Bonnet Issues

As I wrote a few days ago, I removed the paint from the areas of joints on the new bonnet stiffener and headlamp cowls, coated them in weld-through primer and connected them with temporary pop rivets.

However, when it came to spot welding the lot into a composite structure, I was unable to get an electrical connection across the primer.

I had to take the whole lot apart again, take the lot back to bare metal and start again with the spot welding, which went perfectly. Can't imagine what the issue was with the primer, as I could see the flecks of zinc in the coating.

With no primer inside the joints, I'm going to have to carefully seal all the points of potential water ingress with Tiger Seal before primering (again) and painting the topcoat.

I was desperate to install the composite assembly into the bonnet, but there's no getting around the fact that the paint needs to be removed from the underside first as, with the various bits in position, access to parts of the bonnet underside will be difficult, if not impossible. It's not as if I can paint over what's already there, as the finish if hideous. A couple of days hard graft with the knotted wire brush wheel.

Pinning Down Mouseman

Last Friday we visited Malmesbury Abbey and I discovered something I never knew - it contains the tomb of King Athelstan, the first king of all England.

Malmesbury Abbey, the home of William of Malmesbury, a 12th century historian considered by many to be the best since Bede, was dissolved by Henry VIII, who sold it off to one of his mates for a few bob, as he was short of cash at the time.

Anyway, in the gift shop we spotted some wooden mice for a tenner, which I thought I could use to decorate something.

It was photographing them on the ash slab table I made that gave me the idea of emulating Robert (Mouseman) Thompson, a Yorkshire furniture maker (now dead) who incorporated a mouse into all his furniture. I first learned about Mouseman from a Yorkshire friend of mine (now also dead - had a heart attack and couldn't get to the phone, which could have saved him) who owned a Mouseman table for which he'd paid a small fortune. 

You can see one on the leg of the Robert Thompson table above. Now I can't carve a mouse into the legs of the ash slab table, but I can put these mice on the legs with glue; however, to ensure they're not knocked off, I wanted to pin them in place with steel pins - but what on earth could I use as the pins?

As it happens, I was doing some work on the GT6 bonnet and decided to pin the headlamp cowls and bonnet stiffener together with pop rivets, just to get the positioning right before exposing the metal at the joins and spot wenling the whole caboodle together before offering the complete sections up to the bonnet top.

Bingo! The waste pop rivet mandrels were perfect for what I wanted.

Two pins per mouse. I drilled the mice, secured a couple of pins into them and then drilled corresponding holes into the table leg, glueing them on for a permanent fix. 

Nothing will knock them off now. Nice little feature.

Arlington Row

A couple of weeks ago Hay and I went to some of the Cotswold villages and towns to scout a holiday destination for Hay's dad and his partner.

On the way there we went past Arlington Row in Bibury, a famous row of weavers' cottages that adorn many a chocolate box and is always infested by tourists snapping their cameras (especially Chinese tourists).

Hay asked me how old they were, so I looked it up on Wikipedia, where it mentioned that Arlington Row appears on the inside cover of every British passport.

When I got home I looked at my passport, but rather than an image of Arlington Row, I saw an image of nautical paraphernalia.

Intrigued, I looked through my old passports, but couldn't find Arlington Row. However, I found No.2 Son's old passport that expired in 2016 and was issued in 2011 - and there is was in all its bucolic splendour!

There was obviously a period when it was used, but no more, to be replaced with images that recall Britain's (no longer existing) maritime greatness. Brexit benefit.....

I also found Arlington Row in Hay's expired passport that was issued in 2003.

Labour Will Bankrupt the Country

I'm seeing a constant refrain in the right wing press and on Twitter that a Labour administration will bankrupt the country.

While comparing government finances to a credit card is common, it's misleading and here's why: 

• Income & Expenses: Governments have different income sources and spending priorities than individuals. 
• Debt: Governments have lower borrowing costs and spread debt across generations (we've only recently finished paying compensation to slave owners for the emancipation of slaves). 
• Goals: Governments aim for societal well-being, not just individual finances. 
• Extra tools: Governments can print money (QE) and use spending to stimulate the economy. 

