Well after a week I have been productive in some areas, and not productive at all in others.
When welding up my workbench last weekend, I managed to knock the gas cylinder over and put a large hole in the rubber hose, which quickly ended my ambition of getting the suspension brackets welded in place. I've been quoted £10 delivered for a new hose/brass fixing so its not too bad.
So until I find some more money I've been trying to find jobs to do on the car until I have more money to buy some more welding wire, flap discs, new hose, new tips and shrouds.
So far I have:
- Ground down all of the welds on the bottom, left/right sides of the chassis and I've half finished the seat back welds.
- Stripped down my drum brakes, as they are very rusty so thought the back plates could do with some time in the electrolysis bath. I then found out that the transformer I was using is broken and blowing fuses, so that has been chucked out and I need to find a new power source to get me up and running again.
- Since moving to the new house I had noticed a lot more rust on the chassis, and due to having no money to finish welding the bits to it and going away for 2 weeks with the army at the start of sept. I decided to give the chassis a quick coat of primer as I felt that the time required to remove the primer to weld was going to be much less than the time to completely de rust the chassis. To put 1 coat of primer on all tubes accessible with the chassis sitting upright took about an hour with a roller
, so I would highly recommed doing it this way and getting the inaccessible areas with a brush instead of painting it all with a brush. - I finished making all of the chassis plates I hadn't made yet, or misplaced during the move.
- My work bench is pretty much finished now, I just need to weld some cross bracing to the bottom of the legs to prevent them from moving and then weld on some nuts to allow each leg to be adjusted to make sure it is level. The top feels unbelievably solid, it has been made from 3mm thick plate with 80mm of wooden slats below that and then top off with a rim of 3mmx30mm steel angle. It is all held together with the M12 bolts which were supposed to be used for my car suspension, so it looks like I will be buying a new set
.
So it is all slowly getting there, once my finances allow it I will be buying the bits I need for my welder and getting cracking with these suspension mounts!