:: Diary - August 2010 ::

:: Sunday, August 1, 2010 ::

It's TVR Car Club meeting day today, so, since the S is in the hospital awaiting chassis surgery, I have to take the Cerbera. First I meet up with Dave and Jim (and Claire!) before setting off. Dave has all the bits he needs to put power steering in his Wedge, but needs to fabricate different brackets for the pump.

We finally set off, the weather is reasonable so we have a nice leisurely drive there. There are 15 TVRs there in total, including 3 Cerberas and another owner who's come in his Tamora because his Cerb's engine isn't well. I won't say why... He asks me about rebuilds, cylinder heads, liners and shims etc, so that he can get his engine back together.

Tom still isn't happy with his car either - he got it back during the week but it's still not running right. He lets me drive it so that I can see what I think - and after a mile or so, I think that it's not fuelling properly, but more importantly, it's backfiring at random (not the popping and banging on the over-run that mine does) so I wonder if the camshaft timing is out. They replaced a cam in April, and I don't think it's set up properly.

Over lunch, we have a discussion about "cars we have owned" - Brian talking about an eclectic range of classic sports cars, me talking about varying buckets of bits flying in (very) loose formation.

They are also making plans for the Big Northern Gathering in Blackpool next month, but I don't think I fancy it.

After the rain goes off a bit, we set off for home, again with Jim following me. After an encounter with a complete tosser in a BMW, who decides to overtake a whole traffic signal queue (which I am at the front of) just as the lights change to green, we drop off Dave and Claire and I head for home.

At least I can put the Cerb in the garage and dry it off a bit - but I do wonder if it's better sitting outside where air can circulate.

That's me now done well over 600 miles since the immobiliser issue, and nearly 1,200 since the rebuild.

:: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 ::

The key fob for the Cerbera is getting more and more fragile - it's ready to fall to bits again. I have the code card, so I order a new fob on the Bay, which should be here in a couple of days.

That was the easy bit. After that, I load up the car with jacks, axle stands, tools, overall, and various other accoutrements (good word that, much more polite than "general shite") and head along to the farm, and the S.

First task is to get the car jacked up high enough to get my fat carcass under it. I realise pretty early in this process that my trolley jack is past its best - it moves about 1/16th of an inch with each stroke of the handle. Maybe it just needs some more oil put in - pain in the arse, that'll be the second time since I bought it for £20 in 1995...

Anyway, car up, supported on axle stands (the first test for stability having shown that it wasn't very secure at all). I remove the wheels and stack them in the corner. Before I forget (this is a note to me so you can ignore this bit if you like) the tyres are stacked, bottom up, in this order: LH front, LH rear, RH front, RH rear.

Right you can pay attention again at the back.

Then I remove the bonnet strut so that I can get it right open (and also to separate it from the bonnet, so that I don't end up trying to lift the bonnet with the rest of the body).

Then I disconnect the battery - just while I remember, because arc welding with the battery connected isn't a very good idea.

I remove the wheel arch liners, just 6 screws each, and the horror is (at least partly) revealed...

There isn't a lot left of the chassis tube alongside the body plate. The first photo shows the bottom, looking up. The second one is taken from the wheel arch, along between the tube and the body. There is virtually nothing left of the top of the tube. The body plate is held in place mainly by the body.

After a few minutes with a screwdriver and a wee 1 pound hammer, the series of holes in the bottom have expanded somewhat... Most of the top half of the tube was lying as crumbs, inside the bottom half.

This is my chassis tube, now lying on the floor. Or what's left of it.

With some trepidation, I inspect the same point on the other side - but it seems to be ok, apart from the paint falling off in chunks. I put a lever in from the front, between the front of the tube and the chassis, and it seems to be pretty strong.

I go along the rest of both sill tubes with my hammer, and it feels and sounds pretty solid. I have a look and a feel at the tops of the tubes and again, they seem to be fine. I also examine the rear suspension and body mounting points, and there no obvious problems.

I'll still be happier when I get the whole body lifted and have a better look, though!

Tune in soon for the next exciting episode! Don't ask me when that will be - it depends what else I find to do instead. At the moment, setting my head on fire with petrol and tamping it out with a sledgehammer holds more appeal that derusting a TVR chassis, but I suppose I'd better get on with it.

:: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 ::

The key fob for the Cerbera arrived today, so I spent 5 minutes programming it into the car's system. I'm not going to post here, the details of how to do that, but it only takes 5 minutes. After I've finished, the new key, and what used to be my spare key, both work. The key I've been using all the time, doesn't. The new key arrived just in time!

:: Thursday, August 5, 2010 ::

I went to buy a welder today, having spent ages deciding on the one I wanted. When I got to the shop though, they had another one that seems to be better for the job, so I got confused. One thing I hadn't thought about: those things draw a helluva lot of current so I don't want to get one too big, because the electrics in the farmer's barn are, shall we say, maybe a wee bit fragile.

However, having done some more research, it seems I would have probably been ok with the one I had, so I'm going back tomorrow.

In the meantime, I decided I was bored with the grey and black format of the web site, so I have re-formatted it to brighten it up a bit, and hopefully bring it a bit more up to date. If you have any comments on the new layout, keep them to yourself because it's my web site and I'll set it out how I like, see?

:: Friday, August 6, 2010 ::

Bought the welder today, took it home, assembled it and set it up, but then realised that I don't have any scrap steel to practice on. I also bought a proper full face shield because I suspect I'll need both hands to get the welding right!

