Otter LRC CM4647296 comes home

[Jordan Baker]

Pretty happy with how this tank cleaned up in the citric acid bath over the past week. Power washing it out really gets it cleaned up and flushes out the gunk. Next up will be stripping the remaining paint off. Then soldering up the pin holes.

[Jordan Baker]

For the past 4 days or so I’ve had the drivers seat base soaking in the citric acid bath. After power washing the seat off I was quite happy with how well it cleaned up. I know in the picture it still appears quite rough, but other than some variation in metal colour, the rust was gone. I decided to give it a once over I the blasting cabinet and it came out very clean in a minimal of time. I also cleaned up the early style seat runners.

[Mike K]

That's a neat method for heating up the citric acid/water solution , a fish tank heater

Just wondering how the ends of the tanks can be re-used after the top edge of the folds have been ground off ?

[Jordan Baker]

The 90 gallon fish tank heater works great in the 40 gallon bath.

I’m planning on welding the fuel tank ends back in.

[Jordan Baker]

Seat mounting parts and drivers seat base all painted up.

[Jordan Baker]

Turret basket seat getting some rebuilding love. The original seat pan and back rest frame had taken some heavy rusting due to the open top of the turret. Initially I was going to weld up all the rust holes in the tray. However after looking it over again I decided to replace the seat tray. This involved cutting off part of the frame mounts and then using the original angle iron brackets from the Otter seat. The Otter also had a third lift the dot stud along the front of the seat. One had to be removed from the back of the seat and I soldered it in place at the front. The seat pan also needed 8 holes drilled in for the turret basket and Bren magazine parts to bolt in place.

[Jordan Baker]

The turret gunners foot rest getting the full rebuild. It was in really great shape and just required a strip down, some minor welding and a repaint. The part was held in place by 4 rounded head slot screws that had seen better days. Access to the nuts was blocked by a frame cross member. I ended up using a Zip disk to cut off the heads of the screws. The downside to this was cutting a bit into the steel base just below the screw heads. So once the part was cleaned up I welded up the cut marks and ground them back down to make the mounting blocks flat again. As for cleaning up the part, it was given a quick needle scaler pass and then dropped into the citric acid bath. After 4 days I pulled it out and power washed it off. Pretty much all the left over paint came off and I had some pretty nice clean metal. It was given a spray of Zep degreaser, hosed off then finally sprayed with POR Metal Prep. Finally for painting I brushed on the POR15 and once slightly tacky it was over sprayed with the white paint.