:: Diary - February 2022 ::

:: Wednesday, 2 February, 2022 ::

Went along to the farm today, and the deal has gone through (finally!) after gazillions of questions from each side's lawyers, so I will have a new landlord from next Monday! They also (after only 17 years) gave me my own key to the shed!

So, the main task for today is to paint the roof rails over the primer.

This isn't too hard, except that you're painting overhead at a height that is too high to reach sitting in the car flow, but too low to comfortably kneel in, so I end up half-sitting-kneeling-crouching most of the time.

At my age, that's an absolute killer when you've been doing it for 3 hours!

But it all looks good, and it's still has about 4 weeks to dry before the headlining cloth will be delivered, so that should be plenty!

Another wee task is to repair the windlace (the door trim) around the rear passenger door. It's supposed to be stapled to a rubber tack strip, but has detached, along with the front edge of th trip panel beside the back seat. First, I staple the windlace into place...

then I staple the front edge of the trim panel through both, then fold over the panel into place. It needs a wee bit of glue on the back of that, but mostly the seat back holds it in place.

Just to complete the day, I crimp a couple of bullet connectors on to the wires for the dome light. Connect it up temporarily, connect the battery, and it works!

The next jobs will mostly be external bodywork - first the windscreen scuttle so that I can get that all back together before I forget where all the bits go, then the rear passenger door, the front driver's side wing (or fender!) and the two bits on the bonnet where somebody has put in hinge bolts that are slightly too long and have cracked the paint on the top... not me!

I'll also have to check those sticky rear brakes before I drive it anywhere.

:: Tuesday, 2 February, 2022 ::

Back to the farm today - I've kept clear because the place was full of removal vans over the weekend!

There's another couple of bits of door seal (or windlace as the americans seem to call it) that need to be re-fixed. This bit goes down the back of the driver's door, and after I've removed the pillar trim, you can see the bits of rubber tack strip that it's supposed to be stapled into. I pull the windlace into place and staple it...

and then replace the trim.

Nice tidy job. I could do with peeling the vinyl of its backing and re-sticking it to take out those creases, but that's for another day!

There's another bit loose at the back of the rear door on the same side, so I re-fix that in place too.

The next job is to replace the grabber strips along the top of the side windows on both sides.

They are held on to the roof rail with dozens of wee screws.

I experiment with a piece of cloth and my home-made "tucker tools" to push it up between the roof and the grabber rail. It works!

That hasn't taken me very long, so I decide to make a wee start to the bits of paintwork that need attention. Well, to be fair, ALL of the paintwork needs attention, but let's focus on the four bits that look crap from 20 feet away - we can do the close-up stuff (ie all of the rest of the car) later.

The first bit, as I said last time, is the windscreen scuttle. There are two huge cracks and blisters that stick out from miles away, so while I have the wipers etc off, I rub those down with coarse sandpaper, until it's all reasonably smooth. It needs a lot of finer sanding before painting, but I get the worst of it off.

Then I paint the bare metal with a coat of Kurust and leave it to dry.

and here's the driver side. The black bits are where I've removed all the paint to get to the bottom of the cracks.

I'll lave that all to dry before final smoothing, masking and priming. I've got a busy few days ahead with work and several other things, so I don't know when I'll get back to this.