Didn't get along to the car either. This thing called work got in the way.

:: Saturday, August 7, 2010 ::

Right, no more procrastinating. Let's get a start made to lifting this body.

Now, the car is along at the rented barn at the farm. My tools are all in my own garage here at the house. You might be asking "why didn't you fix the car in your own garage you plonker?" - well the answer is, that I don't know how long this will take, and I don't want to leave the Cerbera outside if the weather gets bad - so the Cerb is here and the S is there. Also, I don't want my neighbours complaining about me welding in close proximity to their house (although it's a detached garage, it's in even closer proximity to my house but I don't expect that would go down well as an excuse).

The down side, as I said the other day, is that you have to remember to take everything with you that you might need. For example "I need a bigger lever" is easy if you have a selection of levers and jemmies 6 feet away, that would get you locked up for intended burglary if you carried them in the street. It's not so easy when they are 4 miles away and you've brought one that doesn't fit.

So I load up the car with all the tools I think I might need, and head off.

First I remove the exhaust. That doesn't take long at all - 3 bolts each side at the manifold, 1 each side of the silencer, and 1 at the back. All stainless steel, no rust problem, wheeee!!!!!

The exhaust has to come off so that I can get at the handbrake lever, which goes through the body and is fixed to the chassis at the top of the transmission tunnel. It's so inaccessible that I suspect that TVR might have hung a handbrake lever on a hook at the start of the assembly line, and then built the rest of the car onto it. (Did you know that Citroen 2CVs were made by hanging up a back bumper on a hook, and then building the car on to it, bit by bit? The car was only put onto its wheels by a ramp at the very end of the production line before it was driven out of the factory. Not a lot of people know that).

The cable fixes on to the lever spindle with a splined clamp with a pinch bolt through it. The ends of the bolt are shown by the yellow arrows here. The spanner is on the nut. There just isn't enough room to turn the spanner, I need to remove the prop shaft. No wait a minute, that's held on with 14mm bolts and I haven't brought a spanner that size (see, it's a pain this...).

Plan B - I remove the gear knob and gaiter, then unscrew the 2 screws at the rear of the centre console, and remove what's left of the rubber shroud under the gaiter, around the gear lever. It's falling to bits, so basically falls off. I need a new one... Then if I hold the gearlever to one side, I can get a ratchet spanner with a 13mm socket onto the nut, and a ring spanner on to the rear of the bolt, braced against the chassis. That lets me loosen the pinch bolt, then lever the clamp off the end of the handbrake shaft, take out a second fixing bolt under the lever inside the car, and remove the whole handbrake lever. I'll still have to take the prop shaft off to get the clamp back on though, I think it will need a little "persuasion".

Now that probably didn't take long to read, but that took me two and a half bleeding hours (although admittedly I was also poking crud out of seat belt mounts etc to put rust penetrating fluid in. No wait, I forgot to bring that too...

Add on to that time (a) a chat with the farm man when I got there, (b) a chat later with his wife's uncle who is visiting and wants to see the car, (c) a chat by phone with a Cerbera owner who is looking for advice but I know less about his question than he does, and then (d) about 30 minutes recovery time while I clean up, tidy my stuff away, etc, and it's dinner time!

Now again, if I was at the house, I would have my dinner and then go back out again. But you're not going to drive back 4 miles, and knock on the door for the barn key again, are you?

So that's all I got done today, and that's my excuse.

I'm off now to write my list of thing I have to remember to take next time.

:: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 ::

I meant to go back to the car on Sunday, but in a fit of enthusiasm, I went for a run in the Cerbera instead. Had a nice drive and an ice cream, and then dropped off at Mike's on the way past, to put him off his gardening. Although I was home just after lunch time, I decided to give the S a miss for the rest of the day.

So today, suitably re-invigorated, I set off for the garage with a more ample of supply of tools I might need, including the ones I realised last time that I needed and didn't have. Just as I got there, I got a text with my first feedback on the new web site colours - he doesn't like it. I'd gone off the old grey layout, thought it looked a bit drab and not very reader-friendly, but I can experiment with different colours easy enough, because I'm a genius.

The task for today is to remove the seat belts and as many of the body securing bolts as I can reach with both arms at the same time. The seat belt stalk against the tunnel is easy enough - it bolts straight through the body into a captive thread on the chassis. So do the lower and upper seat belt mountings (the bottom end of the belt, and the one behind your shoulder). The only difficulty with them (especially the bottom one) would be if the captive nut came loose, or if the bracket that mounts it onto the outrigger had rusted through... which has been known to happen. Anyway, the good news is that mine come out.

The seat belt reel is mounted on a bolt through the body, into the bracket under the rear wheel arch, and secured by a nut just in front of the tyre. Which means that it gets covered in all kinds of crud, and rusts. I painted mine which helps to stop them rusting but doesn't help you to loosen them later!

They are a nightmare. The nut is partially rounded so it needs a very good ring spanner on it. The bolt is recessed under the seat belt reel so you need a wee socket extension to reach it. The rust means that the nut is as tight as hell, so it has to be wrestled round 1/8th of a turn at a time. By the time I have done both sides, I am knackered!

Then I lift what's left of the carpet behind the seats, and wedge a ring spanner on to the top of each bolt that goes down beside the transmission tunnel. The nuts on the bottom come off much more easily because they are out of the tyre spray crud.

