Had a good day today and as a bonus the weather was great. It was way too hot for my ongoing loft project so a day outside was called for.

First of all a general cleanup around the inner wings, and with the front panel off, easy access to the steering relay made it an obvious first job to squirt in some EP90 after first brushing away loose debris.

Following that I got to work on cleaning up the exposed chassis parts and removed ancillaries from the inner wings and gave them a quick rub down.

I noted that the material around the bolt mounting the wing to the mudshield had completely disintegrated so that needs repair, and the mudshield itself is completely rotted.

I decided quite recently to paint the visible parts of the chassis. I prefer the look anyway but also, if the chassis doesn’t look obviously galvanised at first glance I hope it will be less attractive to would-be thieves. A while back a chap in a transit tipper laden with scrap-metal with a low-loading trailer stopped and asked how much I wanted for it. When I said ’10 grand’ he was quite rude using words that shouldn’t be used in front of a lady. Luckily there were none. Basically, it’s not for sale. Since then, a similar vehicle has been spotted by two neighbours on different occasions, slowing down and taking a good look around.

So, after a good clean up with the wire brush I applied Mordant Solution T-Wash to the chassis. I wire brushed the front axle casing as best I could, and spent considerable time doing the same with the steering linkages and treated with ‘Pattex’ rust converter. I found this for sale in my local ‘Lidl’ store, very reasonably priced, it is similar to ‘Granville’ rust treatment, or Loctite. I am a fan of ‘Fertan’ but that’s no good if there’s any paint residue as it won’t go off and stays sticky.

I then turned my attention to the ‘recycled’ front panel. I had done some work to this already. It had been ‘roughly’ primed by the repairer over some obvious rusty patches, so I had already scraped of the paint, sanded and liberally treated the affected areas with Pattex.

I sprayed many coats of ‘No-Nonsense’ zinc ‘galvanising’ spray to the panel, the ‘horn protecting’ mud shield, and bonnet stay bracket.

All in all, a good day that ended with some lawn-mowing and general tidying in the garden, cheese rolls for tea outside, so very nice.