Overall, government finances are more complex and require a different analysis than personal finances. A household budget analogy might be more fitting, but still not adequate. Countries may have financial crises, but they don't go bankrupt.

However, while not technically "bankrupt", several countries in history have experienced severe financial crises with devastating consequences: 

• Weimar Germany (1920s): Hyperinflation following WWI crippled the economy. 
• Argentina (multiple instances): Repeated defaults on sovereign debt and economic instability. 
• Greece (2010s): Debt crisis led to austerity measures and social unrest. 
• Venezuela (present): Hyperinflation, currency devaluation, and widespread shortages. 

These situations highlight the significant economic and social repercussions that countries can face due to unsustainable debt and financial mismanagement. While not a direct equivalent to individual bankruptcy, it's crucial to understand the complexities and consequences of national financial crises. Britain is not in the same league as these countries though.

For the above reason, I simply can't understand why Labour has ditched its £28bn Green Investment Plan. In terms of government finances, £28bn is relatively small at roughly 3.4% of government spending, with considerable upsides including meeting climate targets, job creation and industrial competitiveness benefits, environmental protection and social benefits.

Could it me more to do with the false trope of Labour possibly bankrupting Britain hitting home with the swing voters and Starmer heading off any line of attack? I truly hope so and that there will be a reaffirmation of the policy once Labour gain power. If not, then they're not worthy of the Labour legacy and have also swung to the neoliberal end of the spectrum.

Tit for Tat

Bereft of any plans to rescue the country from the mess they've created, the Conservatives are, in desperation, opportunistically using a strategy of capitalising on the anti-Semitism accusations that plagued Labour under Corbyn. 

They have come down firmly on the side of Israel's Netanyahu and are colluding with him in attempting to portray any criticism of the ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza as anti-Semitic - an ethnic cleansing which, by the way, has been going on in fits and starts since 1948 with each successive land grab and the moving in of Israeli settlers. It's a last ditch effort to smear Labour with an old trope.

Labour, rather than responding with the fact that criticism of Netanyahu's government is not anti-Semitism, has responded by highlighting the rampant Islamophobia the Conservatives have had to adopt as a direct result of their desire to portray Labour as anti-Semitic. We end up with an unedifying slanging match, rather than campaigning on policies.

We have seen two parties arguing about the precise wording of a ceasefire statement that neither side in the conflict will take a blind bit of notice of until ready, while countless thousands of civilians and children die on a daily basis. Also a Scottish Nationalist Party that's thrown its toys out of the pram because it didn't have its day in the limelight during a useless debate that achieves nothing and pushes for another debate while already having been offered one.

Sunak bigs up a recent humanitarian drop to Gaza, while simultaneously providing Netanyahu's murderous regime with the very weapons it uses to kill said civilians and children in Gaza. Although not in the top 3 countries exporting arms to Israel, the UK exports military technology comprising components for F-35 fighter jets, helicopters, drones, grenades, bombs, armoured vehicles and tanks, small arms and ammunition.

Stainless

Not me that's stainless - it's the black, rear wing finisher I bought by mistake.

The photos above are both of them on the car, although they can't be stuck into place until after it has been painted in the final coat of Opalescent Golden Sand. 

Using liberal applications of paint stripper I removed the hard-as-nails black paint that was on the recently purchased finisher (I couldn't abrade it off else I'd destroy the shiny finish) and discovered that it is indeed made of stainless steel.

A couple of days in the open didn't produce any rust marks and I also did the magnet test. Mild steel is magnetic, whereas stainless steel, depending on the quality, isn't. Both mild and stainless steel are alloys that contain iron as a major component. Iron is naturally ferromagnetic; however, in stainless steel other compounds are added, such as nickel, which can render it less magnetic (or magnetically confused) by locking the crystals in an autenstitic structure. Adding 16-35% nickel suppresses magnetic phases.

In my last GT6 post I mentioned that the rear finishers are made from chromed steel, not stainless (much as I searched, I couldn't find any stainless ones). I thought I might be able to fashion some stainless rear finishers from a couple of stainless wing finishers, but they interlock into each other and so it's not possible with my limited metalworking skills.

I'll just have to make do with chrome.

Train Travel

Yesterday I took my first e-journey by train, using a QR code on my phone to pass through the ticket gates, rather than a paper ticket.

