qwakers

the rest of the paint arrived today, so i got on with painting the last of the lorry bits. (this lot of them, anyway...) thats all 1st coat, 2nd coat now done so just got to lacquer them now....

stuck one door on the lorry door was a bit sleepy so put it to bed.. going to look good in the colour i think

getting there so that's everything primed. just the door, corner panel and flap to flat back, then all the above and both sets of hinges to topcoat and lacquer. then 48hrs or so for the paint to harden properly before i dare move them.....

getting on......

anyone guess what im up to? someone let me loose with a spanner this afternoon and something strange happened... all laid out to be cleaned... thoroughly 'cleaned' and primed. (y'know because 'cleaning' it damaged the paint...) its going to look a bit patchy for a while, but i can live with that....

ok so where where we? alternator sorted gear lever springs sorted. so it can be driven again. yay! stuck a ratchet strap between the axle and the cab and took the pressure off the cab tilt ram so i could turn the pin round and attach it properly. made the corners for the rear panel up and welded and painted. (for some reason I didn't take a pic of it after the final coat of white...) so just the rear marker lights to wire back in and its all done! one slight mishap, i found out what happens if you accidentally knock the generators 12v system to 'high charge' instead of low then spend a hour or two welding.... only a small fire... eek.... good job the battery was already knackered...

where where we.. oh yes, the lorry has been wedging my wallet open a lot this last couple of weeks. on the way to the event last month i started to get a charge warning on the dash. turns out my alternator is toast, which is nice. to top that off the cab tilt pump failed, so i needed one of those. so £70 for the tilt pump, that problem is solved. but there are two springs that hold the ball joint in place for the gear stick when you tilt the cab and they disintegrated so that's another £63. then there's the alternator, i pulled it out and took it for a refurb, not possible, you'll see why in the pics I'm about to post, so that's another £160 for a new one. plus gas paint and steel, it owes me £500 this month alone, not including fuel. so the alternator, its this one. which im replacing with a 0 124 655 006 which is the 110a version to this ones 80. and its cheaper, don't ask me why... any who, the strip down. undo the screws x4 in the top and the two nuts holding the two posts in and remove the top case. undo or drill the ones underneath and remove the regulator apply heat and undo the casing bolts remove pulley, split the body and inspect. decide it is totally and completely unserviceable and bin. look at the grooves on that! fyi they should be smooth all the way down...

d'ya like my home made compressor?

What idiot decided to do this in the rain? Petrol compressor works well though. 1st use and works perfectly...

can anyone guess why fuel leaked out of this fuel tank? this is the weld ground back showing no fusion along most of the length of the weld. i hasten to add, my dad welded it, with mig, and the amps set too low. ive bought it home to run the tig down it (and then remembered my welding helmet is still in the lorry.... #-o fixed is fixed, even if I'm no maestro with the tig. also rewelding with tig something that has been MiG welded is, shall we say, challenging.... not bad eh.... yeah that'll just be the best bit i selected there fuel cap fiberglassed on . im no where near good enough with tig to seam weld what looks like 0.4 mm steel.... (nothing to do with the lorry btw, this is off the big diesel generator i was using, just thought it might make you smile.)

did a spot of beefing up on the lorry today.. I caught both corners on the bridge (one day I will get someone to video me coming over it, I am genuinely wider than the bridge...) coming back in last week. I properly mashed them up to the point that I couldn't just wallop it a few times and pull it straight with a ratchet strap, so some major surgery was required. I cut the entire rear panel off the lorry, hammered it straight (took over an hour just go get the bends out!) and welded a length of 2" box all the way along the bottom, primarily to give me a straight edge to work from. I then welded it back on, and made new triangles out of 2" box rather than 1" angle. bend now, B***h! it isn't finished by a long chalk, but I've run out of gas. i worked out I've done over 10.5 meters of welding today!

no, balance beads are snake oil anyway, but in general, the rotating mass is so high, and top speed so low, it doesn't matter, except when it does...

