8v Further Works

Tackled the spare wheel cage today. I had some mild steel tubing, so made up an extra section – tacked in place:

Neither the cage or spare wheel move about now. Welded up the additional section, cleaned the whole frame and gave it two coats of POR15 so should be able to get it fitted again tomorrow.

The big job for the day was to fit the replacement drivers door. Ian had issues getting the bolts undone when taking it off the shell, so had cut it off. I didn’t think it’d be too much effort to get the bolts undone. I was wrong!

I thought this would work. It didn’t. Couldn’t get enough weld penetration into the bolt to stop the nut separating off when force was applied. Had the nut glowing red hot! Tried a couple of times to be sure.

In the end a few heat cycles from the welding was enough for one of the bolts and I was able to get it loose with mole grips. For the other it wasn’t enough, so I changed tactic, which worked, but then revealed the next problem:

Fortunately once the threaded section is free the rest can be tapped out, but I had to get a slit disc in the angle grinder to cut the remains of the chassis side of the hinge out first.

Fitted the new door. Then discovered that the check strap wasn’t working. Bit knackered:

Fitted a spare from one of the doors that came off. Reassembled the door, then discovered the door lock linkage for the pop up button wasn’t connected up properly so had to undo it all again to correct it. Awkward bastard difficult job where you can’t see what you’re doing.

Fixed it in the end but what a ball ache of a job – took ages.

Had to adjust the exhaust as I’d set it too high when fitting the cat and it was rattling on the underside. Also bled the rear brakes again. Good for the MOT retest on Monday. If the battery hasn’t gone flat again…