When you buy a ticket on-line and collect it from a railway station vending machine, you get half a dozen pieces of paper without a clue as to which one is actually the ticket. This can leave you fumbling around at the ticket gates, annoying the hell out of the people behind you waiting to get through.

Also, you run the risk of the ticket machine at the station where you collect your ticket being out of order, which has happened to me more than once at Yate.

Of course, you have to ensure your phone is adequately charged, or you're stuffed. There again, you can print out the QR code as a safety measure.

Picked up No.1 Son's BMW M114d from Sheffield and swung by Leicester to pick up a replacement loom for the SL500. The BMW is lethal - it doesn't have a limited slip differential (apparently it was an option when new), making the rear end extremely twitchy when you put some power into the wheels, especially in wet weather - it was a nightmare to drive. He's going to get an LSD fitted ASAP. My SL500 and the BMW are about the same power, but the SL500 is infinitely easier to drive when applying power, regardless of the weather, as it stays in the straight line.

Safety First

I've bought a couple of accoutrements for No.1 Son's drone.

Two sets of propeller guards - a light set for normal flying and a more robust set for use near trees. Hopefully that will prevent a repeat of the ditching in a lake incident, which was caused by a a rotor being damaged by a branch.

I played a bit with some of the special shots the drone's capable of. I particularly like one where you centre the camera on an object and the drone will automatically circle that object.

I did a circle of the house and edited it to speed up and added some music. Would have looked nicer if shot on a sunny day. I may seek out a local wind turbine and do a circle shot - that would be cool.

Jig Saw

The bonnet stiffener has arrived,  but there's a lot of work to do before I fit it, along with the headlamp cowls. All the paint has to come off the bonnet, top and bottom, and the bare metal needs covering with weld-through primer. There's a bit more work with the air-chisel too.

While it's nice to have the new panels coated in an impervious paint, it simply doesn't facilitate spot welding, meaning wherever there's a seam I'm going to have to use a rotary wire brush to remove the paint finish and replace it with weld-through primer.

All the bits necessary to rebuild the bonnet are now available to me, either new or restored.

It's getting there, slowly but surely.

For Christmas I got a rear wing, stainless steel seam finisher. To spread the cost of the postage on the stiffener I ordered the other one with the bonnet stiffener; however, I did my usual thing of buying the wrong part number. Instead of receiving a stainless one I received a black one.

Now, it could be that the black finisher is actually a painted stainless one, but there's only one way to find out. Below you can see the stainless one (top) and the black one (below).

I removed some of the paint from the recently ordered finisher with paint stripper  and, while it looks like it might be stainless, I dipped the bare metal in water and will leave it out in the weather to see if it shows signs of rusting. If it does then it's mild steel; if it doesn't then it's stainless and just needs polishing.

It it turns out to be mild steel, then It's useless to me, as there's nowhere I can reuse it, unless I find somewhere where a painted mild steel strip would add something. All the finishers on the car are either stainless or chromed.

Above you can see the wing and rear end finishers. While the wing finishers are available in stainless, the rear ones are chromed, which seems a bit senseless to me. They should make all the finishers from stainless.

Above is what I'm aiming for with the finished article, including the non-standard colour. However, I think I'll add chrome wire wheels.

On Thursday I'm going up to Sheffield to pick up a 3 litre BMW 114d Shadow Edition for No.1 Son, who has decided to switch out from his Mercedes CLA. As it happens, I bought a replacement HT loom for my Mercedes SL500 on e-Bay the other day and it's located just outside Leicester. I can swing by Leicester on the way back and save myself £25 postage. 

The loom is from a 1990 SL500, which puts it safely outside of the years when Mercedes used biodegradable material on their looms. Hopefully I can have the SL500 back on the road for summer, after it being off the road for 6 years.

I may sell it after the summer and use the proceeds to go to town on the GT6, possibly upgrading the engine to a 2.5 litre TR6 lump. If I do stick with the existing engine, I'm currently inclined to go for a exchange recon to save time. While I enjoy doing bodywork and spraying (within limits on the latter), I'm not that confident with things that are coated in oil and grease.

