A Lick of Paint

With the first coat of paint now on, the great thrill is to actually tick things off the list as finished! With the body tub welded and repainted, Matt and the chaps are moving on to the chassis. There are a few, small, welding jobs to do, then the fitting of all new brake pipes and fittings. The brakes it came with, were judged to be serviceable anyway and some parts even look new. My role has been minimal, but I fear I shall be doing what I do best, and heading back to Jeeparts, with another shopping list before too long.

Nice new floor.

Piece by piece it’s taking shape. The rusty old floor is in the skip and this lovely new one is now in place, Matt went to great lengths to point out that it would be far better to get the whole tub sand blasted and weld to bare metal, but I wanted to retain the patina of old paint underneath the new paint I shall apply next Spring. Therefore, it was out with the grinder to clean up the metal for welding. With the new floor now in, the body is not far off being complete and the next task is to get the chassis and all it’s components up to scratch before refitting the body.

Measure twice, cut once.

The Matt Savage team have now started work and removed the old, rusty, floor section. I went back to Jeeparts and lashed out a fortune on a whole Land Rover full of bits. The biggest bit was a new floor panel. This should fit in perfectly once the chaps have hacked out the original 1943 spot welds and tidied up the edge of the floor.

They found a few little wasp nests around the vehicle. These are genuine Californian wasps and one or two were sort of flying about and about 3/4 of an inch long. Hope this sort spell of warm weather we're having doesn't wake them all up! ahhhhh