got one of my two new cameras setup yesterday. cab has decided it doesn't want to tilt, the pump is knackered, so i had to run the wire from underneath, which was fun.... in theory, when i originally kitted it out, wireless cameras where a good idea. just pick up power from the nearest source, job done. unfortunately the issues where twofold. first was i ended up running power back from the cab anyway, which made them pointless. second was the inside camera never worked, and the outside one was very intermittent. so all that considered, i went with wired this time round. the kit came with two cameras and allegedly 1 10m cable and 1 6m. having unspooled both cables and found them to both me 6m i knew i was only going to be installing one camera yesterday.. cable ran... (and all the way along the chassis, up the door pillar and across the top.) camera mounted. job done. i sorted the loose work light out whilst i had the van and ladder there.... when picking up yet another load of block up for the parents i had to worlds tightest lane to navigate down, in doing so i managed to dent one of the side panels and rip off both marker lights. being fed up with re attaching them, i fitted new ones... after hammering out the wonky panel, Which explains the ripples and lack of paint. I'm fed up with the thin alu panels not standing up to any bank contact (a common occurrence) so I will be remaking them out of 5mm steel, with "bend now you ****S" written on the back

fitted the horns today. didnt take many pics.... horns are on roof underneath the roof spoiler, so no direct weather issues. headlining down (enough) access isnt easy... horn attached with rivnuts and bulkhead air fitting screwed on. then just a air hose from there to the solenoid and the solenoid wired up to the existing horn location.. i then put the dash lower back in only to find that a load of my accessory wiring doesn't work. its all off 1 10a fuse and that had blown. there is a dead short on one of the circuits. oh joy. (and that dear fellows is why i fuse everything separately normally....) so first things first i cut the feed at the distribution board i used. then i checked at the fuse, and short is gone. i then metered all the 'fed' wired (4 circuits) and found one wire that dead shorts to earth. that'll be it. problem is, i cant remember where that wire goes.... so i pull it out the cab to under the front flap and start pulling a foot or so through the cable ties until i get to where it goes through the grommet into the living. having got that far and found no damage, i now know it feeds the rear and interior cameras. i then unplug the internal camera, still showing a dead short to earth. i unplug the outside rear camera, short gone. oh joy, all of that work and i could have just unplugged the camera... grrr. so i pull all the wire back through. reconnect all the accessory wiring, put the dash back together and put a new fuse in. all is well again. looks like ill be needing new cameras then i suspect its full of water...

i ordered a 'low tone' air horn set for the lorry. https://youtu.be/LajpBOmKjIw not very low tone bleeding loud though!

i'll tell you what seemed like a good idea at the time.... picking up a few ton of paving block of a late afternoon for my parents. i must be a bleeding mug.... there's 1130 block there. that 3.5 ton...

That's better

lorry fiddling time today.... got a bit (quite a bit) of vibration above 50mph on the steering so i decided to rotate the tyre 90* on the rim to see if it evened out. whilst i was at it i decided i might as well pop the other side off, take the tyre off and paint that one too. takes a fair amount of room up in the car... got the machine out and got the tyre off. i think im finally getting the hang of this... painted up and refitted and the tyre moved around on the other wheel. ill check the balance tomorrow and if its no good take it to tructyre (ats for lorrys) and get them balanced. balancing isnt normally necessary on hgv tyres, but sometimes it is....

completed all the above jobs, cleaned out the living and painted the arse of the lorry (has had the corners painted in red oxide for about a year now!) much better

been doing a few jobs to the lorry in readiness for the great trackday tour in December... first off change the switch for the water pump to a double so i have a switch for the heater next was to sort out the cover for the fuse box and label it up also added a wire from the cab to the relay shown on the right, that relay controls the feed to the fridge so it can only run on 12v if the engines running and so the batteries charging. put a carbon monoxide detector in, this serves two purposes, first it adds safety! second it covers the hole i put in the wrong place..... :oops: lastly, fitted the new fridge. left to do, put the 3rd light up in the car section, rewire the 12v charge on the generator and a few other small jobs. getting towards being done

oooh much better...

fixed.

i know, its weird, im working on it.

one thing ive been meaning to do is to flip the tyre round on the n/s/f wheel as its wearing unevenly (will fix the problem causing it someday, but for now) whilst im at it it seems a good time to slap some paint on the wheel. first things first clean all the gunge off the wheel.. good stuff if used neat. then wire wheeled to clean it up before during after primed basecoat lacquer and tyre back on. ] I've put it in the car as i would like the paint to cure properly before tomorrow.... and the full curing time is about 1 hour at 60*c. it must be getting near 40 inside the car parked in the sun so every little helps