Random Projects & other Shenanigans - The big cat's back

Have to say, your prowess with wood is equal to your prowess with bodywork and mechanicals,
Superb work,
Nigel

I'm fairly sure this next bit should come with a censorship warning.
I now have a well oiled box.

I'm using this stuff, Osmo Clear Satin Oil


After 4 coats allowing a day drying between each one the box and drawers are looking rather splendid.



Everything together i marked out for the knobs


And drilled a load of holes in my shiny box.
That went fine and now it is resplendent with its shiny knobs


Then its a case of fitting all the extra hardware on



The drawers need a liner and since traditionally green beize was the go to thats what i have gone to.



Rinse and repeat for the rest of the drawers


And now the inner lid.


To say I'm chuffed with the result would be an understatement.
But wait.
Its not finished yet.

In between the work on my toolbox things have been busy and jobs stacking up.
First up an easyish job for a friend at work.
He has what can only be described as the fruit of a forbidden relationship between bicycle and wheelbarrow


It has a crack in the frame and its easy to see why since all the weight being carried is between the 2 wheels. Sharpie to highlight where the crack is


So drilled out the ends and ground out the crack


Welded up, Forgive the very bad photo its the only one i have got.


And then made a gusset type reinforcement piece.
1.5mm sheet should do it


And welded that in


Followed by a bit of paint


And its on its way back to him for a couple of beer tokens.

Then something you might have noticed in the background. There is a large red elephant in my workshop, its not mine but another job for a friend.


I think i will start its own thread since there is quite a bit to do.

It has been the end of an era this weekend.
No progress on the car. Instead i have been in the shared workshop.

The time has finally come to say goodbye to the pit.
It has served us well but i cant say I'm sad to see the back of it.
It was always full of water, dark and awkward.

The job started with moving everything out and marking the floor


Then grabbing the biggest sledge i can find and smashing up a big chunk of the existing floor.


Which gets thrown in the bottom of the pit.


Followed by some more


Then some hardcore goes in and is compacted down.


Then repeat,


A friend came round to help for a while which was nice to have an extra pair of hands especially for breaking off the top row of blocks from the pit wall. They are hollow blocks filled with concrete so took quite a beating to break off..


Tried with the sds drill but in the end i fired up the slab cutter and ran that through them halfway and finished it off with the sledge.

End of saturday i had made good progress and there was only a little bit of pit left.


Sunday was alot of work finishing filling in the pit and levelling all the ground off at around 10” deep.


Then a few inches of hardcore dropped in to blind it off.


Damped and gone over with the whacker again. Then the dpc goes down and called it a night.


Everything hurts now so I'm very glad its done.
Concrete is getting delivered on wednesday, once thats dry its the beginning of a new age.

I think I'm going a bit strange, I thought i had already posted an update.
Anyway with the concrete hard enough to walk on i started tidying up the workshop.
This included a full cleandown, repaint of walls and roof with new lights.
This is before


Half the lights didnt work. The roof was stating to fail in places and the walls were filthy, stained and painted.

Now the concrete is setting properly i took my grandad down for a drive to Kettering with the trailer.

We got a large crate loaded up and headed home.


Have to say it was really pushing my little mini digger to its limit trying to lift the crate.
But we got it in and unpacked.


Yep i bought a 2 post lift. *Happy dance*

Unfortunately the concrete still had a week of curing to do so i cracked on with sealing and painting the floor where the lift will go.


Along with a small patch on the wall which you will see why later.


Soon though with the paint dry and the concrete set it was time to bolt it down. Under supervision of course.


It took most of a day to get the posts lined up, all in position along with the electrics and hydraulics connected up. Then the best thing to do is pull my car in and test it out.




And then all the other cars just because i can.



Onto the green patch on the wall, I probably should have flattened it of a bit but bear with me


Decal stuck on reasonably well once i got the heatgun on it.
And then a few white coats of paint rollered over it all, before peeling off the vinyl.

Very nice looking workspace, now you have cycled the lift a few times, retorque the mounting bolts
Ttfn Glenn

With the lift now up in place i could make a start on some work for my grandad, some of you might recall about 2 years ago we did a considerable amount of work on the front end, feel free to flip back a few pages if you don't remember.
Ill be honest this lot of work was the final reason for getting a lift. He wants to be able to help out with the work on his own car but cannot get in and out of a pit anymore.

This time we are onto the back end and we have a deadline to hit. We have to be done before June as this will be my sister’s wedding car and that happens in June.
As you can imagine that pushes a few other projects backwards a little bit.


We had a bit of a poke around and decided there really isnt much that needs doing, the arches need some attention along with the ends of the sills but the chassis looked like it was ok and all the suspension will be dropped out for a full strip and rebuild.


With that in mind, we dropped the subframe and everything else out.


And stripped it down


Mostly everything looked good, almost all the bolts came out. We do have 2 that are seized into the shocks and will take a bit of removing.


And we found a hole in the lower A frame.


Which progressed a bit under more investigation


Continuing we pulled the rear bumper off. Which broke the mounts due to steel bolts through aluminium bushings.you would have hoped that they had learned this lesson a long time ago but nope. Its getting more and more common.


We also found the bumper skin had been bodged up in the past with a riveted on plate and load of filler



And to add to the steel and aluminium issues are these little spacers should be between the 2 steel plates.
This is all that was left


The reinforcement bar had been busted too I'm guessing at the same time as the skin was and not replaced.

Onto the car body then
The sill ends are starting to look crusty.


And would certainly fail an MOT


There is a bit of a blister on the rear drivers chassis leg.


And general crust around the arches.



Onto sourcing some parts and repair panels that are available.

Some more rust spots i found, in the same area as before but this time above the rear axle.
It didnt look like much to begin with, but I'm learning not to ignore a bulge in the panels.


Because this is underneath.


Same on the drivers side



So some more new pieces. Nice and easy again.
Welded in, Cleaned back, painted and then the next piece welded in aswell.



Onto something a little more tricky.


These sill end caps we decided to have a play at making.
Its 2mm plate so takes a bit of shaping.
I made a wooden form and clamped the steel onto that.

This let me fold the edge over to an accurate shape and without distorting the panel.
Then i can clamp it back on and chase the step in with a chisel


This will fit on nicely.


Other side was the same


Took about an hour per side to make the form and the panel doing it this way. And the panel comes out just how you want.
Its often worth taking time to make a form because it can same a lot of time and pain later on.
I'm not welding them on just yet because I'm still waiting on the new outer arch panels to arrive.

Next up we started looking at the area at the bottom of the chassis legs and there was a few bits not looking great.


So i cracked on will removing that section


Its not looking great in there.
The other side wasnt any better.

Should be a fairly easy piece to make though so i think ill bash on with that next.
I see another wooden form coming up.