It has been too long since my last post. I do have an excuse, I have been very busy or at least it has felt like I have been busy. My time has been split between this:

My Tomcat, some other bits and pieces and worrying about the weather. But mostly I have been worrying about the weather, and in particular the wind. To be 100% precise I have been worrying about how gale force wind affects a 7.3m X 3.7m X 2.5m tent (kite). Whilst the South-West has been getting drowned, we have been getting blown away. Here are a few of the measures I took to keep the tent where it should be.

First off I drilled eyelets into the concrete and tied them to the frame. Stupidly, I left a small amount of slack in the rope. The whole tent moved and lifted off the ground.

Next step. I tied 35kg breeze blocks to each side of the seven portals in the tent. No change, the whole thing was still moving around.

Next step. I laid a piece of wood across the legs of the end portals, then loaded that up with paving slabs. It stopped the tent lifting at the ends.

The last thing I did to ensure that the tent stayed in my postcode was to tie a rope around the peak of the frame and run the rope outside to some very deep ground anchors. The middle of the tent stopped lifting. If the tent blew away after that so be it.

Basically I took the photos to cover my behind to prove, that if it did blow away and do damage to someone’s house, that I did take every reasonable step to prevent it happening. I am pretty sure my brain exhausted it’s whole supply of worry/stress chemicals, as at the end of the first day I did not give a stuff whether the tent stayed or not. Anyway, the tent survived, surprisingly it isn’t too badly bent either. It is still standing, when the next bout of high winds comes, I don’t know… we’ll see, I may have to make some more thorough fortifications.

Anyway, moving on.

In between the last post and this one, the Tomcat has taken a large leap forward. Namely, I got my frame!

Here is the (un-painted) finished article. I got the go ahead from Paul at about 1pm to go and paint it. I thought it would be a fairly quick job to do, a couple of hours at the most. In the end, it took me nearly 5 hours to paint it, I ended up painting it in the dark. Mind you, I hand painted it, if I had used some aerosols, I’m sure it would’ve been quicker. So just a word to the wise. If you intend to paint it before you travel with it, get there in plenty of time. Also, I used roughly 3 litres of paint.

The paint I used was just a primer (to rust proof it until I complete it, at which point I will have it powder coated), but it was nasty stuff. All the warning signs on the side were basically telling me I would die if I used it. It was really horrible. I got a small drop on my face whilst painting the underside, it started to burn. But then the paint contained things like Zinc Phosphate so why am I surprised. Anyway, I chose this particular paint for it’s high Zinc content, in the hope that the paint will provide a bit of cathodic protection. I.e.: the paint will become the anode and corrode preferentially over the steel of the skeleton (due to the differences in electrode potential between Iron and Zinc) a la a battery. However, I pity whoever has to sand blast this back to bare metal when I get it powder coated, as I don’t think the paint will come of easily.

Unfortunately, due to the failing light, I didn’t manage to get a photo of sufficient quality to show you the painted frame. So I had to wait until a week later when Dad was free to go and pick it up (I really must get round to taking the trailer test).

So here is the obvious photo of me sat in it, putting on a brave face, after Paul kindly put it on the trailer for me. As you can see the car is rust brown at the moment. It isn’t very becoming, but it’ll do as a sacrificial coat to keep the metal covered. After the short drive home, again unfortunately due to failing light I had to get it off the trailer quickly. I’d like to thank Fred, from the Chamberlin Bros farm, for coming over and moving the frame to where it now sits, so Thanks Fred!

So now, I think it’s time for a shim update. You may recall I put some shims in vinegar to see if it would remove the rust that was on them. Well now they have been in vinegar for a month.

I took them out and dried them off. There has been some improvement. I must say I won’t be using vinegar to de-rust anything else. It does work, just not in a timescale that is of any use.

Some of the shims are looking a bit dog-eared, I’ll throw those away. The rest are fine with little to no rust left, all in all the shims are ready for (re)use. I am getting close to re-building the axles, I just need to sit down and order the necessary parts from Brit-part. Speaking of which, I finally got round to cleaning the swivel bearing housings.

This is the passenger side swivel bearing housing. This one was leaking. Presumably, a combination of rust in the seal seat and some grit caught between the swivel and oil seal have caused the swivel to start leaking. I cannot therefore re-use this, so bin.

The above picture is the driver’s side swivel bearing housing. It is a lot worse than the passenger side. This one had leaked, as in there wasn’t much grease left in it. So much for Teflon being a much better coating than the chrome. This swivel bearing housing is showing nigh-on identical damage to the chrome ones from the spare axle. I was undecided about buying new swivel bearing housings, but seeing them made the decision for me. Both of them are unusable. (Apologies for the poor quality photos, I had to turn the flash off otherwise the photos were just blurry light.)

Anyway, they are just another thing to add to my list for the axles.

So, moving on. In the previous part, I gave the swivel pin housings a clean up and was at the stage of deciding what to do with them. Here is a reminder of the condition they were in:

Well, they were cleaner than that when I finished them, I just don’t have photos to prove it. Whilst deciding what to do with them, a powder coaters opened up down the road from me. I took the swivel pin housings and various other parts to see what he thought. Long story short, he gave me a good deal as I was his first customer. Here are what my swivel pin housings look like now (well the drivers side one anyway):

The colour is satin black. I have decided on a colour scheme of matt black, gloss black with green highlights.

The mating faces still need a bit of work to clean them right up, but overall, really chuffed. I have dropped off my brake calipers to be blasted and coated in a green colour. I’m looking forward to seeing what they turn out like. The rest of the axles and suspension are going to be satin black, except the Panhard rod, which will be green like the calipers. I have the radius arms, rear trailing arms, A-frame, steering arm and spring platforms to go.

With that in mind, I ordered a bush pulling kit to get on with preparing the above for powder coating.

The kit starts at 44mm, and goes up in 2mm increments to 100mm. Not much use for the bushes on the rear trailing arms which are 24mm, but there you go. I tried it out on the radius arms, I wouldn’t call it easy (it is, however, easier than pressing the bushes out with your thumbs would be), but it does the job.

Here are the bushes in question, a pair of 51 or 52mm sleeved rubber bushes. They are pretty much your standard issue bush.

Here is the puller set up. It is really easy to do. Just make sure that on the side the bush moves to the cup is large enough to engulf the bush.  I also used the thickest threaded rod I could fit through the bush without forcing it. Easy as that.

This is the set-up I used, as I don’t have a bench, or a vice. I used the breaker bar as a lock against the floor and wound the nut with a ring spanner. As you can see the bush is half out.

Here are both bushes out. They probably haven’t been changed in a while, and the one on the right looks slightly oval. Although, I think that is just an optical illusion (it is, I just went and measured them, they all hover around 50.50mm to 50.60mm in every direction I measured). The radius arm just needs a degrease and clean up, and it’s off to the powder coaters.

Anyway, that about wraps up my progress over the last month. Not as much as I’d like, but hey there’s always next month.