There are 4 bolts in the front footwells, but I can't reach round the doors to hold a spanner on the top and bottom at the same time. I need a glamorous assistant for that bit, and I don't have one with me. Damn.

So instead I decide to remove the two bolts on top of the transmission tunnel under the dash. First I have to remove the radio, mainly because the wiring is catching on something and preventing me pulling the centre console far enough back.

With that out of the way, the console can be pulled back as far as the gearlever will allow, and that lets you see two bolts through the transmission tunnel, shown by the yellow arrows. You can see them, but you can't get a spanner on them!

I found that the easiest way was to use an offset combi spanner upside-down, by pulling out the front of the console and slipping the spanner underneath. Both bolts go straight into captive threads, no nuts to reach underneath.

So that leaves the body held on only by the 4 bolts in the footwells, plus 2 in the boot (they should be ok, I replaced them with stainless a few years ago). I also still have to disconnect the steering column, the petrol filler, an earthing strap beside the gearbos, and some electrical wiring, and we're ready to lift. I think. We'll find out soon enough, eh?

I call it a day for today - I need a helper to hold a spanner on the bolts inside the car because I can't reach them and the nut underneath at the same time. More importantly, though, I want to play with my welder!

I go to the steel supplier and he sells me a sheet of 2mm plate for £2.

I've set up the welder, watched tuition videos (thanks Chris!) - now to put it into practice!

First attempt is an absolute disaster - I followed the welder's set-up instructions but the settings are pants. I turn up the wire speed and increase the voltage a bit, and set off again. I also adjust the darkness of my welding visor, because I can't see a bloody thing even when the arc is at full tilt.

Between adjusting the wire speed and the settings, and looking on the reverse to make sure it's welding right through, I reach weld 6, and I'm getting fairly happy. So far I've been "pulling" the torch away from the weld (welding left-to-right) so I decide to try "pushing" right-to-left. First attempt is a disaster because the wire jammed in the gun - it got a kink in it coming off the drum and stuck in the feed roller. That cleared, I set off again - and pushing seems to be a lot easier than pulling, for me at least - you can see better what you're doing, for a start.

I'm pretty happy with that for a first go - I could do with getting the weld a little further through the metal (I'm trying to avoid using the "penetration" word for any silly schoolboys out there) so I'll have another go at fiddling with more knobs (behave!) when I have more time.

:: Thursday, August 12, 2010 ::

Found myself with a half-hour to spare this morning so I nipped into a Ford dealer to see if they still sell the rubber gaiter that goes around the gear lever (under the pretty leather one). Mine is completely knacked, with several bursts and holes. It's off a Ford Transit and its part number is 6112048, but it's not available any more.

I've been hunting for them online as well, but no joy. I've found a couple that might fit instead, need to do more research. There is one place that might still have them...

Anyway, when I get home, I have another hour of welding practice, experimenting with settings to see what more / less voltage does, faster / slower wire speed, more / less shielding gas, till I think I've found better settings than I had yesterday - a nice flat weld that penetrates the sheet. Still a little bit spattery though - I think I need a slightly faster wire speed because it's burning back slightly to the tip.

Still pretty happy with the welding progress though!

:: Friday, August 13, 2010 ::

The rear shock absorbers are pretty knackered (they are leaking, amd not really damping spring movement any more) so I am going to replace them while I have the body raised - it will make access to the top bolts easier, especially if I have to take an angle grinder to them, like I had to when I replaced the front springs a few months ago.

I order a full set of Gaz dampers and springs.

:: Saturday, August 14, 2010 ::

I thought that I had a wee helper lined up for today, to help me get these last bolts out. I sit around the house till 10am, and there's no sign of him emerging from his pit though, so I decide that I can manage on my own. Don't quite know how yet, but I will.

It's a right pain in the arse, isn't it, when you realise that the only person you can rely on is yourself?

First step is to disconnect the steering column from the rack. I release the clamp bolt from the upper UJ, and make sure that the position is marked - then it's just a case of turning the clamp out of the way and releasing the joint. I have a universal steering gaiter over the joint to keep muck out, so I had to release the cable tie holding the top end of that, and pull the gaiter back a wee bit to let the clamp turn enough.

Next step is to remove the 4 bolts across the front of the footwells. These are the ones you can't reach from inside and outside at the same time. I set up a block of wood on the floor to hold the combi spanner at the right andle. Then I wedge in another bit of wood to prevent it turning. Then I put a hammer on top of the bolt head, to weigh the spanner down over the hex, and then another bit of wood on top of the hammer.

Then I can clamber underneath, and take the nut off with a socket and ratchet. They are very rusty and very tight, though, so the spanner slips off several times as I loosen each nut, so I have to go through the spanner balancing / wedgine / weighing rigmarole countless times. One of them comes off a couple of turns but then isn't for moving any further, so I have to use a nut splitter to open the nut up a bit.

After an hour or so, I have the four bolts out!

The last holding down bolts are in the boot, and go through the metal trim across the back edge of the chassis, above the exhaust. These you can reach (just!) both ends at the same time, and because they are stainless and were replaced relatively recently (3 years rather than the 21 years the other body bolts have been in!) they come out easily.

Final main item - the petrol filler. The tank is fixed to the chassis, and the cap to the body, so you have to separate them! My filler neck had been carefully carpeted, using what looked like a whole tin of evostick. It took ages to peel the carpet back off the neck to get to the hose clips.

