Leaderboard

A bit more progress on the Bolens HT snow plough replica. In this video we make up the brackets on the frame for the hydraulic cylinder and make the pins for the frame.

Nae happy !! Doing a bit more last night and just about to load the last photo and internet crashes and lost the lot. With all the tools and raw materials gathered it was time to start dismantling, the chassis was levelled on two wooden blocks and rear bodywork supported by two adjustable scaffold feet and some aluminium tube under the boot top rail, wheels were removed, rear wings removed and all the interior trim from the back seat rearwards. It was evident that the rear body section was sinking causing the sides of the rear wings to bow out and the front of the doors to rise above the front bulkhead level. On the offside you can see the wooden chassis mount is tilted along with a broken bracket and a makeshift repair with some sheet steel. The nearside gives a better view of how it is constructed with the chassis attachment plate half lap jointed to the cross member, a fairly solid support block attached to a length of angle iron bolted to the steel inner wheel arch. The boot hinge is bolted up through the cross member with one bolt coming through a steel bracket coming round and up along the lower wheel arch frame which is again attached to the back of the support block. 80 year old wood screws are not the easiest of things to remove especially in such confined spaces but using small cutting discs in the dremel the slots were tidied up and with a selection of different sized flat screwdriver bits and various ratchets and sockets to fit all but two came out and I was lucky enough to have space to drill them out with a right angled drill and some short stumpy drill bits that I had bought for this job some time earlier. The bolts were also dispatched using the dremel and cutting discs but it was all too easy to shatter them and quite a number were used. I had to cut the crossmember to ease removal of all the bits but was still able to measure them and get dimensions for the new pieces, the chassis mounts and support blocks along with the crossmember were relatively easy to make as they were all straight sided, the lower wheel arch extension needed to be curved but after some trial and error I worked out the radius and used the router to form this piece. By fixing the workpiece and pivot block to a 8 x 4 x 3/4" sheet of plywood the radius was set and the inner radius cut then adjusting the threaded rod by the required thickness the outer radius was machined - a lot of playing about but it worked out OK. Behind the boot hinge bracket there was some evidence of a solid piece connecting the boot side rail, another body rail and the lower wheelarch extension which had been screwed from the outside before the aluminium had been formed around it, I managed to make a couple of pieces that would fit to all three wooden rails but just could not get the correct profile to fit the body. After two attempts and even trying some modelling clay I finally managed to get the correct profile by using one of my trial pieces, covering it in a good layer of body filler, covering it with a polythene bag and gently pressing it in to position.Once set I was able to use a profile gauge every 1/4" along the piece to copy to the new one. With all the new pieces made and trial fitted, broken bracket welded back together, pilot holes for the screws were marked and drilled and holes for the bolts drilled, final assembly took place with all pieces glued and screwed together. The rear body was now solid and firmly attached to the chassis for the first time in over sixty years. The fun really begins now.