It is all so very Super

[cuntbuster]

Amazing work here JimH. There can’t be a lot more work for you to carry out now, on the road early next year?

[Eddie Honda]

I've seen that company name around.

It's funny how it is with haulage firms- in my head Norbert Dentrangles are everywhere but actually turned into XOL or something unmemorable that I can't remember.

Aye, Nobby Dressingtable is XPO Logistics these days or something.

[Warren t claim]

I've seen that company name around.

It's funny how it is with haulage firms- in my head Norbert Dentrangles are everywhere but actually turned into XOL or something unmemorable that I can't remember.

Aye, Nobby Dressingtable is XPO Logistics these days or something.

Whatever happened to Ceva Logistics?

[JimH]

Amazing work here JimH. There can’t be a lot more work for you to carry out now, on the road early next year?

A fair bit yet. The big tit ache is registering it which is being bit of a bind. After that there are a trillion and one little jobs to finish all sorts of bits off.

For the past two days I've been working on the spare wheel carrier drawbolt which is one of those jobs that has grown arms and legs. In my head it was a bracket, a big "bolt" with a pivot point and a nut. It then dawns on you that of it is to look like someone who knows what they are doing has been at it it also needs a neat little swivel mounting on the arm itself which has involved turning big bits of bar into surprisingly small things and a mountain of turnings.

The thing is that once it is done and running right we'll lose interest and do something else anyway so there is no mad rush.

[JimH]

Not really an update - I'm just blowing smoke...

The Super has had to slow down a bit because of some belligerence on the part of a large government body meaning that it's going to take a while to get it on the road. There isn't too much more to do on it once the bodywork is finished so something else is needed to keep the voices under control and make me think that I am doing something worthwhile. The fire engine needs its new boiler made which is a lot of fun and all but there isn't that much work in it and most of the other stuff on that is already finished - the boiler kind of ground to a halt because the Super came along. I have also got this cottage that needs a fair bit of effort this year (in a rebuild the whole frontage sort of a way). However, I still need something to do.

I have three projects sitting in the pending file:

1983 Porsche 944. IIRC there is about 86K on this and the engine was replaced about 12K miles ago with a new Porker engine when the then owner ran it out of oil. It's body shell isn't too bad but there is enough tin bashing to keep it interesting. It needs new sills and the outer sections of the floor pans done and the front wings have gone at the front and lowers. Last time I looked genuine Porker ones were a grand a throw so it will just be a case of sitting at the tin bashing bench accompanied by the gentle hiss of gar torch.

The major downside is that it is India Red with a brown interior which I absolutely hate. The dashboard is the usual erupting mess but there is a nice bunch making new ones but if I were going that far I would need to change the interior from brown to black which means spending a lot of time and money because even the stalks are brown FFS, What is it with the Germans and colour? They really haven't a clue. I would also need to get the money together to have it trimmed in black and white pasha which is the best interior made since Voisin shut up shop.

1978 X1-9 Lido. I bought this in 2005 to stop it rotting away on someone's drive. It's a proper X1-9 with the proper engine and even lovely little chrome bumpers instead of that 1500 abortion that followed it. While it is in not bad nick for an X1-9 that isn't saying a great deal but I have slowly collected new panels for it so most of the unboltable panels are new or at least very good. On the downside a previous owner was clearly a bit careless with it because they O/S rear quarter has taken a bot of collateral damage. On top of that you can see the blistering on the inside front end showing that the strut mounts are going to need to be rebuilt. Oh and some tit decided that the best way of dealing with the leaking windscreen with silicone sealant so the frame has rotted out too.

If I did this one I think it would need to go off for dipped so it was done properly otherwise you are just waiting for the rust to start again. There is a lot more tin bashing in this one. I would also need to find the money to replicate the off white alcantara interior which the Lidos had. It seems a shame that there aren't very many good X1-9s left.

Lotus XI. Not so much a car as a vague notion of something to do with an engine. We had a light portable pump from a Goddess which had sat round for years. One idle morning while looking for something else I turned it over and found that it would not turn. This I thought would be an excellent project for apprentices 1,2,3 and 6 to get it going again. In the process of helping them I actually started looking at the Coventry Climax engine (which I in my ignorance thought was just an Imp engine) and slowly began to realise what a very special little thing that it was. That lead to some reading on CC engines and an idea that something needed to be done with it. Making some moulds to make an Elite is probably a bit ambitious so the most sensible thing would be a Lotus XI. I have some drawings on the drawing board and the various bits of tin bashing I did on the Sentinel made me keen to do something that involved aluminium rather than 14swg steel. Making an XI body seems like a suitably ambitious project to force me to learn a bit more.

