there's a hole in my outrigger

So moving forward up the car next in line for a waft over with the welding wand was the outrigger. Rust here is commom on these cars but it wasn't helped by somebody screwing mudflaps onto them, the water sneaked past the presumably unsealed screw holes and into the inside of the box section outrigger, only on way it's escaping then.
Sombody has also been here before me with the angle grinder too and lopped huge slabs of metal out and not replaced it with anything at all. Great.

Outrigger as found with rust and parts missing from the lower section.
from the front looking back.

from the back looking forward.

so i joined the angle grinder fun a cut out a load more so it ended up like this.

hole cut by p.o. (previous owner)

Origami welding

and it fits here.

thus.

break out the welder..

crackle, crackle, welded.

sheet metal origami

It's a good job me and the girls eat our weetabix©, otherwise i wouldn't have any cardboard to make my templates with.

snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip bend, bend...and template.

accurately marked out on 1.25mm thick steel plate to the nearest... erm well it's good enough for me to produce......

this...

OK so i missed out the bit about cutting it roughly to shape take it to the car, lie under the car, position, mark where to cut and bend, get out from under the car, go to work bench bend, bend, bend, snip snip snippety snip, go back to car and repeat until it fits, (approx 40 billionty times) who needs the gym.
This is how they made the panels on your car. FACT!

more of the same

I'm just not skilled enough to make this repair section in one piece, so i made it in two, i'll weld up the join after.

the second bit of hand crafted perfectionism.
But you can buy these outriggers as a whole panel i hear you cry, ah yes, I could actually buy these bits ready formed, but then:
1) I would have to cut out the whole outrigger
2) they cost a lot of money to buy and ship over here
3) where is the fun in that?

here's one i made earlier. And it fits......

like a glove.

to this, from.......

this in a matter of many, many hours. Still, got to be happy with that. Just got to weld it on now.

The pasta wagon unplugged

Ahh so what's new in the world of the pasta wagon, thankfully very little, the warning lamp that i extinguished with a computer a while ago made a return appearance and after some internet browsing seems like i'm probably going to have to change the vacuum lines. So for the time being it still glows.

I finally got round to changing the sparkplugs i got off ebay about 6 months ago and as you would expect a thoroughly unenjoyable new car PITA it was to do too.

Under the plastic engine cover, (why does the engine need covering up with anything, it's an engine that is what it looks like), anyway plastic engine cover and deeply recessed plugs is hardly user friendly but i got it done with the help of my wide swearing vocab.


So this Passat with an up to date service history from a VW garage and the plugs look like this, looking back at the service history in fact reveals that plugs aren't part of a normal service anymore and these were last change about 90 000km ago.


This week will also see TPW getting a new front wing after the stupidness that was the tiny dent made while it was parked. I hope they make a good job of it.


shiney new ones YAY!

manky old ones, booo!

Trigger happy

Plenty of action been taking place on the austin, just not so much on the blogging front, though that is now sorted, as you can see. Another blog from the creators of I&I to separate out the old from the new, the good from the less good and the proper cars from the plastic cars.

Automotive Redux i'm sure i'll be owning more old cars in the future may as weel dedicate a blog to them too.

The weldathon continues when i get the chance to get to the workshop, the wheel arch / sill repair piece needed sticking to the rest of the car so i out my new (re)found weldings skill to the test.

Tacked on, so as to not create too much heat in the panel and distort it.

join up the dots and voila.

and from the back, looking good too.

attacked with an angle grinder and flap disc gives you this. - I must say that i mightly pleased with the result for a first try, a dab of filler and you never know.