Alan

I'm running out of suitable complimentary words Richard. 

With the under dash wiring done I could now finish the carpeting of the bulkhead, side panels and floor.
When I initially started in 2006 I removed the gearbox cover which was made of moulded hard rubber and had broken in 3 pieces but I was going to make a mould from it and do one in fibreglass but in the meantime it had fallen off a shelf and was now in a hundred pieces. A modified one was made from aluminium and made it a lot easier to carpet.


The vinyl edging around the carpeting is wider than I would have liked but the rubber backing just cracks and the carpet splits if you sew too close to the edge, I didn't have this trouble with the hessian backed stuff I used on the Carlton.
The bulkhead



and the side panels with air conditioning facility - no fuses required!



then renovated front seats fitted



The new front brake cylinders and shoes along with the new hubs and bearings were next



The tyres were all different makes and sizes and well over 50 years old so new 5.50 x 16 Blockley tyres tubes and tube protectors were ordered, the wheels sand blasted and powder coated to prevent damaging the new tubes.
The original colour had been cream then repainted yellow and I couldn't decide whether to go black to match the body, green to match the interior but in the end decided to go with silver.

Not far to go now but we still have the engine saga.


  

For the last few months I have been medically chair bound with the exception of odd forays to the garages and workshop to find things. Father Christmas was very good to me giving me a comfy office chair, an LED head torch and a Drill Doctor drill sharpener. My new lockdown past time is sitting at the kitchen table in my comfy chair ,my headlight beaming away and my drill sharpener on the table in front of me.  Over 50 years of workshopping I have somehow amassed a huge collection of drill bits , some were my Father's , Rhys gave me a pile of Morse tapered lathe drills  but most I have bought when embarking on a new project. Although I am quite capable of sharpening drill bits ,it has not been a regular workshop maintenance task and consequently it was quicker to buy some new drills rather than sort out and sharpen old ones, UNTIL NOW !      The drill Doctor machine will cope with drills from 1mm ( if you are careful ) up to 3/4" . The drill bit is set in a chuck which aligns the flutes to produce a point angle of 118 - 135 degrees  with minor up or down variation.  The chuck is then slotted into a holding socket above the diamond grinding wheel to be rotated slowly by hand, two turns will dress up a tired drill to new, 10 turns will restore a broken drill.  The machine was not cheap but works extremely well, will cater for split point drills and masonry bits, clean working ,not too noisy and a nice way to spend a few hours in the warm recycling useful things. I would certainly never have stood at the grinder for many hours hand sharpening hundreds of drill bits. I have now ordered a couple of graded drill bit holders so that I can again sit at the table and sort out all the sizes and then give a couple of sets to my sons. I recently bought a spring caliper guage for measuring valve shims and was very pleasantly surprised to find that it can display in mm / inches and also fractions of inches so I can now identify some of the odd sized tapping drills I have. That should take up a few hours maybe I will improve my set up with my headlamp and some wireless earphones tuned in to Planet Rock! 

In 1963 when we got the car the old man repaired the join between the front and rear wins with a couple of plates as we didn't have any welding gear at that time and there was also a lot of corrosion on the front wings where the headlamp support bolted through to a bracket under the wing. Once the wings were removed the extent of the corrosion became apparent and new metal from a half sheet of 20 SWG mild steel I had left over from a previous project was formed and welded in. 
 

Not a perfect job but blends in well with the 'patina' of the rest of the wings, the corrosion around the headlamp support was a bit more extensive and a double curved piece was formed on a sandbag and carefully welded in to prevent buckling. A quick grind down, thin skim of filler, sanded, primed and given a quick spray of cellulose with an air brush and an acceptable finish was achieved.



A new bracket under the wing had to be made as the old one had more holes than it did metal



The running board strips had also been replaced by wooden ones in 1963 and the wings were full of holes from previous repairs to the strips but by carefully placing new ones I was able to hide nearly all of them because welding them all up would have corrugated the running boards and I didn't want to try sorting that out.