The filler is metal, with short lengths of rubber hose at the top and bottom. Disconnect the hose clips and pull the cap out. There is also a short stub for a smaller hose, which I think is a breather connected to the "carbon purge canister" - take off that clip and pull off the hose as well.

I think that's just about it! I might have to disconnect brake or clutch pipes if they look like they might be about to become over-stretched, (oh and there's an earth strap between the chassis and the gearbox that might need to come off).

I tried lifting it in each corner, but the back didn't want to move at all. I was pretty sure there was nothing holding it down though, it just needs more even lifting rather than one corner at a time.

One thing does make them tight though: if there are a lot of tiny stones wedged between the outer edge of the outrigger and the sill, they can prevent the body lifting. I push a scraper between the tube and the sill, all the way along, and dislodge hundreds of wee bits of stone and grit!

That's as much as I can do today though - I need some mates to lift it (or alternatively, a trestle hoist and some ratchet straps... hmmm).

:: Saturday, August 14, 2010 : Supplementary::

Later on in the evening, I sit down to list and order all the new bolts, nuts, washers etc that I need to replace the body later, and to put the shock absorbers on. I'm going to use stainless steel for the body holding down bolts, but ordinary HT steel for the seat belt bolts - stainless steel can be more brittle, especially in shear, so I'm not risking that.

There is a good list of bolt sizes etc on Pistonheads, and as I go through it, I realise that there's two listed that I haven't found: there are two bolts under the carpet below the seat belt reel, that go downwards into the chassis bracket. Better take them out as well eh?

I order all the bolts at a cost of 45 quid - this is getting expensive...

So let's recap on where all these body bolts are:

2 in each front footwell;

1 in each rear wheelarch, which also holds the seat belt reel in place;

2 more holding each seat belt, 1 beside the seat and 1 behind the shoulder;

1 holding each seat belt stalk into the side of the transmission tunnel;

1 underneath the seat belt, downwards into a captive nut in the same bracket;

1 each side of the chassis just behind the centre exhaust mountings;

2 on top of the transmission tunnel; and

2 in the boot.

The seat belt ones are UNF thread and the other body bolts are metric. Confusing eh?

:: Sunday, August 15, 2010 ::

Back along to the garage today to take the last 2 bolts out.

There they are under the carpet! The carpet is glued down and almost falls to bits as I lift it. The carpet down behind the seats is also falling to bits - legacy of too much dampness in the past, I think.

The bolts are as tight as hell - rust on top of the outrigger has damaged the ends of the thread. I use the power wrench to take them out a bit, then drip some rustbuser down the threads, and then tighten and untighten them a couple of times, and they come out a lot easier once the lubricant has worked into the threads.

Then I drill out the remains of the rivets that held the inner rubber gear gaiter in place. I wish I hadn't torn it getting it off now - 2 months ago I found a place selling them, and now they are out of stock and unobtainable. They are off an early Ford Transit apparently, so I need to visit some scrap yards...

After all the bolts are out, I have a go at lifting the body, but it's too heavy. I can jack up each corner in turn though, but when the body angles over, it wedges onto the chassis and you can't lift it any more. The bits of wood I have with me are too thick to wedge in with a "half-lift" in one corner.

I go home and cut up some thinner wood into little squares that I can pack in, and also some thinner plywood to use as packing spacers. I'll have another go at jacking the body up a bit at a time, packing it off the chassis with wood as I go. If that doesn't work, I'll have to track down some unwilling helpers.

Finally, my son is reading my site on his Macbook, and the format is knackered. A bit of research shows that there's an html command that explorer, opera and firefox all recognise, but safari doesn't. I go through every page on the site correcting that... so now it looks right in Safari too!

:: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 ::

Right. Lift or bust! (and no, that has nothing to do with cosmetic surgery for ladies).

First, there is a cable tie that holds the brake pipe to the top offside chassis member, at the front. I cut it off, to allow the pipe to flex a bit as the body lifts. The clutch pipe has a big bend in it so shouldn't be stressed. Not as much as I am by this stage.

I've bought another trolley jack, so that I can lift one end at a time, and not just one corner. I put a jack under the rear edge of the floorpan, on each side of the main chassis. I have a couple of big blocks of wood on top of the jack heads to spread the load so that the fibreglass floor doesn't crack. It lifts easy, a bit at a time on each side.

You need to disconnect the wiring to the petrol tank sender. There's also a small earth connection to the end of the top crossrail just in front of the petrol cap, and that has to be disconnected too. You can see it in this photo just in front of the block of wood between the chassis and the body. I put one long bit of wood across from side to side, then pack it up between the wood and chassis with thin plywood. There are a couple of rubber pads just at that point, and I'll need those when I put it down again, so I put them away safe.

You can also see the cloth stuffed into the neck of the petrol tank to stop any stray sparks dropping in!

Then I lift the front end and pack that up above the inner front body mounting. A quick crawl underneath with a light, confirms that nothing is becoming overstretched. There is a cooling hose from the heater that goes down the bulkhead to a pipe under the oil filter, and that looks like the main constraint. We'll see how we get on without draining the cooling system. So far so good!

Then it's back to the rear, and lift that a little more, then the front again.

This is about as high as you can get it without disconnecting that coolant pipe at the front offside, or a fuel hose at the rear nearside. Should be high enough to get around it to repair it though.

The damage is revealed! Not pleasant, but I'm glad I noticed it!

