much more deeply than I ever have.

Life is good.

Time for an update. I have made a deal with SWMBO that I will spend at least one evening a week in the man cave so that means progress has been made! I've also promised myself to spend an evening working on house jobs, quiet ones that won't disturb baby Forkliftfred.

You may remember from earlier in the thread when I was staining the fence, that there use to be a raised flower bed in the garden? Some of this was removed when the extension footings were dug which left half of it behind. I decided to remove what was left and level out the lawn to give baby Forkliftfred more play space. Grass seed was sown and a few weeks later grass has gown. I think it will be ready for it's first haircut this weekend.



The Quarantine garage is built at the end of the garden which is on a slight incline, consequently it's sits higher than the lawn so there used to be a wooden flower bed made from scaffold boards to prevent small children/dogs/drunk relatives from falling off. It has long since rotted out and seeing as the plants had gone to the big compost heap in the sky, I decided it was time for it to go. I will eventually replace it with another type of fencing.



Carrying on the garden theme, the sunflower my daughter brought home from nursery flowered today.



You may recall from earlier in the thread that I changed jobs? I'm happy to say the change was the correct decision both mentally and financially. I went from being a mobile Mechanical Engineer to being a workshop based Mechanical Engineer. My new company supplies all tools so the toolbox and tools that were in my old company van have been living in the garage for around 18 months now. I kept them seperate in case the move didn't work out and I wanted to go back. I decided that two tool boxes occupy lot's of valuable garage space. So I removed the two top boxes and stacked the the two roll cabinets on together. Ideally I would have got rid of all of them and replaced them with a nice new wide roll cabinet and top box. Unfortunately i'm far too tight to purchase such things so this is what I have. I may remove the stickers and give them a coat of paint but then again it may just look like this forever more.



This means I am left with these two small boxes with some tools I no longer want. If they are of any use to a fellow RR member and you can collect from Benfleet then they are yours for free. If not they will go to the big scrap yard in the sky.





I am still plodding along with the Caddy. I made up a swirl pot/fuel pump bracket and painted it.



A few years ago I extended the garage by two feet (yes really). I had spare panels and it annoyed me that it didn't reach the edge of the property so I mixed the cement and screwed in the extra panels. I initially gave the floor one coat of paint. A few years of jacks and rusty old cars being dragged across it have caused the paint to flake off. So I moved all the curse word out of the way, swept it and gave it a coat of paint.
Before



After



While the floor was drying I decided to give the compressor a birthday. Guess which colour I sprayed my motorbike panels?



Note to self, put the compressor outside the next time you want to spray in the garage.



It was at this point my phone battery died so I don't have and pictures of it cleaned and reassembled.

Early Discovery 2 (no diff-lock on low ratio gear lever)?

Ours is an end of the line one (54 reg), HD roof bars, diff-lock. Had a pre-facelift and an earlier facelift ('03), the facelift models are much better.

Umm must look up Dynachip although at 133Kmmiles probably best left alone.

Used diff-lock a few times and low range was useful when maneuvering horse trailers and uprooting the remains of a tree :-)

I've had all the common D2 issues, ECU wiring, 3 amigos (earthing mod for ABS unit), rear chassis rust, FPR leaking, rear brake pipes. Plus a couple of not so common ones, window regulators, lower ball joints and replaced the rear airbags twice now as well. Still love it though and would only replace it with a L322 Range Rover.

I tended to get the 3 amigos more when it was damp, the local Land Rover specialist did the earthing mod that is detailed on various LR forums. If you get the chassis welded check behind the air-bags, when I changed an air-bag recently mine is starting to go there as well.

Just looked at Dynachip, £225 very tempting.

Video's not showing are they 'private'.