Saturday 19th Jan. The Red Shed gets more attention.

     The light snow fall that we received Saturday morning meant for a cold day in the garage, so for the first time since I bought it last February, the log burner was fired up.

I had (what I thought anyway) was plenty of fuel in the form of broken pallets that I had brought home from work. However, these burn pretty quick so I will have to source another load when I return on Monday. (Luckily health and Safety is none of our warehouse guys religion at work, so broken pallets and crates will always be in good supply!)

As you can see from the pic below, the log burner  also served to dry out spark plugs which had flooded when the Red Shed mysteriously refused to start.



All we had done was remove the rear carburettor to fix the broken float chamber and change the water pump to cure the leak, so why wouldn't the sodding thing start?  Further inspections began and removal of the rotor arm revealed that the plastic lug that stops it from spinning round was no longer present.



So another item was procured from the spares bin and fitted and then the Red Shed once again burst into life. Further inspections with the engine running highlighted a badly leaking core plug and a noisy gearbox. Not sure what to do about the gearbox. I have a spare but this isn't brilliant either. I think I'll just run it this season and suffer the noise. (It'll be just like driving my old white one!) :)

 

The leaking core plug was one of the four that hide behind the inlet and exhaust and the water pipe that runs off of the water pump. So removal of all of this lot was required before I could get to it.

Persuading the core plug to leave the engine block was erm....interesting and after much levering, hammering and cussing it did eventually decide to vacate its home that it's been residing in for the past 45 years. There was that much silt and krud behind it that I decided to remove the other three along that side of the block too.

The man in the local car spares shop only had three core plugs, so we just flushed the block out with a hosepipe (Once I had unfrozen it!) and have left it for another day.

While I was faffing about doing all of this Gavin kindly offered to use my gas welding kit to weld up the hole in the floor. Well, it would have been rude to refuse him, so I let him carry on. Welding the one hole opened up another area that needed attention, (Doesn't it always?) so this will be finished another day. (When it's not so cold and I've nicked some more broken pallets!)



I did want to wash Gertie today as well as she still carries her North Essex dirt from last Sunday. But as you can see, due to the fact it was just too damn cold it never happened. I'll try and get it done before next Friday nights Chelmsford Motor Club Rally. If it isn't cancelled that is.