Then a job I hate, I haven't forgotten the last time I did this 3 years ago. I wire brush all the paint and rust off the outriggers, the outer body mounts and the seat belt mounts, using a rotary brush in my angle grinder. Fortunately, the rest of the chassis is in reasonable nick.

This is the full extent of the rust repair required. The mounting plate is only held on with about 5mm of wafer thin metal at one corner!

Then it's on to the other side, again using the wire brush to clean off all the rust and paint. This unfortunately shows that the drivers side, which looked perfectly ok, is actually worse than the other side. Although the damage is only to this inner corner of the sill tube (where crud gets caught on top of the mounting plate), the front tube, that goes out from the main chassis beside the wheel arch, is also rusted through in the same place. Although you can't see it in this photo, there's a hole along the top of the plate, from the corner to the point where the diagonal bracing strut comes down. I'll have to cut out and rebuild this whole corner.

So - there's the damage!

I need to finish wire brushing the driver's side, and then remove the rear shock absorbers, and clean up and paint the chassis member that the spring / shock mounts on to - you can't get to it properly when the body is down.

I'm disappointed during this job, how little Hammerite and waxoyl is left on these tubes. It's fine where the chassis is reasonably protected, but exposed bits have been stripped bare where the paint has been chipped off by stones and grit. I've read recently that Hammerite is too brittle where metal might not be protected from flying stones or grit, so I think that, once I've repaired it, I'll try a different paint system on these bits. POR15 seems to get good reviews and is far more chip-resistant, so I'll get some of that, and a topcoat paint (POR15 is light-sensitive and needs to be covered).

:: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 ::

I must be mad.

After my day pulling the S to bits yesterday, I went to the Chiropractor (not as a consequence, I had it booked anyway) who asked me if I'd been taking it easy and not twisting myself about. "Oh yes," says I without a flicker of guilt, "I've been good".

Got up this morning and felt like I'd spent the night in a tumble drier. I was sore everywhere.

So what do I do to recover on my night off from working on the S? Yes I decide that for a change, I'll help Adrian refit the front suspension and front brakes to his Chimaera. 5 bleeding hours it took... 5 hours kneeling and bending and pulling and generally not relaxing very much at all! I did get a lie down at one point while I waited for the blood supply to my feet to resume...

Still, on the plus side, we got it finished.

On the double plus side, I went there and back in the Cerbera so got a run out of it too! And I got to drive it in the dark for only the second time since I got it (and the first time, I think, since I changed the headlamp bulbs) and it's not too bad. Not great, but better than the two asthmatic glow-worms it had at first.

I'm really sore now though... I'm getting too old for all this!

:: Friday, August 20, 2010 ::

I meant to get back to the car yesterday, but this thing called work got in the way. I hate when that happens.

Today was a close call as well - I started off answering one email at about 8am, and was still there at mid-day, so by the time I got organised, changed, loaded the car with tools etc, and got along to the farm, it was after 2:00. It was also bloody roasting.

First, I manage to wriggle a camera in under the body to show you the rear edge of that front sideways tube on the offside - as you can see, it's well gone. I'll have to replace that whole corner.

Anyway, the tasks for today are first, to remove the rear shock absorbers. I want to do it now in case they are as stubborn as the front ones, where I had to cut through the mounting bolts with an angle grinder. It will be a lot easier to get an angle grinder into position while the body is lifted!

As it turns out, though, my fears were unjustified (there's a first!). The bolts come out no trouble, and both rear suspension units are off the car within 10 minutes.

Then it's back to wire brushing a mixture of paint, rust and waxoyl off the chassis and the vertical spring hangers at the back - again, it's easier to reach the back edges while the body is lifted, and most of the original powder coat is coming off in slices. By the time I have finished that, the floor of the garage looks like a martian beach. And I look like I've been lying on it with a coating of glue to make the dust stick.

The offside outrigger is stripped back to bare metal, and apart from the damage I'd already found at the front (that started me off on the damn fool project in the first place), the rest of it is fine.

Not so the offside. The wire brush removes a clump of dust and muck from the end plate of the rear outrigger, and exposes a tiny pinhole. I have a poke at it with a screwdrive, and it seems to be pretty localised. I hammer a drift into the pinhole and this is as wide as it gets. So I need to put a tiny plate over that, but it can't stick out too far or the body won't go back over it.

I've also stripped the body mounting plates in the rear wheel arch, and they seem to be fine. The spacers that were between them and the body have crumbled away to nothing, though, so I wondered if they were originally metal (to spread the seat belt load). Other owners say that theirs were plastic though so I'll have to make new ones. I am pretty sure that the plates aren't any thinner than they should be - I did notice that the bits that fell out still had the original powder coat sticking to the back edge of them, so that would suggest that they weren't part of the bracket, and have flaked off.

I go over the rest of the bits I have stripped, to make sure that I have now found all the damage, and I'm sure now that I have. There is no paint left, and no rust, that could be hiding anything.

So, that means that the next step is serious - get a cutting blade in the angle grinder and start cutting bits off the chassis! Remember to measure everything first so that you can make sure everything is going to line up when you come to lower the body back on!

I've also spent nearly £80 on POR15 paints today - the rust resistant paint, a two-part topcoat (POR 15 is UV sensitive and will deteriorate in sunlight - and besides you can't get the rust-resistant stuff in red) and some POR15 solvent, because the word on the street (or rather on the forums) is that without it, you'll never get any splashes off your skin, and you'll go about with hands like Geronimo (don't ask me "How!") until the postman brings you some. Seeing as I still have to turn up for work looking fairly presentable, I'd better not take the risk.

