Thread: My 1955 86" rebuild.

Moving along as I do on most days, because if I don't do it "who will" LOL.
Anyway when I arrived home from work the good wife wanted me to do some lawn maintenance, as the grass was getting too high (40mm) this sometimes makes it hard to find small doggy do, so who am I to argue!!.
With that task out of the way, I drilled a small hole 1/8"dia in the seat box lid RHS as I had found a spot weld had let go, the topside was C/sk using a 3/16"dia drill and a 1/8"dia C/sk rivet deployed.
It had started to rain so I decided to continue to grit blast the rad/sup panel, it is a very neat fit into my cabinet, not a lot of room to move around, but I have made some progress

the front of the panel has been done, but I can't get across the top and I can't get to the flat panel where the 'ROVER' oil plaque is fitted, so I will wait until the wife goes to her Bonsai thing soon, and I will do it on the front lawn using sand LOL sshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! don't tell her LOL, all was going well until I saw the end of the nozzle flopping about like a 'well U know what'

I now need to buy a few more Hi-tensile bolts, that's what 120psi does to bolts, anyway cheers Dennis

We went to Cardiff this afternoon (day screwed over by morning work in-service) I couldn't buy any short lengths of 12mm solid alloy (machine grade) round bar locally, and as usual you have to buy a full length @ 3.6M, so in preparation for this I took a hacksaw and made it 2 x 1.8M

all I really needed was a piece about 75mm in length to make these 2 rivets

then I needed to make 2 tools, one to support the head and the other to peen over the end, a short piece of Bronze was used to support the head

it didn't take long to make both tools (nor the rivets either) and in no time the job had been completed

the rivets had to come out when I had the base re-galvanized, the alloy would have melted and I would have lost the wing nut assembly.
I'm still fitting items to the seatbox in between the rain, cheers Dennis

Love this thread!

Keep up the good work!

To catch up on what I missed yesterday, I was down in the shed this morning @0610hrs, I made a new nozzle for the grit blast gun

the bolt was a drive flange bolt 3/8"BSF.
I waited until mid morning to grit blast the rad/sup panel

and I did blast it on the front lawn, it looked like a small sand storm had hit LOL, anyway swmbo didn't bat an eyelid about it.
Before grit blasting the panel, I fitted up the rhs seatbox lid then the center panel

the center panel will need to be removed at sometime in the future, so I can facilitate the opening to engage the PTO lever, and of course it will need to be re-painted as well, anyway that's been my day, cheers Dennis

After last nights storm, the back yard flooded 40mm rain in a very short period, thank god for good drainage/pump, putting water out into the gutter.
Anyway I had planned on getting up on the roof and cleaning the guttering out, as we have several big palm trees etc, well it took a lot longer than anticipated.
After 4 hours and 7 bucket loads of black filth and moss, my right hand has that many cuts n nicks on it, I don't know how I'm going cover it for work on Monday. The roof tiles were very hot, about 30<>40 seconds touching them with bare skin and it was burning, after all it was 32c this morning, this was me @ around 1200hrs today

I had finished cleaning the muck n filth out, a quick hand wash and the good wife made me a sanger or 2 then it was back up on the roof, to wash the slime down, we live about 60k's from the open cut workings but I would bet a fair amount of the crud was mine dust etc, anyway no work today on the project, as my back is killing me, cheers Dennis

Hi Dennis,

It must have been the day for doing yard jobs.

The next door's horses have taken a liking to the wooden parts of the new boundary fence that I am building and now I'm having to cover with sheet metal the parts of the wood that the horses can get at to chew, part of the covers I made up are ten little 40 x 50 mm galvanised iron caps to fasten on top of the wooden droppers.
.

After a weeks Hiatus, with the lousey weather, (and my crook back after a 4 hour stint on the roof of the house just cleaning mud etc out) I managed to get something done today. This item I scored about 2 weeks ago off the 107 wreck that my mate has, I have heated it, covered it in penetrene etc, but today I took it outside mounted a vice and really got some heat into it.
The alloy cover housing had grown into the thermostat block, but it came off without breaking to reveal this good looking thermostat

and would you believe it still works

it is now soaking in penetrene, hopefully with some persuasion it might come out in the morning, then I can grit blast the thermostat body.
My mate Gordon who was the prev/owner was asked last week how much warranty he gave me on the tyres

this one let @ under 1mph LOL, it did have 60psi in it, anyway cheers Dennis

Not a great deal of progress, but I had been working on this for two daze now

it has been heated, chilled with a freeze spray then heated again, bumped/knocked with a brass hammer, but after grit blasting the inside of the topside of the housing, it finally started to move, ever so slowly, it took approx. 2 hours of hitting the housing against 2 lead ingots, finally out

After finishing that job I ratted through my 1/4" nut n bolt supply to get 6 bolt assemblies to attach the guards to the rad/support panel

I found what I needed, then all treated to a run with a tap/die,

then into grit blast, etch prime, undersides painted flat black, then assemble them all on a strip of stiff cardboard, spray them in DBG

both sides painted and hanging out to dry, then tag n bag em, cheers Dennis