The wings were now firmly attached to the body which in turn was firmly attached to the chassis and in the future if someone wishes to restore it to concours condition there is enough originality left to do so.

Photos are becoming a bit thin on the ground now.
Under the back seat there were two crossmembers on the chassis with plates for holding two six volt batteries, one of these had to be replaced and I decided to convert it to one single 12 volt battery while I was at it. I test fitted the new battery and noticed a bit of a spark as I put the terminal on and thought that everything was switched off and it was. I knew the wiring to the back of the car was needing replacing but when I added an ammeter to the main cable there was a 3 amp discharge with nothing switched on, so the rest of the wiring was now suspect.
There were a couple of burned wires under the dash, several added wires under the bonnet and a couple of duplicates to the front lights, the club came to the rescue with a wiring diagram and it really isn't a complicated system and I removed the lot to start from scratch. Although cotton braided cable is available the thought of measuring the various lengths, making sure I had enough and getting the right colours seemed a bit too much like hard work. I had plastic covered wire from 2 Triumph 2000's a Mark 10 Jag and an XJ6 all in BL colour codes so decided to follow their coding system and make up my own loom and use some vintage style trunking to hide most of them.



It was a cold spell and paint wasn't drying, glue wasn't going off so I thought I'll do the wiring but hadn't reckoned on trying to straighten out cold plastic wire that had been coiled up for the best part of 25 years, it was a real pita to feed six or seven cables through the trunking and had to pull some through two or three at a time with a squirt of WD40 to help it along.
Once done it looks quite in keeping with the rest of the car with only a couple of inches at the control box showing



and fixed to the chassis with brass clips



Two solenoid were added for the horns and the headlights to lessen the load on the wires passing down the inside of the steering column and the underside of the dash is also a lot neater.



The reconditioned steering box was also fitted at this stage before a new plywood bulkhead section around the pedals and steering column was installed.
This is the final tally of all the woodwork that was replaced

Further progress on the Bolens HT snow plough replica despite the workshop feeling like it is 10 degrees colder than outside and the outside temperature is at freezing point. The workshop soon warmed up or we got the hang of the temperature. We finished work on the swivel, started making the clevis forks and finished the main frame.
Video of progress

Happy New Year to all. 

Happy New Year to all. 

Happy and prosperous New Year to one and all

Hogmanay in lockdown - bah humbug!

As I raise another glass of navy rum

A guid new year tae ane an' aw and mony may ye see.

Happy new Year to one and all
    

All the Best one and all. And here's to a much better 2021.

Happy and safe new year to all from Dover.

Happy new year everyone!
 
Here's to a better 2021!  

Happy New Year to you as well Paul!

Happy New Year to all forum users
 
Lets hope 2021 is a better year for us all
 
Paul and Wendy
 
 

Happy New Year to all. 

With the boot floor finished it was time to refurbish the boot lid, it originally had a small steel flap which hinged down to extend the boot floor and with the lid opened against a canvas retaining strap gave a significant increase in carrying capacity. The inner lining had seen better days and my father had removed the flap long ago but for some unknown reason it was still in an old shed complete with it's chrome hinge. The rexine was removed from the flap, the rust sanded off and new vinyl glued on, the hinge was eased off and straightened and a new panel made from 4 mm plywood and again covered in vinyl.



When not being used it is popped against the boot lid.



The aluminium protectors and the retaining lugs were still usable.

The nearside door was next for attention and needed a new section where the lower hinge attached as the original was split and the screw holes were stripped, simply screwing the split together and plugging the holes didn't look as if it would  work so a rather rough piece was cut, bolted and glued to the upper frame and screwed and glued to the bottom door frame.



Only the front half of the plywood lower section remained but it was used as a rough template and a full length piece was cut and sanded to shape but when placed against the frame I only had about 1/8" of aluminium on the leading edge to fold back over. Took a few tries and checks of the frame to realise it was made of 9 mm ply and not 12 mm - a total waste of a good piece of 12 mm plywood !
That was soon corrected and then screwed and glued to the frame.
These doors are quite interesting, the triangular black piece actually hinges up and provides a straight door top for using the sidescreens and when cut away doors are required an armrest unfolds and screws to the top of the cutaway

 



The finished door, with new rear and lower panel and original armrest and flap in leather.



The lower hinge was non original and I found some hinges of the correct depth and width at Vintage Supplies which had to be cut to length and drilled but they fitted perfectly.
The threaded plate in the door top was stripped so a new one had to be made and the offcuts from the hinge did the job.
 

Just as well as my aberdonian tightness did cringe at paying over 40 quid each for them, the offside door was better and only needed a new piece of ply and all the trim.

We have put together a quick Christmas video. Merry Chrismas everyone and we hope to see you in 2021
 
 

Next came choosing material for the interior trim, a lot of which could not be removed intact in order to gain access to the framework , I decided to go with a modern type green vinyl similar in colour to the original along with dark green rubber backed carpeting. The original carpeting was a short pile hessian backed type but I could not find it in a suitable green and I did not think dying it to the correct colour would be a feasible proposition. As someone had coloured the leather rear seats and arm rests with a hideous blue in the past  I also ordered a leather renovation kit in the same shade of green as the vinyl and if the original side panels which I was going to re-use didn't look right I could do them as well.

 

The rear arm rests along with the rexine attachments had to be fitted first before the boot floor as these formed the inside of the boot.
The boot floor was duly cut to size, covered in the new vinyl and fitted along with the repainted steel covers.

  



The old rexine side panels don't look too bad against the new vinyl and the arm rests turned out quite good as well alongside the original rear panels, this is after the seat had also been done.



Before the side panel could be fitted a new door seal was required, not just any door seal but a 3/8" dia piece of wing piping, you can see it running down the door pillar here



You can't buy 3/8" wing piping and certainly not in green so as always we'll just make it.
Sewing machine was already there as I had bought it to do the Carlton interior, 



and a new 3/8" foot was purchased



The original piping had an orange rubber pipe running through it and I managed to get some 10 mm bunsen burner tubing which was the perfect size for the job but I just couldn't get the vinyl to feed through the machine. I tried various methods of lubricating it until someone advised using tissue paper and it worked a treat but a bit of a pain to remove from the thread afterwards. Once a new piece of carpet was sewn on the bottom of the side panels they were then fitted along with the back seat.

Doing well, Joseph.
 
I think you need to tell dad to get some heating in your workshop.

A bit more done on the snow plough. This time we worked on the blade swivel bracket. We already had a swivel bracket from a different tractor which needed to be modified. A lot of work went into modifing this and it might have been easier to make one from scratch
 
 

Hello all, and thanks for the positive comments. Finally got to a point where I could get the tank primed during a dry and low humidity weather window.
Had been busy making the (tiny) tank lid furniture out of mainly Nickel Silver.
The latch bolts are 3/64" (1.2mm) dia silver steel with 1/16" (1.56mm) stainless balls brazed on and fixed with 1/32"(0.8mm)rivets-
 
  
 
Next job is permanently fix the woodwork to the tank and finish ready for paint
Not completely successful with the soldered lettering, as a couple had moved slightly in the process...never mind!, just glad to get past this stage-
 

 
I really need good, dry painting weather now, as I have to paint and assemble this and the T/Engine to fix the dimensions for the towing bar frame for the Water Cart.
 
Regards.
 
 

Not quite a Tot Rod but a Black Hood Wheel Horse look a like, sort of.  Based on a Pride Celebrity scooter bought cheap as a non runner.  Info said 6.25 MPH.  Larger rear wheels make it faster.  Steering wheel in place of the tiller with a dummy V twin engine to hide the scooter steering column.  Chain and sprockets from column to wheel.  2 x 12 volt 75 amp battery's so should give a good run. Still needs decals. Only had short test run so far.  Photo's of Grand daughter  having a play.  She loved it.

Brilliant as usual Richard.    Worth waiting for.