So far, I've spent £80 on paint, £45 on new chassis bolts, and £28 on a second trolley jack (that I could argue I needed anyway).

I've also spent £230 on a welder, but I was thinking about that anyway, so it's not specific to this job. I also bought new Gaz shock absorbers, but again, that was on the list anyway (I spoke to the man from Absolutely Shocks when I was at S Club in May) so again, that's not specific to this job.

Apart from the chassis tubing and a bit of metal to make a new mounting plate (if I need one), I don't see what else I'm going to need. I wish I hadn't said that, because something is now bound to go expensively wrong...

:: Saturday, August 21, 2010 ::

Didn't get along to the S today. First off, I had to take the Cerbera to act as a backdrop for a cheque presentation by the Sporting Bears, to the charity we collected for when we did Dream Rides at Thirlestane in June. Managed to get there and back before the rain came on!

After that, I went to the scrap yard to see if I could find a gear lever gaiter to replace the one I ripped off. Unfortunately they now close early on a Saturday so I was too late.

So I had another wee play with my welder, hacksawing strips off the plate I got to practice on, and then welding the strips back together. Seems to work ok!

Then I got ambitious, and tried a couple of "plug weld" joints - you drill a hole in the top plate, clamp the two bits together, then weld them together through the hole. That seems to work ok as well! More cutting, more welding bits together, and the results seem perfectly acceptable - better than I expected to do, to be honest.

Next step - welding the car itself! This is the bit I'm looking forward to, but also really dreading!

Oh and, I noticed when I was uploading updates to the web server last night - this page is now the biggest single page on this whole web site! I can't half gitter on...

:: Sunday, August 22, 2010 ::

Still didn't get along to the S today. I went down to B&Q to buy myself a metal file (I have one but it's not rough enough!), and some jig saw blades for cutting metal.

Came back home and cut out and shaped a tiny corner of metal for fixing the end of the rear chassis crossmember.

And that's about it! I did mean to go along to the car, but I didn't.

:: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 ::

I spoke to Dave on the phone last night, told him that I hadn't been back to the car and was a wee bit less than confident about cutting my car to bits! So he very kindly (and foolishly) offered to have a look and help me tonight.

So first job was to nip in to the steel suppliers and buy some 1.5 inch, 1.6mm wall thickness steel tube, They didn't have any ERW, only seamless, but that'll do! I also bought some slightly smaller diameter tubing to fit inside, so that I can make strengthened joints. Whole lot came to £12.00!

So then it's along to the garage. First job: weld that little patch into the end of the rear outrigger tube. That was easy, then I grind the welds down a bit so that the body will fit back on.

My next job is to measure up both sides: where the chassis tubes join, where the mounting plates fit, where the mounting holes are, all the dimensions I need to make sure the new bits line up. Important tip - DO NOT measure one side and assume that the other side will be the same - mine was't - it was close, but it wasn't right (as that guy Roy Walker used to say on "Catchphrase"). Measure twice, cut once. Or in my case, measure over and over again because the numbers don't add up, and you can't work out if it's the numbers or your adding that's wrong.

Then I am just making a start to cutting the left front corner off the chassis when Dave arrives. The angle grinder doesn't go all the way through (it's only a 4 inch blade, so by the time you take into account the thickness of the angle grinder body, you can't get right through a one and a half inch tube.

While we're on the subject of tubes, I manage to put the angle grinder down on its own cable, and cut through it. That requires a 5 minute diversion while we re-cable the grinder.

Then we cut through the 45 degree joint at the front of the chassis, and also cut off part of the body mounting plate that has almost rusted away. We leave enough to show where the bolt hole should be though! Then Dave hacksaws the end of the chassis tube nice and straignt, and I make final adjustments with a file. So that's the chassis ready for the new bit.

Dave makes up the new bit in about half the time it would have taken me. First we cut the length, then Dave uses the end of the old tube we cut off, to mark on the angle of cut for the new one. We deliberately cut it a mm or two too long: it's easy to shorten a tube, but not so easy to lengthen it! After various trial fits and filing or grinding bits off, we're happy that we have a good fit.

Then we cut a bit off the smaller diameter tube, to fit inside. Another check fit, check the dimensions, especially the width to the outside of the tube (too wide and the body won't go back over), then tack weld the inner bit inside the outer bit. Make sure it's straight, and then Dave seam welds all the way round.

And that's as far as we got, before the farm man suggests that it's getting late, time we were leaving. I need to grind that seam weld down a bit, and then refit that bit to the chassis and see if I also need to shorten the chassis a little bit. Then plug weld that in place, weld the other end on, and we're laughing!

Then I've only got the other side (the tricky side) to do!

:: Wednesday, August 25, 2010 ::

Again, a bit busy with work, so not much progress on the car.

I do manage to tidy up the welds on the bit of tube Dave joined yesterday, using a grinder first, and then a hand file. It fits almost perfectly inside the other section of tube I brought home, with a nice even (weldable) gap all the way round.

I also make a cardboard template of the body mounting plate, to help me make up a new one to butt against the new tube.

The good news is that the postman brought another parcel today - POR15 rust preventer, red topcoat, and solvent. I had the "Metal Ready" already.