However, by the time you have made an FW engine into an FWA engine you are only really left with the block and the cam cover so the engine alone is going to cost a few bob. On top of that while hub carriers, diff housing, calipers are all available they don't exactly give them away so this project wouldn't be very cheap at all. I'm not sure I can burn that amount of effort and bread and possibly not be able to register the sodding thing with a plate that looks remotely tolerable. However, I did buy a Ford Pop front axle so that's a start, isn't it?

Thoughts?

I'll sort out an update later but we are all struggling with motivation at the moment.

[paulplom]

I had a 1983 A reg 944 about ten years ago. Black with brown seats which had a cream pinstripe. It was a ball ache from day one. Just problem after problem. When it started blowing blue smoke I swapped it for an N reg, gold, vectra saloon just to get rid of the fucker.
Sorry that doesn't answer your question.

[JimH]

I had an 85.5 a long time back and it was lovely and I only got rid of it because I got a new MGF. When my Old Man retired and had to give his company car back he bought a very late Turbo SE which was even lovelier. Then he got a rush of blood to the head and sold it to buy a New Mini Cooper S which was beyond hateful and lead me to wanting every Bini being fed into an industrial mincing machine.

I like 944s.

[JimH]

Not much by way of updates so far this year for a number of reasons. To start with here is the spare wheel carrier getting close to being finished.



This is the sort of thing that brings it home just how much work has been done over the last six years. For years one of the jobs on the list was "Make spare wheel carrier" which is pretty quick to say and it was given very little head space until it was needed. The first thing you need to start thinking about is what design to use. Since these things were built on solids originally the pneumatics and by extension the spare wheel arrangement was the responsibility of the factory, the regional service depots and the workshops of the people who operated them. Sentinel's drawing archive lists at least 8 different designs (searching the archive is no mean feat because all you have is the most scant description and about 10,000 drawings) which range from plausible to a draughie's flight of fancy. One is for a flat bed which involves a slot-in davit with a block and tackle to haul the wheel onto the back where it was clamped behind the cab. Aye right.

So you work up a design and then start building it. Wheel frame, wheel frame pivot block, draw bolt, draw bolt pivot frame, nut, spacer for the nut and draw bolt protection tube. They are just the big bits. The wheel frame alone has eight separate components. The nut has four.



This whole thing has soaked up weeks of work. Just to make the bloody thing that holds the spare wheel in place.

Enough whining. This is another job that has been on the list for ages. Despite being very big there is very little room for storing stuff on these things. You have plenty of space for load but pretty much all other available space is taken up with coal. The upshot is that there was no room for oil, tools, spares or your lunch so the ones that were driven longer distances (there were a few) grew boxes in this space. One DG6 flatbed I found grew an extra pair of water tanks which I thought was quite cool.

These are the boxes so far. Angle iron frame, clad in plywood and then sheet steel epoxied over the ply so the construction matched the body.



The corners will have poplar trims to match the trims on the body so hopefully it should look all about the same. Haven't quite worked out the door arrangement yet.

Next are the boxes to hide the water tanks. The nearside one also hides the main battery while the offside one has the modern greasing system in it for the front axle. Again, the edges will all be trimmed in poplar to make everything look neat and tidy. I loath working with plywood.



Baffles for the water tanks ready to go in.



And the lids for the tanks ready to go on. Exciting, huh?



Sadly as it becomes more complete there are diminishingly few things lying around to photograph. The other job that is ongoing at the moment is wiring the thing up but there is nothing very exciting to look at there. So here are some other things that are lying around.

This thing is orsum. You go into the big shed freezing your knackers off, turn this on and half an hour later everything is toasty. At the moment it costs about £2.00 per hour to run but it is a small price to pay when considering improved productivity. The flexible duct was for testing to see how it would heat the other workshops and it is would be worth running some permanent ducting. It can also be poked into the Super's body for extra super warmth.



This was purchased from the farmer next door. We had a 3CX before but it was a bit big for most of what we wanted to do. There is a bucket on order for it and the old man has gone down to Darlington today to pick up a set of pallet forks for it. Should be handy to have around. Note insignia in background.



And while I had a camera in my hand here is the Fiat X1-9 mentioned further up the page. It is in there somewhere.



And here is the 944. This is the first time I have laid eyes on it for about three years. I actually started working on this which is why the front wong is missing but then the Super came along so it got shoved in the barn.



Decisions. Decisions.

[Hooli]

One is for a flat bed which involves a slot-in davit with a block and tackle to haul the wheel onto the back where it was clamped behind the cab. Aye right.

I'm sure I've seen something nearly that daft under the back of a car, probably french.

[BusmansHoliday]

One is for a flat bed which involves a slot-in davit with a block and tackle to haul the wheel onto the back where it was clamped behind the cab. Aye right.

I'm sure I've seen something nearly that daft under the back of a car, probably french.

I have a feeling my Ducato motorhome has some sort of winch system under it for the spare wheel. Must have a look