Tick-Box Stupidity

Because her dad is partially deaf, hay had to phone the council on his behalf in order to see whether he qualified for a grant toward double glazing. She has enduring power of attorney, but that wasn't even an issue.

When on the phone to the council, the person at the other end said she'd need to speak to Hay's dad to ensure he gave permission for Hay to act on his behalf. Hay could easily have passed the phone to me and I could have said I'm her dad and that I gave her permission. No-one would know whether I was her dad or not.

It's an example of a ridiculous tick-box exercise that no-one has ever thought about logically and whether it actually achieves what it sets out to achieve.

Black Spot Cough & Ambulance

In Treasure Island, pirates are presented with a "black spot" to officially pronounce a verdict of guilt or judgment. It consists of a circular piece of paper or card, with one side blackened while the other side bears a message and is placed in the hand of the accused. It was a source of much fear because it meant the pirate was to be deposed as leader, by force if necessary—or else killed outright.

In my case, it's not a piece of paper, but a stain, or rather several, caused by using Jenolite (or phosphoric acid, as we experts call it) to convert rust. Stains the hands hideously - and probably not good for my health. Did the other GT6 mudguard yesterday - after having done it once on the n/s, doing it for a o/s was a piece of cake. Usual procedure - original inner half and replacement outer.

The cough mentioned in the title wasn't really a cough. It was a noise I made while we were watching TV last night. Hay looked at me, rather surprised at the sound. I said it was meant to be a cough, but I simply couldn't be arsed, and so it was hence a prelude to a cough.

We went out for a family meal on Saturday night, which turned into a bit of a medical emergency. There was Hay and myself, Hay's sister and husband, No.1 Son and Hay's dad and his partner. We'd just finished the main course when Hay's dad's partner keeled over (she's 89). Turns out she had a massive drop in BP for some reason and simply passed out. Ambulance was called and arrived within 20 minutes, which was very impressive seeing as we were out in a countryside pub. No serious damage done, but we thought we had a bereavement on our hands. They didn't get back from the hospital till 5am Sunday.

More Bonnet

Having nothing better to do, I tackled some more of the GT6 bonnet yesterday and opened a can of rust worms.

Started by separating the headlamp cowl from the upper bonnet by drilling the spot welds and air-chiselling along the seam.

I should have done the drilling from the inside to retain as much metal on the upper bonnet panel as possible, but access was the issue, so it had to be the front. In any case, it does provide me with readymade holes for plug welds, rather than spot welds.

So far, so good - until I started carving away the unwanted metal. Below you can see the new panel that needs inserting and the old metal that needs cutting away.

Once I'd exposed what was underneath I saw that a lot of welding had already been done at some stage in the past in order to bodge a repair, leaving rust traps along the sides of the bonnet stiffener that runs along the underside of the front of the bonnet.

Now the near-side is often in a worse condition than the off-side, due to it being the part of the car nearest gutter puddles, but I feared the off-side, in this instance, would be as bad, necessitating a new bonnet stiffener (shown in the photo below) at £70.

Starting to think I should have bought a good condition, 2nd hand bonnet. However, I continued to remove the old panel to see if there was any scope for a DIY repair to the stiffener.

Not a chance - it had already been patch bodged. The shape is too complex for me to attempt a repair and, if the other side is just as bad, £70 seems a reasonable price. I continued by exposing and drilling out all the spot welds along the front of the stiffener before attacking once more with the air-chisel.

It was rotten right along the entire length. Just as well I decided to remove it completely.

Here's what I need, which I have ordered, along with some other parts to spread the cost of postage, which seems to be the same whether you order one or ten parts.

Removing the rotten stiffener necessitated me having to remove the off-side lower panel and mudguards which, having done it before on t'other side, was much easier and quicker. I still have to clean up the spot welds along the off-side seam where the upper bonnet joins the lower repair panel.

Below you can see I clamped the cowls in place, just to see what it looks like.

I'm starting to worry a tad about rigidity. It's fine attacking both sides, but I could end up with a skewiff bonnet if I'm not careful.

Not a bad Saturday's work, although what I was expecting to be a couple of hours work turned into 7.

Next job is reconstituting the off-side mudguard, but that should be easy.

By Bye Tories?

 Is it by-election or  bye-election?

