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Rosie Resto Project
Apr. 20th, 2008 08:44 pm...
For anyone interested, the blog of the restoration of Rosie can be found Here and just as an FYI, I will be making an appearance next update.
I was playing with fire today, quite literally with a blowtorch. Pyromaniac?? Me?? *looks innocent* I have been put in charge of the suspension, it's a dirty, fiddly job, but it involves fire and power tools, so what's not to love? Today I had to get the old rubber bushes out of the end of the tie bars and trailing arms, 8 of them in total, but the rubber was so old and hard that I had to melt and scrape out the old rubber before I could remove the metal cores (that the bolts fitted into) and then prise the rest of the bushes out of the holes.
It was a bit of a pain because the blow torch started to run out of fuel just as I was finishing, luckily, I was on the last tie bar by that point, and the wind had dropped, so I just set both sides of the rubber alight and left it to burn a while. It got so hot that the rubber started to spark and crackle and the metal core self-ejected!! It was the coolest thing, especially after I'd spent all afternoon coaxing, levering and cajoling the cores and bushes out using the "brute force an ignorance" method!
While I was doing that, Garry was cutting out the rusty first few bits of welding he's going to do, he needed to get the rust holes cut out and measure up for the sheet steel when it arrives, so he has cut out the rear passenger side wheel arch bit, and the rusty seatbelt mounting, at which point he realised how fortunate he was that he never actually needed his seatbelt to save his life!!
After both of us were finished, it was grey and cold, starting to spit a bit, so we went over to the pub for a well-earned drink. I was completely filthy, covered in melted rubber, grime, old oil and had hundreds of cuts all over my hands from the slippage of the screwdrivers I was using as pry-bars. I went straight to the bathroom at the pub, ran some water into the basin and had a wash, my face was filthy as well and I think I scared a woman who came out of the loo while I was drying my hands :o)
Since coming home I have impressed Garry with the cleaning capability of baby wipes. I have never come across anything yet that can't be cleaned effectively with baby wipes, I would love to know what they are impregnated with because it's amazing. I haven't tested it on car grime yet so this was the trial and it went very well, even getting the ingrained stuff out of the prints of my fingers and palms!! After I was mostly clean I had a bath and now am all-the-way clean.
We have eaten eggy-bacey sandwiches (mine with HP Yum!!) and are now listening to the radio while Garry is pottering in the kitchen, doing washing up and stuff, we're probably going to watch 'Casino Royale' tonight. I watched my first Anime thing last night, called "Ghost in the Shell" I quite enjoyed it. We also had a couple of fish casualties over the weekend. One of the yellow cichlids was discovered upside down with eaten fins not looking happy at all, and then he died. A few hours later, in the other tank, I noticed one of the gourami nibbling something floating at the top of the tank, turns out one of the little neon tetra had died as well.
Ok, that's about it for now, have a look at the blog link if you're interested, it's quite a comprehensive and well-written account of the re-building of a classic Triumph!! I'm going to make another cuppa and have a bit more of a rest...
For anyone interested, the blog of the restoration of Rosie can be found Here and just as an FYI, I will be making an appearance next update.
I was playing with fire today, quite literally with a blowtorch. Pyromaniac?? Me?? *looks innocent* I have been put in charge of the suspension, it's a dirty, fiddly job, but it involves fire and power tools, so what's not to love? Today I had to get the old rubber bushes out of the end of the tie bars and trailing arms, 8 of them in total, but the rubber was so old and hard that I had to melt and scrape out the old rubber before I could remove the metal cores (that the bolts fitted into) and then prise the rest of the bushes out of the holes.
It was a bit of a pain because the blow torch started to run out of fuel just as I was finishing, luckily, I was on the last tie bar by that point, and the wind had dropped, so I just set both sides of the rubber alight and left it to burn a while. It got so hot that the rubber started to spark and crackle and the metal core self-ejected!! It was the coolest thing, especially after I'd spent all afternoon coaxing, levering and cajoling the cores and bushes out using the "brute force an ignorance" method!
While I was doing that, Garry was cutting out the rusty first few bits of welding he's going to do, he needed to get the rust holes cut out and measure up for the sheet steel when it arrives, so he has cut out the rear passenger side wheel arch bit, and the rusty seatbelt mounting, at which point he realised how fortunate he was that he never actually needed his seatbelt to save his life!!
After both of us were finished, it was grey and cold, starting to spit a bit, so we went over to the pub for a well-earned drink. I was completely filthy, covered in melted rubber, grime, old oil and had hundreds of cuts all over my hands from the slippage of the screwdrivers I was using as pry-bars. I went straight to the bathroom at the pub, ran some water into the basin and had a wash, my face was filthy as well and I think I scared a woman who came out of the loo while I was drying my hands :o)
Since coming home I have impressed Garry with the cleaning capability of baby wipes. I have never come across anything yet that can't be cleaned effectively with baby wipes, I would love to know what they are impregnated with because it's amazing. I haven't tested it on car grime yet so this was the trial and it went very well, even getting the ingrained stuff out of the prints of my fingers and palms!! After I was mostly clean I had a bath and now am all-the-way clean.
We have eaten eggy-bacey sandwiches (mine with HP Yum!!) and are now listening to the radio while Garry is pottering in the kitchen, doing washing up and stuff, we're probably going to watch 'Casino Royale' tonight. I watched my first Anime thing last night, called "Ghost in the Shell" I quite enjoyed it. We also had a couple of fish casualties over the weekend. One of the yellow cichlids was discovered upside down with eaten fins not looking happy at all, and then he died. A few hours later, in the other tank, I noticed one of the gourami nibbling something floating at the top of the tank, turns out one of the little neon tetra had died as well.
Ok, that's about it for now, have a look at the blog link if you're interested, it's quite a comprehensive and well-written account of the re-building of a classic Triumph!! I'm going to make another cuppa and have a bit more of a rest...