But first, I need to finish the repair to the left hand side, then get on to the other side.

:: Thursday, August 26, 2010 ::

Meant to get along to the car this afternoon, but ended up with a work meeting, then a pile of emails to work through, then some stuff about selling my house, so I wasn't finished all that till tea time. So I decided to take the Cerbera to the last Dreadnought track night of the season (as a spectator!). I know that Dave, Mike and Jim are going, so one of them can buy the chips.

I do find time to cut a piece of plate to the shape of the template (a 45 degree angle at one end) and file it straight. I need to use the cardboard to work out where the other end should be cut, but I'm half way there.

I'll get this car finished yet! I'm not in a hurry (as you've probably noticed) but I'll try to get it finished over the weekend. But I might not.

See the other night when I said that this was the biggest page on the site? Well I thought I'd better check the site's size - and it's only just slightly smaller than the web space I have (which is 100 megabybytes). I've got enough left for maybe another month or so. A few statistics: 140 web pages, and 1,200 photos, plus another 1,200 thumbnails (the wee photos in the text that you click on to open the big version). I need to buy more web space!

I also need to get a bleeding life, but that's another story.

:: Friday, August 27, 2010 ::

Managed to get along to the car for a couple of hours today. I want to get the left side finished so that I can start on the right.

I think (well Dave thinks and I agree with him) that I should weld the body mounting plate on to the tube, before I weld the tube in place. That lets me get to both sides of the weld, see? So I wriggle the tube into place, and tape it in position for now. Then I take my cardboard template and try it in place. I've already cut a 45 degree angle to join to the new tube, all I need to do is mark off its length to the other side. Once I cut the template to size, I hold it in place then mark its position on the new tube using a permanent marker along its edge, with crossmarks at the ends of the plate to fix its position.

Then I mark the bottom of the tube so that I can work out the angle to fix the plate on.

Then I put the tube down, upside down, between two blocks of wood, with the bottom mark at the top. Then I use the plywood packing pieces to lay the plate level, so that it just touches the marks. Then I tack weld the plate at both corners and in the middle.

Then I waggle the whole assembly back into place, and check that everything lines up. It does, so I mark the position of the hole for the body bolt, and remove the whole lot, and seam weld the plate onto the tube along the top and bottom, and drill the bolt hole out.

Then I mark the length of the internal joining tube onto the old outrigger, and drill two 7mm holes on the outside, 2 on the inside and 2 on the bottom, to plug weld when everything is in place.

Then I put the whole assembly back in place, clamp up the body plate, and tack weld the front corner. Check all the alignment again, then seam weld the front joint and fill in the outside plug welds.

When I come to do the plug welds underneath, I find that I can't weld upside down, and burn wee holes in the old chassis. I need to practice that! (p) Then I seam weld the join in the chassis tube (the outside bit - the other bit is also upside-down!

Finally I weld the top and bottom of the body plate, the bottom weld is upside down but seems to weld ok - but I seem to have overloaded the welder because it cuts out.

While it's cooling, I grind down the main welds (the body might not fit if the welds stick out too far). You can see the two plug weld behind the seam.

And here's the repair in place!

And here's what's left of the old outrigger, just for comparison!

The welder isn't coming back on. I take the fuse out and test it. I need another fuse and I haven't got one. So that's the end of welding for today! I still have to finish the plug welds, and the back edges of both tube joints.

It's 20 to teatime though so I'm packing in anyway.

I pack the welder and all the tubing into the car, so that I can make up the opposite corner at home. And fix the welder if it needs it.

When I get home I discover that there's a blob of weld on the wire feed nozzle across to the gas shroud, so it's probably shorted out. I can't get the shroud off with the blob of weld in place, and I can't get the weld off while the shroud is on. Eventually I manage to break the weld off but it takes a wee bit of the brass neck with it, so the wire nozzle is as tight as hell (the wire feed is ok, screwing the nozzle in and out of the neck, isn't).

I also clean out the inside of the gas shroud which is blocked with gunge. Then I reconnect everything, turn the gas on and try a couple of trial welds - they are perfect, the best I've done yet. I think the gas supply has been partly blocked for the last couple of uses. You live and learn!

:: Saturday, August 28, 2010 ::

Had a busy day today, but not on the car...

I started to make up the tubing for the right side, by cutting a tube at a 45 degree angle. Except it turned out to be a 43 degree angle or something, so I had to do a little bit of grinding and filing to get the two bits to fillet together.

But they did! I didn't get around to welding it though - too many other things to do! I did manage to measure up for the body mounting plate to go on that side.

I was hoping to be further on than this, but I've been busy with other things too. Plus I'm having to work out what I'm doing as I go along, and I'm not the quickest worker-outer in the world. I'm not that bothered about time, I want to get it right.

Did sort out the webspace issue I mentioned the other day - I have unlimited web space now!

:: Sunday, August 29, 2010 ::

Woke up this morning keen to get on with the car. Started off by welding the two tubes at right angles

Then I thought I'd grind the weld down to make sure the body would fit back on. Because it was still early and I'm working on this at the house, I decide not to use the angle grinder, but to use a hand file instead. It takes ages but at least it's quiet!

Unfortunately I find that the angle between the tubes has pulled in slightly, by maybe a degree or so. Nothing to worry about (I don't think!)

