Gertie the 72 crossdresser. Full resto....and it needs it!

I wouldent mind a job on the rigs ive heard the moneys good and obviously you get a fair bit of time off aswell

Im ex forces so it wouldent be to much of alien a concept for me

 

Yeah 2 weeks on 3 weeks off is mad. Most people dont get 3 weeks off a year!

Whats your trade?

 

Avionics by trade but not practiced since 2006

Not much use on a rig im sure but id be happy to retrain

 

One on the lads on there with me is ex raf. He is the turbine tech. Tornado, euro and typhoons. If you want some details re training pm me your email addy and I'll send you some details.

Lyn

 

Fair play for pushing on with the big repairs, alot of people would have given in by now!

 

you certainly make good use of your time when your back ashore

keep up the good work mate, its comming along well

 

Cheers Dale 8)

 

Spent 5 hours up the garage today, and all of it prepping the chassis cut to fit in to the space left when I cut out the rot.

Due to the fact the torsion beam fixed arm is cast and the bump stop bracket being steel, I decided to cut half of the bracket off and reattach a better piece to save messing around with an arc set and dissimilar rods, heating up the cast etc as it really isn't my forte.

Well I did this, and welded it inside and out so it should be strong enough. Dressed it back with my carbide burr in the die grinder as I have more control, so the strength should still be there rather than using a grinding disk and taking it back too far.



Took a lot of fettling to get the chassis the correct length. When finished I will strengthen the weld on the torsion tube by welding fillets either side so it'll be welded twice.





The rear end lines up ok and it is tacked in for now. I've just run out of gas and I want to make sure there is plenty of strength there when it's done.

 

Good work, you're almost there!

 

8 hours in it today but I can't see where

Made a start by cutting off the lower extremes of the inner arch and fitting a new piece ready to plug weld to my chassis cut.





Cleaned up the little shelf inside the engine bay and gave it a coat of rust stabiliser and a coat of etch primer. Next I cut off some of the rot off the front edge of the fuel tank housing and set to making a new piece.

Got it bent in the folder then used my shrinker/stretcher to put in the curve.









I found a load of rust so cut back even further and did it in 2





Then decided to cut out the rotten base under the tank. This is a pic of the RH but the left was in a worse state but I forgot the pic






I did get the patch welded in but will take a pic once it's prepped.

 

Welcome to my world!! I've been there before... 6 weeks worth of cutting/welding on a bay a few years back... it was like the more I cut the more I found needing to be cut out!!

Kicked my initial 10 to 15 days worth of welding right out of kilter!!

 

Paul, I know, it's a nightmare. The rear end of this bus is the worse part, it really is.

 

10 out of 10 for effort mate that sure is a lot of work, keep it up.

 

Keep at it dude its all progress that adds up even though it may not feel like it

 

Cheers lads, all work is good work I suppose.

 

Very much so!!

The hardest bit is to not get bogged down by the seeming lack of progress!!