Even More Shiny Shiney

Hmm, the eye's come out good 'n proper this morning.

 

Shiny Shiny

So, home from work early, get under the car & remove the rear suspension - on the near side at least. The wheel came off OK, then the brake drum, then the hub, the upright & the driveshaft came off as a unit so I didn't have to remove the big nut on the end of the drive shaft.
So far so good. Then I went for the rear wishbones - & that's where the trouble started.

I put a spanner & a ratchet on  one of the upper wishbone attachment bolts, I pulled on the ratchet, nothing moved, I pulled harder, nothing continued to happen. I pulled harder still .... The ratchet slipped, my hand - with the ratchet, moved (quite fast) in a direction tangential to the axis of the bolt, fortunately there was something soft which stopped me hurting my hand. Unfortunately it was my face.

There was quite a lot of pain, some tears & a bit of blood. I walked myself into the house expecting to see a face like a balloon in the mirror. This proved not to be the case, but as I write, I have a swollen nose & a black eye.

After the application of some cold water & a tissue, I returned to the garage & removed the wishbones. They proved to be less corroded than I'd feared, with the powder coat just being chipped off the outside ends & strangely the lower face of the rear tube of the lower wishbone - I guess that area picks up debris picked up from the tyres. I'll put some protective coating on it when it goes back on. I decided to begin with the wishbones as they were to hand. So I went at them with a wire blush, then a coat of yellow hammerite - not he same yellow as the plastic coat, but yellow never the less

So it's begun, the Fury is in bits & so far I have  badly cut finger & a black eye. Will the car be fit to see before I am? Only time will tell.

Back To The Garage

With my wife off doing her hobby & the daughters at the work (yes - they both have jobs now - Hurrah!) I was left to my own devices. The device in question being the Fury.

As I've mentioned The rear chassis needs the loving caress of a wire brush, so I took down the rear valence & the fuel tank, noting a couple of things that needed doing better when it goes back. I also noted some surface damage where bolts have been rubbing against the tank. Nothing serious, but I took a bossing mallet to the areas to get a little more clearance - wonderful stuff aluminium!

I then tried to remove the aluminium panel under the diff, it's attached by ten stainless 4mm bolts into riv-nuts & five of them unscrewed - the other five span. A few I was able to pull through the chassis tube, the others had to have the bolt heads ground off. Altogether a nasty, uncomfortable & unpleasant job, made worse when the claw hammer I was using to pull one of them through, slipped & the panel edge took a lump of skin 1/4" wide by 1/8" deep off my finger - fortunately it was the same finger I nearly took the end off with the jigsaw 18 months ago & the feeling hasn't properly returned yet, so it didn't hurt much. Every cloud, as they say.

So I haven't got very far yet, but on the other hand I wont be needing the car for the foreseeable future either, so I can take my time.

Still to do:-
Remove the rear suspension.
Run a new return pipe from the rear bulkhead to the tank.
Remove all other equipment aft of the rear bulkhead.
Wire-brush all the chassis aft of the rear bulkhead.
Re-treat the chassis.
Re-assemble the rear suspension.
Bleed the brakes.
Re-fit the fuel tank.
Re-fit the rear valence.

Inactive

So, what’s been going on?

The answer is “next to nothing”, still no job, not even a sniff of an interview, though there is something simmering that could be the answer to all my prayers, about which I’m saying nothing in fear of putting the royal kybosh on it.

On the car front I have decided on one mod for the winter tear-down, I need a de-fuel valve. I came to this conclusion while lying on the garage floor, with one arm of my tee-shirt & my hair soaked in petrol trying to empty the fuel tank.

I’d jacked the back-up & slid the petrol can underneath, I’d disconnected the 12mm supply hose, but moving the fuel from one of the tanks to the other seemed to be beyond me. I managed to get most of it into the Zafira, one can at a time, but there was an abundance of spillage. I abandoned the garage in some haste without using anything electrical & had a shower which almost – but not quite entirely removed the smell of unleaded.

 

I'm promised a quiet day on Saturday, so the plan will be to bag & label as much of the car as possible so the clean up can begin.

 

Not a Good Year

2014 has been a bit of a duff year in Blatterland. I was booked to go on the Rallye-des-Jonquilles, but had to pull out as my job was looking shaky, then I was booked on the SKCC tour of Europe, only to have to cancel that for the same reason, I suffered a spell of ill health, had a break down, separated from my wife (only briefly thank goodness), the daughter's horse was ill, then the daughter was ill & today I've been made redundant, so the car is on a SORN & I've had to cancel my participation in another couple of SKCC runs I was looking forward to (sigh).

I was intending taking the car off the road for the winter anyway as there's some rust on the chassis towards the back that needs dealing with, so a full strip-down is planned, looks like I'll be starting it a month early & I may have more time to do it than I'd anticipated.

So the plan is:-
Drop the fuel tank (unfortunately full of fuel in preparation for this weekend).
Remove all the rear suspension.
Remove the 1/2 shafts & diff.
Remove the exhaust.
Give the rear chassis a damn good wire-brushing.
Treat it with POR15.
Repaint.
Re-assemble
Get another job (for preference this item needs to be further up the list).

Fortunately I've bought what I need to do all this up-front.

That's probably little more than a couple of weekends worth, so I may need to find some more cheap things to do to it to keep my mind active.

We'll see what happens.