[RHClarke]

It has been busy at the barn despite the lull in updates. Last weekend saw a lot of fire wood stacking, cleaning up and clearing away of items in preparation for winter. Since Monday was a holiday (for federal employees) Bob and I spent the day at the barn. Grant was called in to work for some reason or other.

The temperature hit 21oC at the barn on Monday - a record for this region. So Bob broke out the sandblasting equipment and cleaned up most of his front fenders. There were some issues with the compressor that caused the coil in the control box to go up in smoke. Bob replaced the coil and got a few more minutes of blasting done before the new coil also went up in smoke. It looks like the control box will have to be replaced.

I spent the day working on the roof of the pilot model deciding where to replace the sheet metal. Bob recommended that I put the roof on a solid jig to prevent warping, so until that is done, the roof will wait. Next, I turned my attention to my 45 HUP roof hatch cover.

The hatch cover was in sad shape when I first got the truck. One of the previous owners cut a hole in the hatch into which he fitted a smoke stack for a wood burning stove that was put in back behind the divider on the passenger side of the rear of the truck. The heat from the stove warped all of the metal nearby and burned off the luxurious green liner on the passenger side door, the divider and the roof hatch. As mentioned previously in one of these threads, Bob and I welded up the hole. Last spring I dropped off the hatch cover at Brian Francis' place, where he trued up the edges and took out most of the warp in the hatch cover metal. He delivered the cover this summer and I was really surprised at how much metal can be shrunk or expanded. Brian did a great job. The cover stayed in the shelter until I dragged it out on Monday.

On Monday I cut away the rotten metal around the bushing mounting holes. The bushings hold the four arms and rollers that allow the hatch to roll back and forth in the tracks. All four of the bushings had rusted away on the inside edge of the hatch and had locked the shafts of the roller arms in place. Two of the bushing mounting brackets had also rusted away. The removal of the old bushings was quite easy as the metal around the edges of the hatch had also rusted away. This meant that new metal had to be welded in to replace it.

The next trick was to remove the broken off bolts on the end of two of the pivot arms. Using Bob’s “nut” technique, I welded on a small nut and eventually (after a dozen tries) removed the offending bits. I had forgotten that I had drilled out the old bolt shafts and tried to use “easy outs” to remove the remaining metal. Some folks never learn (meaning me of course). I figured that the easy outs would work nicely on such a small bolt. Wrong. Again. The remaining easy out came out rather easily using the nut technique, and the remaining metal followed suit.

Photos:

1 - Bob adding to the Hammond beach. Despite compressor problems, Bob spent the best part of the afternoon merrily blasting away.
2 - Refurbished hatch sliding hardware - pivot shafts/roller arms and bushings
3 - More of the same
4 - Some of the rust damage