Disaster this evening

Went to listen to Radio 4 at 18:30 for the comedy spot and I found the workshop wireless had died
The workshop wireless is an old Leak Troughline FM Tuner which in the early 1960s was the last word in Hi-Fi tuners. It's entirely valved and still gives good service. It feeds into a little home-made valve amplifier so the entirely valve theme is continued.
I found I'd sort of hard-wired the tuner in place on its shelf above the lathe so to repair it I had to lay it upside down on the lathe bed...
Here it is receiving attention...
It was my fault it died. I'd been ignoring a loose on/off/volume pot for months on end and in the end the loose pot caused one of the wires to break off on the back of it. A quick wave of the soldering iron and Radio 4 was again restored
I have quite an interest in vintage wireless and have quite a collection of early FM sets. I have another Leak Troughline in the lounge connected to my stereo system which is almost vintage in itself.
The rather odd name of the tuner refers to the use of a "troughline" lumped L-C tuned circuit to form a very stable local oscillator and thus overcome the tuning drift that early FM valve tuners suffered from.
Enough of my wireless antics. You read my blog for the cars and so it shall be
Friday saw me making up a MK2 version of my clutch bleed nipple for i3. It went off in the post today...
Project Activa received a bit of attention this weekend and the first task after making good my "experiments" with the clutch slave cylinder was to check the brakes in readiness for an imminent MOT. I found tham all to be good and in fact there's evidence that all four corners have had new discs and pads in the recent past. The rears are mercifully free from corrosion on the calipers and the pads are wearing true. That's quite some bonus really.
Then it was to the rams. Following the exploratory work it was time to go for it and fix a couple of rams for real. I removed the leaky rear ram before bad light stopped play. I was amazed to note the ram was of recent vintage judging by the lack of corrosion on ut. Despite that, it was weeping like a good 'un...
The bush in that ram was in perfect condition too. Another clue the ram was relatively recent. That ram and bush has gone into my stash and another ram has been prepared for refitting.
On Sunday the day dawned very wet so time was spent on the lathe making a couple of ram bushes, one for Tzani in Bulgaria and one for myself for the ram I was preparing for the project. I ade Tzani a conventional one but for mine I made a different one; a split bobbin with cheeks, the idea that it would allow better lateral control.
This is they:
Then a rear ram was prepared in a similar way to the method used to modify a front ram. This is the modified rear ram with modified bush fitted and ready for installation:
I fitted it and during the fit it came on to rain. I was blissfully unaware, lying under the car and did not become aware until I felt very wet legs. I seem to recall that happened when I fitted a new ram to my red Activa
In refitting, I discovered something interesting about ram bushes and why they are actually rose-joints. It's to compensate for potential lateral misalignment between the top and bottom mounts, effectively allowing the ram to sit a little sideways if necessary. My wonderful new split bobbin bush actually locates too well laterally and is not really an outstanding success.
In removing the rear ram, I dropped the subframe crossbar to improve access and due to corrosion two bolts sheared

What fun it was drilling them out and re-tapping the threads
All came good in the end and the last job on Sunday was to remove the leaky front ram (which had already been subject to an unsuccessful modification method). Removing front rams is so easy compared to rear ones it's almost a pleasure
I pulled the front ram apart in readiness for modification and this photo shows the extent of corrosion on the sealing face of the original leakage return collar. This corrosion is what causes the weeping. Shocking isn't it that something so fundamental as this has been allowed to write off countless rams and no doubt with them, complete Activas...
Time and weather permitting, I hope to be able to report on the effectiveness of the ram repairs in the next few days...