Anyway, by-elections (I have nailed my flag to the mast) are notorious for low turnouts, meaning it's dangerous to use them as a weathervane for General Elections; however, historically the cohorts least likely to turn out for a by-election are the young and the marginalised - precisely the cohorts most likely to vote Labour at a General Election, when they do tend to make it to the polling stations. This does not bode well for the Tories. 

It seems strange to me that their response to losing support among voters, because of their swing to the right over the last decade, is to go even further to the right. That's counterintuitive. There again, for many Conservatives, they haven't move far enough to the right, hence the emergence of Reform, Reclaim and all the other factions which are draining crypto-fascist votes away from the Tories. In pandering to a small and irrelevant number on the far right, they're alienating a far greater number of moderate, One Nation Tories who could win them a GE. 

It's interesting to note that Britain is bucking the European trend, as in mainland Europe it's the younger voters who are more likely to vote for a right wing party. Quite why this is remains a mystery.

Is Rees-Mogg destined for The Moggery at the next GE?

If Only

 While looking at videos of flying techniques and camera tips, I came across this accoutrement for DJI Mini 2 drones.

A float system for landing on water.

The occasions when you'd want to land on water are few and far between, but if I'd had these fitted when flying over that Welsh lake then I may not have lost No.1 Son's drone. The wind would have caught it and floated it to the side.

The main drawback is that the floats can become waterlogged, meaning you have difficulty taking off, or the balance becomes offset with the water load. The rotors can also suck up the water dripping from the floats and spray it all over the drone. However, as a safety device it's perfect when lake diving.

Drone

Managed to finally purchase a replacement for the drone I lost which belonged to No.1 Son.

It's even a DJI Mini 2, whereas my son's was the lesser spec Mini SE, which had a 2.7k camera as opposed to a Mini 2's 4k. The Mini 2 also has 10 minutes greater flight time than the SE on a single charge. The seller provided me with 2 batteries, bringing the total complement of batteries to 3.

The Mini 2 also, allegedly, has anti-collision sensors that prevent you accidentally diving it into the ground. It detects its own height above the ground and ensures it stays a couple of feet above it when flying. I've seen videos of the system in action and it's very impressive, but I don't think I will be testing it in any hurry - the consequences, knowing my luck, could be expensive.

The problem with 2nd hand DJI drones is that the controller is bound to the drone through an account with DJI. If the drone and controller are subsequently sold, they are usually sold without the account details and in a bound condition, meaning you can't switch and swap controllers or drones if one of them goes squonk. Ideally you want to buy a set that's unbound so you can set up your own bonding account, if indeed you want one. The binding prevents someone else taking over your drone while in flight.

I now have a spare controller which is inextricably bound to a drone sitting on the bottom of a lake in the Forest of Dean, and therefore useless. I guess it may be worth something to an electronics geek.

Azhar Ali

There are some aspects of the Azhar Ali incident that I find rather disturbing.

He was suspended for expressing an opinion that the Israeli government knew about and encouraged the Oct 7th attack by Hamas as a pretext for going in hard on Gaza. Given what's been coming out of the Israeli government, I don't find that particularly hard to believe, especially when the NY Times published an article last December saying the Israeli government knew about the plans over a year previously, but refuted it as implausible. The article was written by Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman.

The article can be found here.

What Azhar Ali said may possibly be incorrect, but it is entirely plausible. Where he goes a bit off piste is where he uses the phrase; "...people in the media from certain Jewish quarters.." But it's fact that there are some British Jews who fully support Israel's actions in Gaza. The Jewish Chronicle, for example, while not 100% in support of Netanyahu, has certainly published pro-Netanyahu articles. It's also evident that the Israeli government is keen on portraying any criticism of them as anti-Semitism.

Let's get this straight - criticism of Netanyahu's government is not anti-Semitism, despite the Israeli government pressing for changes that make it such.

I think this is more about Starmer not wanting to give the Tories a stick with which to beat him. He seems intent on removing anything that could lead to attacks in the run-up to the election.

Wheat

The other night I was kept awake thinking about grass and wheat. I wondered why grass is perennial; you can cut it as much as you want, year after year, and it just keeps coming back, even if it goes to seed. However wheat, which is a grass, is annual. This means the fields it's grown in need to be ploughed up and the seed needs to be sown every year, which is costly, bad for the soil and involves a lot of fossil fuels to accomplish, not to mention the additional work this involves for the farmer.