Then I need to make up the body mounting plate. Now it's not as simple as sticking a plate across the angle (well it is, but it needs to be at the right depth from the top of the tubes). The plate on the car is 27 mm from the top. I find two bits of wood, one 12mm thick, the other 15mm, and I turn the assembly upside down and wedge them into the corner. Then use two bits of cardboard against the tube at that height, and tape them together to get the angle, and draw on the tube with a permanent marker along the top of the card.

Then I used another piece of card 100 mm wide (the width of the plate) and marked on it, the angles of the tube, from the other two bits of card, then cut it to the shape I need. Another trial fit and it's fine. Then I mark round the card onto some 3 mm plate, and this is where it all starts to go wrong.

You see, I haven't got anything to cut the plate. A hacksaw can't reach once you get to the point where you've cut down 4 inches and the hacksaw frame hits the edge of the metal. The cutting disk I had for the angle grinder is knackered. I decide to use a jigsaw but the blade snaps about 3 inches into the cut and I don't have any more blades.

I could go and buy a handsaw, or jigsaw blades, or another cutting disk, but instead I take the huff and watch the telly, cut the grass, atc.

Between people asking for lifts, computers fixed, and various other distractions, I don't bother trying to get back to the car repair. I'll do it during the week when I can get peace!

:: Monday, August 30, 2010 ::

Got home from work early, so decided to have another go at making up this mounting plate, so I stop off and buy more jigsaw blades. I've also had a think about what I was doing yesterday, and I think that the plate heeld in a vice was vibrating too much, and that's what snapped the blade. I need to fix it more solidly before cutting.

So... I use a couple of G-clamps to clamp the plate to the workbench, with the cut line just over the edge. I also need some blade coolant.... let me see... Fairy Liquid!

So after applying a few drops of Fairy to the cut mark, I set off with the jig saw again. 3 mm plate is about the limit for this blade so I take it slowly, with extra Fairy as necessary. It's slow, but it gets there! Perfect cut!

This shows the plate in position, at approximately the right height (bear in mind this is upside down, so the body sits in the gap where the wood spacers are. I decide not to weld it up yet, for 2 reasons: First I want to cut the old one off, turn it over and check that height.

Second reason is that I will be cutting the cross-leg shorter, so that it fits on the outside of the join where the diagonal cross-brace joins the tube from the top. Both the cross-brace and the rest of the chassis tube are ok so I am not replacing them unless I have to. The mark on the tube half-way between the ends of the plate, shows where that brace joins on.

The plan is to cut through the chassis tube outside the brace join, and through the chassis plate, and then cut this new plate along the same line, and join the two together. So I don't want to weld the plate on just yet, until I have cut it to shape.

I've also marked where the bolt hole has to be, but I'll check that on the car after I've welded the plate on, and before I drill it.

So now I need to cart all my stuff back along to the garage, finish welding the left side on, and then start to cut and fit the right side together.

Not today though.

:: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 ::

Right - no putting off any longer - I need to make some progress on the car.

First I have to finish off the left hand side - I still have some plug welds to fill, plus the back edge of the tube joins (the bits I have to do upside down). Eventually I find the right welder settings that result in a good penetrating join, without dripping blobs of molten metal all over the floor. A bit of grinding (well rather a lot of grinding) and it's done!

The back edge of the angled joint at the front corner is a dawdle - perfect weld in a single run! Yay!

So then it's on to the right hand side. First I clamp the new pipes into place so that I can check the approximate fit, and it looks good! You can see in these photos how the front tube extends past that cross-brace, so that I have options on how to join that all up, depending how rotten the back of that front tube is.

Then I mark up my cut line on the sill tube (allowing 3mm for "adjustment" later - it's easier to file 3mm off, than it is to add it on if it's too short!) Then I cut through the front tube with an angle grinder, and then at an angle through the body mounting plate. Unfortunately just as I finish, the cutting disk catches in the tube and shatters - never use an angle grinder without the disk guard and without proper gloves and eye protection! I cut through the side tubes with an ordinary hacksaw - nice straight controllable cut!

And here's the bit I cut off earlier... IN addition to the obvious big holes, there are two cracks - one in the front tube from the edge of the hole into the angled welded join, and another underneath that goes under the sill tube and halfway up the other side. It was only just holding together. Bear in mind that none of this was apparent while the body was on the car!

That leaves me with this. The metal at the back of the tube has almost rotted away and is wafer thin - it resists finger pressure but there's no point welding anything structural to that - I've seen thicker Kit Kat wrappers! So a change of plan is required.

Now that I've cut through the tube, I can see that the front, top and bottom are ok, it's only that back edge that's rusted away. How about if I cut through the chassis to leave the cross-brace in place, and then cut the new tube so that it fits on? There would be a smaller diameter joining tube inside, plug welded to the existing chassis and the new repair. That removes all of the old body mounting plate, so I can put my new one on.

That does mean that I can't put the plate on until I've joined the tubes together - so it's just as well I didn't assemble all that yesterday eh? I also turn the old bits upside down so that I can check how deep the body mount plate is recesses - it's 27mm to the surface of the plate, 30mm to the underside if you have it upside down. I remove the permanent marker lines and mark new ones at the right height, to help me line it all up once it's on the car.

Can't do it today, though - I've broken my last cutting disk. And I have a chiropractor appointment which will go along the lines of "You haven't been twisting about under cars on concrete floors have you?" While I reply like the wee dog on the Churchill ads "Oh no, no, no, no, no..."

I'm starting to see progress at last!