Ended up finding an article online about how a gearbox works. That makes sense, I guess back and forth is for gear change 1-2, then twist and back and forth for 3-4 and reverse.
Hope your eye is ok.. If it was genuine german steel it with have probably turned to rust and disintegrated by the time you get to see a doctor
Got it all out and have two types of drops to put on it. One to sooth it a bit and one to relax the eye muscles which means I have a huge pupil and can't drive for 3 days! No van work for me for a little while.
Oh my life... That's a whopper.. I wonder if that stuff would work if I sprayed some of it on my penis
You learn eventually not to get grindings in your eyes. Avoid grinding under the van works for me as it's never a direct hit, always bounces off something first.
I wasn't even grinding at the time! I was drilling out some spot welds over at the bench (still had googles on) and when Id finished must've rubbed me eye. Was only drilling the welds out as I didn't like the idea of the rear floor support having no paint protection inside it so decided to remove the cover plate. Oh well! Back down there Friday after work hopefully.
Eye is back to normal now. Had to go back to the hospital on Wednesday to have a tiny bit more removed, but I was back down the unit on Friday again so can carry on now.Hoping to get the final two floor support (front and back) sorted this week, and then it's onto the inner sills.
On an unrelated note some time off the van last week gave me the time to finish this Norwegian fairisle jumper I've had on the go for a while. Chuffed with the result!
For the I beam floor supports where they are welded to the inner sill do I need to presumably drill smaller holes than I would for the top hat supports. Current plan is to drill 4 holes per top hat end and the same for I beam but smaller hole as the lip is smaller. Apologies if this is a silly question.
This one's for me. Could never make it viable to sell tbh. Reckon this probably took 80+hrs all in (excluding the fact I had to redo most of the body as my Fairisle gauge is slightly different to normal knitting). I might start making hats to sell though as they're just about worth doing.
I got round to spraying epoxy mastic on the inside of some of sections of the underside which will be boxed in when it's all welded up (cross members and front and rear top hats). I'd already sprayed them with zinc primer which went on beautifully but the mastic wasn't so smooth. The paint seemed to come out of the gun orange peely. Is this due to me not thinning enough? I probably thinned less than 10% so it could've taken more. I'm not too worried on these sections as no one is going to see them but it'd be good to know how I could improve it.
We’ve made steady progress over the last few weeks on the van (god knows how many hours!). Here’s a bit of what we’ve been up to. New I beams fitted tacked into place (2, 3rd floor support): Front top hat floor support cut down to size, new flanges bent into shape, and trial fitted to floor with outriggers, and inner sill: Remaining chassis sections zinc primed and inside of box sections epoxy mastic’d (no way these will rust out for some time now!): Max epoxy mastic’ing the bit I missed with the spray gun (once the front floor support is in I won’t be able to get to this section so paint on it now is important): and Max grinding out the last of the spot welds from the old cross members: I’ve got a day off next week so should hopefully get the inner sills welded in place and perhaps the outriggers and cross members! The underside is really starting to come together now, and it’s so much better than what was previously there.
A little more progress from over the last few days. Rear floor support welded shut again (I drilled out the spot welds as I didn’t want the inside to have no paint on it and promote rust) Before I tack weld in the first and last floor support it seemed like a good idea to trial fit the floor to ensure the sills were sitting at the correct height. Very exciting to see the floor fits perfectly! Now I know the floor and sills fit properly I can crack on with welding the sills, outriggers and cross members in over the next few weeks.
I managed to get a few hours on the van today and got the middle cross member welded in. I spent a fair amount of time practising my plug welds and stress testing them to make sure they were good and strong (doing them in the vertical position took me a while to get used to). Clamped in place: welded to the chassis: welded to the floor support: and finished with a clean up and quick spray of electrox: Really pleased with the results! This project also turned up for one of the guys in the unit across to me, which made me smile:
