you have skills!

How the hell is someone so young, so handy with the mig welder?

Yeh right! Im well jealous

Fancy a holiday in Sussex? Food, bored, I'll take you sailing... and you can sort my floors, sills and toe board out

I'm not terribly sure that telling George he'll be bored is really the way to convince him to come down Sam!

or a holiday in Swindon (its not far from you) welding up Lumaca 2

All right, all right, is this better?



Just when you hit a rusty spot, you hear it making that dull popping sound, heart sinks... Try quickly welding over the hole, just make it bigger, end up going around the edge, and building a massive circle of weld, grind it back, find pinholes, weld over again and so on and so on...

I meant to do some more today, but it was pissing down with rain, I was wet, cold, miserable, and sitting inside fiddling with mobylette engines with a cup of coffee seemed much more tempting.

If the weather's nice I'll hopefully finish the hinge at least tomorrow, then run away to France for a week!

One 2cv at a time - I'm going to need a while to recover after this van..!

I quite enjoy doing bits of work for people, the trouble is I seem incapable of just doing a little bit - Start off patching a hole in the floor, and end up with new floors, sills, door pillars, chassis etc...

Lumaca 2 eh? I've been wanting to investigate the 2cv racing, the only problem will be if I manage to find another garage, a cheap scrappy 2cv and some more time, I've got a few friends mad enough to consider making a race team with me - I can't go welding up the opposition!

That'll be a few years away though probably, would be good to get involved with some races before then though. Can't do Snet this year though unfortunately

*Pant*... *Pant*... *Pant*...

Got up at 7am, which is unheard of for me during holidays, and spent most of the day solidly 2cving. That's the last for a week and a bit now, I'm running away to France, supposedly on a school camping / cycling ride to help out, but really in the hope of finding some cool mobylette / 2cv bits to bring home.

Anyway, I got quite a bit done today, I think the majority of the welding on the cab bit of the van is done

I finished off welding the bonnet hinge replacement panel, which went all right. The ends of it are a right pain though, I still haven't finished them. Think I'm going to have to spend hours, filling up with weld, grinding back into a new shape, filling up with weld, grinding back again etc. to get them to a state I'm happy with. Of course, I could just use some filler when it comes to painting it, however I'm likely to get it shot blasted by someone before that, and I'm conscious Mr shot blaster will see every one of my mistakes...







After that, it was time to trial fit my bulkhead panel. Considering the extent of my measurements was holding out my hands and saying 'yay by yay', it fitted surprisingly well! The toeboard was a bit too far back in the middle, but a few ratchet straps to hold it in place whilst welding cured that. The one problem I'm finding is a lack of clamps - I have a couple of G clamps, and a couple of mole grips, which isn't really sufficient. I might see if I can get any more cheaply off ebay, or those temporary rivet things, I don't know what you call them.



Anyway, that all loosely held in place, I went around drilling holes for plug welding it in place. Another useful thing I picked up from don't-remember-where, is an automatic centre punch. It's just got a spring loaded central spike, you push it on, it goes clunk, there's your indent. I know it's lazy, and probably not effective on any vehicle with thicker bodywork than a 2cv (So, probably not effective on any other vehicle ) But it saves a bit of time, I really rather like it.









Just a few closer up pictures of how it was attached at the edges;









There we go

Obviously the bulkhead needs the heater tube bits fitting, a few holes and brackets making and so on. The O/S sill still needs about 5cm replacing. The top of the O/S door pillar, where it meets the van bit needs... Something doing. And the O/S bottom door mounting bracket thing needs fitting. Other than that, I think that's about all the main welding on the cab bit done!





It's back away in the garage now, but it finally feels like I'm getting somewhere with this, it's beginning to look a bit like a 2cv again. We'll see how much gets done in August, but it might just be ready for the ICCCR.

Thanks for the comments / advice etc. everyone, I'll be back in few days!

George





^ Is it a Sahara? Is it a mod-con? No! I just don't have enough garage space for all my rubbish!

Really nice job - good work

Thank you!

I'm home again (7 2cv's in France, one van, a solex, a mobylette and quite a few renault 4s... ) and the van back in my outdoors workshop. I've barely done anything, just repairing the end of a sill. From now till September should mostly be 2cv time, though I'm feeling rather slow at the moment, and keep getting distracted by mobylettes etc.





Still plodding on. I need to do something about the door pillars visible in those pictures, unfortunately they are a different shape to the normal A posts. Looking at it though, I think I might be able to bend the normal section into that shape, I'll have a play and see.

Has anyone read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance? I think there was a mention of 'Gumption', a lack of which I'm suffering from now.

Oh well, it still seems to be progressing slowly! I'm sure I'll get there in the end, there's no way I'm ever going to give up on this project, I've put far to much effort in .

Had a play with some pictures to cheer myself up, what do you think?