Saturday 1st Aug 2009

Attendance: 5

With the weather not great today work on D5705 concentrated on internal jobs, with Jason, Jim & Dave G otherwise occupied with the task of reattaching the nose end hand rails to D8233, it was left to Rob & Adam to continue the work on Co-Bo, Rob had a very specific job in mind and that was to make a start on the rectangular tank that was removed from brackets on the L/H body side alongside the engine, this tank was plumbed into the fuel system and was first thought to be an additive tank but when it was found to have thick oil inside (which had to be drained out and safely disposed of) we have now come to the decision that its a mixer tank that feeds oil into the fuel system to assist with the lubrication of the cylinder bore in the engine, well the Crossley HSTV8 is a 2 stroke engine after all.

So Rob drained & degreased the Mixer tank before starting to drell it off, and it was found that the original paint on it was in very good condition and drelled off quite easily, so he had finished with the drelling sooner than expected and was able to slap on the coat of green primer paint and hand the tank out in the work shop to dry off.

Meanwhile in the Co-bo Adam was busy in the cooler group furthering the painting of this area, the thing is that the painting of the cooler group has been patchy, the R/H air scoop is more or less complete but the fan cowl section above has bits that are primed, as some plates that are glossed and some still original untreated paintwork, and the L/H scoop was totally untouched, Adam then was keen to address this situation, now as drelling is very time consuming so it was decided to sand the old paintwork down and to key the surface giving the paint something to adhere to, so during the morning Adam got stuck in sanding the paint down, Rob joined him a little later on to lend a hand and by lunch time they were done sanding and ready to start painting.

After some food, Adam & Rob returned to the cooler group and started applying primer paint to the remaining areas, Rob was working inside the R/H air scoop side and Adam was making a start on painting in the L/H scoop, he made good progress but he found a couple of areas where the rust has been busy easting away at the panelling, there was a bad case of rust jacking behind one of the stiffening bars that was starting to break through on the other side and up above on the lower edge of the upper cowling section there was a series of small rust holes, so Adam did his best to work around these areas and completed the primer painting of the rest of the area.

Something else that Adam noticed was that one of the mounting blocks which are chunks of steel that the lower radiator tanks rest on and are supposed to be welded to the floor had come loose, it seems that rust had got underneath and jacked it up and broken the welds, Jason had noticed this and retrieved the block for some intensive care in the coach workshop, Adam had joined him in there and was applying some white undercoat to some pipe brackets that are part of the fuel system, but by now it was late afternoon and the work was winding down.

Sunday 2nd Aug 2009

Attendance: 3

Jason started early by painting white undercoat onto the Mixer tank, he was later joined by Adam and Chris B, the plan for the day was quite simple Jason & Chris would have a mad sorting out session on the shelves, the plan being to strip the shelves out and start, again, one set of shelved was cleared and dismantled, much of the stuff that was off the shelves was later taken down to the store house as well as the dismantled racking, later on one of the other shelves that had been cleared was filled up with stuff removed from D5705 and has now been made into a shelf especially for the Co-bo restoration.

As all this palaver had tied up Chris & Jason for the best part of the day, Adam on the other hand had been knuckling down and getting on with the painting in the object, during the morning he had gone into the Co-bo and continued the painting of the cooler group, all the areas that had been done with the green primer and would now be done with the white undercoat, this was quite and area to paint including both Rad air scoops and the upper cowling, starting with the R/H side and working across this tied him over for the morning, after lunch he continued by moving to the L/H side and by mid afternoon all the undercoating that needed doing was done.

Now that the R/H side and upper cowling areas were dry he then followed straight up with the hemp coloured gloss paint, this took an hour or two and by late afternoon the gloss painting of the R/H side was complete and the upper cowling area too, while he still had the gloss paint out he went into the workshop and fully glossed the Mixer tank before finishing off by touching up the pipe brackets that he had undercoated yesterday, that then finished the days efforts, Adam had been a real trooper today and worked really well, the efforts of Jason & Chris had also born fruit as now with half the racking gone it had freed up lots of space in the workshop and being used to seeing the racking there, the workshop now seems strangely empty... That then ends yet another full working weekend.

The next working weekend is on 12/13 September. If you wish to lend a hand please contact Chris Tatton