It transpires that ancient grasses that were grown by our early ancestors for grain were undoubtedly perennial, but cultivation, constant crossing and selection for yield has resulted in them becoming annuals. Despite the increase in yield, between 2% and 8% of that increased yield has to be retained for next year's seed.

Scientists are looking at ways of genetically engineering wheat varieties to become annuals once more, but without sacrificing yield, which will be a massive plus for the environment, global yield (by recouping the seed percentage) and for farmers.

Mudguard

Tackled the near side mudguard this weekend - the bonnet is proving more intricate than the rest of the bloody car! 

I first removed every shred of paint from the good section I wanted to retain, drilled out the spot welds holding the two sections together and air chiselled the two sections apart. I finally ground down the flange and applied Jenolite to all the bare metal before priming. No.1 Son assisted me with the separation.

The two halves - the old one and the new panel - fitted together perfectly.

Primed, clamped and ready to spot weld.

When I came to spot welding the join the electrodes weren't in good shape, so I had a look for the new electrodes I'd made in the summer. Could I find them? Took me a bloody hour to find the box and on opening it I found this:

So I had to make another bunch of electrodes with the tap and die set, which took me a further half hour.

When I finally came to doing the spot welding, which should have been the easiest operation, I had numerous problems. For a start, because the equipment is so damned heavy that it takes 2 people to operate it - me to hold the equipment with one hand and to operate the lever than brings the electrodes together with the other, and another person to press the switch to get the current flowing. Whoever designed this piece of equipment needs shooting. The switch should be on the lever so one hand can perform both functions.

Then I couldn't get an arc across the electrodes. I'd taken the flange back to bare metal and used weld-through primer, so I was at a loss as to what caused the problem, but it may have been that I hadn't shaken the spray tin enough and the zinc that makes it weld-through hadn't dispersed enough. I got a few decent spots, but nowhere enough, so I resorted to using the arc welder.

A little later I was talking to my brother-in-law about what I was doing and mentioned the weld-through primer. I showed him the can and suddenly realised it was ordinary primer - not weld-through.  Duh!

Here's the finished article, welded and sealed along the join with Tiger Seal.

Below is the wheel arch nestled lovingly in the wing repair section - a perfect job.

As you can see, there is a number of holes for bolts in the mudguard. These are for the pivot tubes, which facilitate the bonnet in opening from the rear to the front, pivoting over the front bumper. Each hole needs a backing plate, but I only have one - the others must either be in my boxes of bits or lost. 

Given the shape is rather simple and I can't be bothered rummaging through the boxes (they're bound to be lost, as the previous owner was intending to fit a fibreglass bonnet), I think I'll have a go at making a few, as they're £12 each from Rimmer's. I've got plenty of 1.6mm steel that's been salvaged from the car, but what I can't understand is that there are three sets of holes, yet I can only find a use for two of them. I need to go to the showroom in Wickwar where the owner has a pristine '73 GT6 that he allows me to inspect  occasionally for information.

Welding the mudguard to the wing repair section won't me anywhere near as fraught as the rear, as I can turn the bonnet over so I'm not fighting gravity when I do plug welds (there's no way I can get the spot welder into the narrow gap).

Stone protection on the inside of the wheel arch is an issue. Most paint the underside with a stone chip preparation that can be overpainted, but this got me to wondering whether anyone made fibreglass wheel arches. I couldn't find any on t'internet, but fibreglass bonnets must incorporate fibreglass wheel arches. I must admit that doing the n/s made me wish, just for a minute, there was a fibreglass option for the o/s.

No.1 Son thinks I should merely have bought both the inner and outer mudguard panels, but he doesn't understand the joy of trying to retain original panels than still have a lot of life in them - might just as well buy a GT6 that's already been restored by someone else. He's looking for a Mercedes C63 AMG at present - a 6 litre, 502 BHP supercar that can burn just about anything off the road.

I've managed to find a rotisserie for the tub for £160 in Newport, which is only about 40 minutes away. The owner was unfortunately in London last weekend, so I'll have to arrange collection next weekend.