! KEN!!

normally a stickler for proper punctuation and grammar im shocked!

(should be "Gawn orft wiv da keys"

then your assimilation in to the youth culture and the "skulking around smoking behind the bike shed" ethos of this forum(over the "proper" 2cv gb one) will be complete

thats a compliment you skulkers

Sean

Is it smoking or injecting, behind the bike shed, these days?....Maybe both

Easy Taff, not everyone is from Merthyr Tydfil you know boyo!

Don't know what you mean

Right, here are the pics from this week as promised:

The first doesn't look too promising really



But actually when the rubber was removed, it doesn't look too bad



The nearside rear window has had to have some rotten stuff chopped out



The 2 small rear windows are excellent



This is the idea I've had for radiusing 2 of the corners



and finally, this is the plate that was covering up a hole behind



Most of the pics are before I've cleaned anything up and some of them show a fresh coat of Hammerite rust remover, so makes stuff look worse than it is. Hopefully you'll see some pics of nice shiney metal in a fortnight's time as I'm on leave for a week now.

As a slight distraction from the window frames and because I've been on leave this week, I just thought I'd mention that I've purchased a set of front body parts including wings, bonnet, grill, valance & what appear to be "half" doors.

Given that the bonnet is far from ideal, both visually/material/condition wise and the grill was something I cobbled together to get the car ready for the national, it was a no brainer and considering the lot's cost me £50, it's even better.

The wings are a bonus but again, seeing as the ones I have at present were chopped about to fit round a GS engine, I'll be looking at using them as well. The headlamp apertures are round as opposed to the square ones I have now, so that means a decision will have to made whether to convert to round headlamps (maybe experimenting with standard 7" bowls) or converting the replacement wings to square holes & brackets.

I actually like the colour scheme as well which has got me thinking...







I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with those doors, but considering they simply lift off the hinges, they might be good to use in the summer, weather forecast dependant

With those half doors Bertie, you could maybe faricate a Mehari-esq slot in side window. That way you could keep half doors on, but carry lighweight weather gear securely strapped on the roof

You might have something there Sam. I have had a problem with the passenger door hinge recently meaning the door hangs low and both doors have rusty holes in the bottoms which, whilst not an immediate problem, are going to need attention in the future. Oh, the options presented to a kit car owner!!

A 2 part post today:

The camera never lies!! The Bedouin parts are just as good as they look in the photos. Yeh right, and I'm in line to be the next pope. First of all, I'd like to say a big thankyou to Rob Horn who volunteered to pick up the parts from Woodbridge last Friday night for me and transport them to the Old Goat's garage for me at the weekend. The idea was for me to pick them up from Wisbech as it's nearer to Coningsby, but then Old Goat asked if I'd carry out a bit of welding for him if he delivered the parts for me. So last night Simon (Old Goat) delivered the parts, we got on with his welding and afterwards we looked at my collection of parts. Initially I was after the bonnet, front grill & valance as mine are far from ideal and the wings/doors were just a bonus. As it turns out the wings are the best items with the bonnet being a thin plywood homemade affair and the doors are VERY ropey. I won't dwell any further on the parts as they'll be looked at in a few weeks time but I thought that the delivery of them to me is a great example of how we can all scratch each other's backs - that is what I like about this community

Anyway, I carried on with the localised repair of the rear window frames last night. There's no great drama - it's just a case of slowly cleaning up the frames back to good metal and replacing a couple of areas with fresh metal.

I did however, discover another bodge last night. I noticed that the rear "quarterlight" seemed to have a lot of badly sanded filler in the corners. As with previous posts, I was almost afraid of carrying on for fear of what I might find, but actually it seems someone has merely made up a repair piece, pop-rivetted it in place (not a good fit, I might add) and then used copious amounts of filler to disguise it. WHY DO PEOPLE SPEND LONGER CARRYING ELABORATE BODGES WHEH IT WOULD PROBABLY BE QUICKER TO DO A PROPER JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE?

It's all the more frustrating because with time, I think Belinda can actually be made into quite a tidy motor as structurally, she is remarkably sound. I know she's not everyone's cup of tea but given the rarity of the car, she could quite easily have found her way to the crusher had the previous owner not been able to sell her to someone who could see the potential underneath the poor workmanship.

As an extra note, Geoff Archer gave me the details of a company that makes custom aluminium (note the spelling Will :p) windows last week. After a phone call to them, I've sent a template off with measurements in order to find out if they can come up with a better alternative to using S shaped window rubbers cut into pieces. At what cost is another matter......

OK then, it's time to post some pics of what I've been up to this week.

First of all I got myself into the feel of welding thin window frames with a small easy repair:





Then it was time to tackle something a bit more complicated. A combined repair piece was fabricated to form the rear part of the frame and a piece to cover the hole on the rear pillar:





Once that was done, I could get on with removing more pop-rivetted angle iron and weld in some proper repair pieces:





and finally I could make up a new bottom frame repair piece:





The yellow piece isn't welded in yet. I was a bit daunted by tackling what seemed a complex repair at first but when I looked at it logically I realised that it would just be a case of making one piece at a time and taking my time instead of trying to do it all at once.

I hope the pics are clear enough.