Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Stickyfinger]

Those must have been a pain to do...body on the Sinclair is polypropylene, and as such is an absolute pig to paint - as many folks have found when they have tried to customise them!.

Wrap it then....get the decals applied = Job done!

[CitroJim]

No car stuff today, been playing with the latest petrol powered tool. Zel now has a chainsaw. Be afraid, be very afraid!

I love petrol chainsaws

[Zelandeth]

Definitely loving this one so far...totally removing the cutting the tops off the trees/hedge aside, just breaking stuff up once on the ground I probably got done in a couple of minutes what would have taken me the best part of a day by hand! That then greatly reduces the amount of heavy lifting involved and just makes the whole job so much easier.

Sorting this lot out actually suddenly looks vaguely achievable again!

This afternoon is allocated to crafting projects, but hopefully will get the fuel lines changed on the Lada tomorrow so the fuel stops draining back to the tank overnight requiring an eternity of cranking to start in the morning.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Zel Just take it careful and easy...

Chainsaws can bite!

[Zelandeth]

Discovery of the day...the longest common size of pop rivet you seem to be able to get at the usual diy type stores here is 4.8mm. That is sub optimal when I had planned to rivet together material that is roughly 12mm thick (slightly less, but I'm rounding).

Will probably wind up using small nuts and bolts in the short term at least...but am not looking forward to having to insert and tighten up the lot of them...probably about 80 of them at a very rough glance... haven't actually counted yet. Be tiny little fiddly ones just to make things even more time consuming.

[CitroJim]

One used to be able to get very long pop rivets... I think I have a very few of them here - about 3/4" long... Have you tried eBay?

What are you making now then Zel?

[Hell Razor5543]

Well, this e-bay search might be useful;

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/POP-RIVETS-Al ... mLCEHtlyhQ

[Zelandeth]

Good call there James, I may well grab some for future use - as it is I'm under some time pressures here so I'll be working with whatever I can find locally tomorrow for the time being. Nuts and bolts aren't ideal as they *will* come apart longer term pretty much irrespective of what I do to try to secure them.

I've faced a number of challenges as part of this project including but not limited to things which can simply be credited as part of the learning curve, my own lack of spatial awareness, the challenges in getting something off a sheet of paper into the physical world, and discovering that some materials are just a real pain to work with. A lot of these were fully expected challenges.

...Have to admit though that discovering when I pulled the rivet gun out of the tool box today to finish off this particular part that the rivets being half as long as I needed wasn't a curve ball I saw coming. Granted, I'm fastening together two roughly 1/4" thick pieces of foamex with a piece of nylon webbing sandwiched in the middle together, so I should have been able to do the math beforehand...Never said I was smart!

What I've been working on today (and had hoped to have finished prior to the "rivet issue" turning up) was the spine for the tail which is part of a far larger costume project I've been working on. We've moved the targeted finish date a bit to have the majority of it ready for Halloween so that I can cause some good natured and in theme pandemonium by being Abby's assistant when she answers the door to any Trick or Treaters (we do get a bunch around here).

I'll go into a bit more detail tomorrow evening when I have a bit more time, as it'll turn into quite a massive deluge of text I reckon, especially filling in the background as to *why* I've gone and thrown far more hours than I care to think of and a not inconsiderable sum of money at this project (I really don't want to do the math...), and why it's only *probably* a sign that I've gone completely insane rather than a definite one.

You all know to start running now - this is *me* warning you that this is going to turn into a ramble...given my tendency to turn what should be two sentence answers into multiple page essays at the best of times!

[Xantianut]

I did look at a Lada but wanted a diesel.

Regretting that now looking at those parts prices.....

[myglaren]

My father in law had two Ladas and I have to say they were awful things to drive. (I was driving a sinker Xantia LX at the time).
I always had to go to Whitby on the bus and drive them up here and be their appointed chauffeur while they were here.
On one occasion the gears were getting more and more difficult to shift and like the proverbial Russian tank would have benefited from the use of a sledgehammer.

He had had it serviced only days before - unbeknown to me - I checked around a bit and discovered that the gearbox was completely dry. They had presumably drained it and neglected to refill.

A dollop of fresh EP80 and all was well again - the gearbox anyway.

[demag]

I had an Estelle 105 I think it was. Super little car. It was so quiet inside it would have put many high end cars to shame. I scrapped it because doing the kingpins was more than the car was worth. I later owned a Favorit but the steering was incredibility heavy. Can't remember what happened to that one.

Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

[myglaren]

My muscles still ache from the heavy steering

[demag]

You had one as well Steve? Nice car apart from that.

Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

[myglaren]

You had one as well Steve? Nice car apart from that.

No, Father in law's Ladas.

[bobins]

On one occasion the gears were getting more and more difficult to shift and like the proverbial Russian tank would have benefited from the use of a sledgehammer.

I had a go at driving a Soviet BMP tank once. I think that when it came to designing the gearbox, they wrote a load of numbers on bits of paper, threw them up in the air, and how they landed was how the gear gates were placed - 1st we'll put over here, perhaps 2nd should go way down over there, 3rd...... Ah!, we'll put that in the middle where neutral should be, and so on. By the time you'd worked out where you should be putting the gearstick , it was somewhat immaterial, as you'd stopped and therefore needed 1st again