Grindin' and a Weldin'

Work has begun in ernist on replacing the rusty holes with proper steel. The fuel tank is out (for safety) and the holes have been made nice and neat. Then I made up some repair panels with the sheet metal bender, joggler and nibbler (if you don't know what the are - they are as much fun as they sound - believe me...)

half a hole

I had to do some welding from inside the van which entailed a little rearrangement of the inside of some of the cupboards and careful peeling back of the highly flammable insulation material. You can just see the new patch in the bottom right of the picture.

where the food cupboard used to be.

Before the rain (and hail) came down, I got a chance to tack in the repair panels, and they don't look too bad. The proof of the pudding is sitting drinking cider chatting with the Mrs, if its rubbish I'll notice and have to do it all again!

While the tank is out I decided to repaint the filler nozzle. It looks quite nice now so I need to make sure all the back end it up to scratch!

Bump and Grind

Yeah - bin grinding again... I can't help myself you know. While me and the mrs were chatting and drinking Cider on Saturday night, I got all hypnotised by the bubbly crumblyness of Jessica's offside rear panel.

Crumbly like a hobnob but not as nice...

Full of cider and looking forward to me welding for the next month or so...

So today, like a good classic car enthusiast, I took a look. With an angle grinder... needless to say there was some rust lurking. Along with a weird blob of filler about 7 mm thick which seemed to have no real purpose. Other than to allow the (sound) steel underneath to start merrily rusting away.




Hopefully this lot will be easily sorted (assuming there is nothing major lurking behind the outer skin) and it'll be one less thing to worry about...

Oh and I managed to scrape Molly's wing on the garage wall.... GRRRRR.....

Camping in Kinross

After all the messing around for over 6 months with the van - this weekend it was time to remember what it it really for. Oh yeah camping .... As it has been such a long time since we last went away we decided to just take a short trip not too far away for just one night, so we popped up to Kinross about 35 miles north of here. Its on the banks of Lock Leven and a top place for a camping trip. The camp site we chose was called Gallowhill - thoroughly recomended.





Of course the traditional barbecue was had. Veggie burgers, corn and asparagus - yum yum....

improptu washing line

All together now...

All together now! I know , I know I've not been posting recently, well it all comes in one go round here. I took a week off work and used some of the spare time to put Molly back together. It all went to plan - should have done too as I've done it loads of times before. So she's up and running again, but (as ever) there is lots more to do. I remembered to change the oil and do a flush job too. However after all that ... that annoying top end rattle is still there!

I've managed to clear out the garage a bit and now I can crack on with a few other jobs like tidying up the paintwork and cleaning up the interior. I one of the (other) things that has been bugging me for a good while was the over spray I got on the heater - gone now!

Oh and that hamper that Gib sent us for Christmas has now found a home....

While I was off work I had to redecorate the bedroom. Not very executing I know but once I got in to it it was quite therapeutic. It also got me thinking about "finish quality". I'm no decorator, but I can do it. I'm no classic car restorer but I can have a crack. It comes down to how long you want to spend on it, how good a finish you want and whether you want to use the car/room any time soon. I keep thinking if I had enough spare room / garages more cash and time, then maybe the finish would improve, or maybe I would just get bored and still have tatty cars and bad decorating... who knows...