Escadrille Ecosse

Oh I do like that

close enough Phil. eeither a downdraft sanding table. Attempting to keep the stoor from cutting carbon fibre to a minimum. Got it very cheap and hardly used. Bloody heavy though..

Today I went to Crieff to collect this...* Autumn has arrived in a rush and weather a bit wet on the way up. But saw this parked by the road in Muthil. E reg late Mk2 judging by the front overriders. It was the Ashley hardtop that caught my eye, that and the colour! Rain stopped and the sun came out on the way back. Rural Perthshire in all it's glory *can you tell what it is yet???

OK, what's the special one with the copper and tape handle for????

Pete. Looking at that I agree with Roger. I'd expect to see brighter metal where the flux has cleaned it. Basic plumbers flux like this... Should do the job. Don't use white spirit, too much residue. Acetone or alcohol or nothing at all is better. Wire wool. Then warm the area with the torch until just too hot to touch then slap on the flux and warm again to make it run. Wipe it off along with the gunk the flux will have drawn out and do it again as you want to get capillary action into the wee hole where the leak is. Then while there is still flux there, heat it up and re-solder. Although you may first want to wipe off some of the old solder. Do this with a wet rag when the solder is soft. Nowadays I just use regular plumbers lead free solder on a roll like this... Works just fine and as its only 3-4mm diameter you don't need to heat the solder just feed it into the metal as if you were gas welding. Like Roger says, nearly there.

I remember them getting issued. Dad had just come out of the RAF and we'd moved back to Scotland and he got one for the Saab 96 he had at the time I'm sure it was. Never actually used them but remember having to sit in the queue outside the local garage in Bonnybridge. That and the 3 day week and electricity cuts.

Got out the PPE, the Dremel and the footswitch today to trim the valance to size. Yesterday I marked out all the cut lines including the holes for the bonnet hing mounts. That was a bit of a performance given that the surface is angled in two planes. And yes I noticed the slight Escher problem as soon as I looked at the photo! Took a while to cut that out. The Kevlar is a right pain. In the end I found that a thin blade intended for ceramics would do the job and the cleanest cut was achieved by cutting as quickly as possible. Which is all slightly scary in itself as the very thin blade is also very flexy and wants to wander with the 'grain' of the Kevlar. Filing and then sanding got rid of most of the fluff but still left a little that I will harden by painting on a little epoxy before sanding again. I think if I was using Kevlar again I would try and keep it away from the cut edges and have just carbon at the edges. Got that done and decided to carry on with the boot lock mount panel. That's all carbon and much easier to work although it produces a lot of what behaves very much like graphite powder and sticks to everything. After an initial vacuuming, tak rags made the best job of cleaning up. Then I dug out the bootlid and trimmed that to size and glued on the lock panel with the MMA. That all felt quite exciting. At long last I am getting to something that will actually go on the car. Only slight issue is that whilst the valance fits the chassis perfectly the shape is miles off the steel bonnet I have I just used the mould that I used to make the original valance which matched the old GRP bonnet. And I don't remember having to fettle the shape. The steel bonnet has been well rebuilt so opportunity for that to be wrong as it is not the best of fits on the rest of the car either so I am putting the issue to one side for now. Worry about that bridge when I get to it. Did some weighing in. The trimmed valance is now 618g The completed bootlid - without the steel frame is 2170g I don't know how that compares with a steel one but my uber light and floppy as a blanket GRP lid which has no frame or lock panel (or lock) is 1900g. That one is so structurally inadequate I was always worried about opening it when It was windy just in case it twisted so far it would split or break off at the hinges.

Sounds like Young Frankenstein so should be good for a chuckle. Make a great 'how to' YouTube channel John

Excellent design for the bean counters, must have saved a farthing or two over the cost of a spline.

You'd think Hamish but it would probably require a more imaginative approach which kind of goes against the grain.

John I don't think your liberal (in it's truest meaning) view are harmed by any of that. Rather reinforced.

I do like it, even though it is very brown indeed. Panel fit not too bad from the pics. Seen MUCH worse - on supposedly good cars. Still looks remarkably rot free too The wheels are very period! I'd plump for some slightly lower profile tyres. Those ones are also very period. Although holding air very well. I take it the giant hubcaps are to cover the James Bond style extending tyre slashers just in case there's any trouble from Ford Mustangs. Although they may have been disabled when the wire wheels were swapped out.

Do you think the late, great John Bolster would approve

Worked on the brackets this week. Made the moulds Laid up the parts, gelcoat then four layers of carbon/Kevlar cloth. Made a pair at a time to minimise the time pressure with the resin cure so two vac bags. Tee'd together to the vac pump. All went fine with this Trimming down was a bit of a swine. Almost wore out a nearly new tungsten carbide cutting disc in the Dremel on the Kevlar. Has a tendency to make lots of fluff and the quality of the cut is sensitive to the depth and direction of cut too. I had been going to start trimming the rest of the valance but will need some new discs so I glued the brackets on. Two part methyl methacrylate adhesive. Comes in a twin tube which fits in a gun applicator with special mixer nozzles. Impressive stuff. Appalling smell though All done.... I tidied up the cut edges with a Perma-Grit sanding block and some 600 grit paper. Got rid of most of the fluffy edges but they will need a touch of resin painted on to seal them properly before painting. Will do all the cut edges once I've trimmed the rest of the valance which is marked out ready. So there we are. The first of the new panels fixed together. A bit of a milestone, even if a very small one.

As an omnivorous animal I find the prospect of being compelled to eat nothing but plants upsetting. I am particularly intolerant of Brussels sprouts and broccoli Everything in moderation (although see sprouts and broccoli comment above). Heston Blumenthal is a nut case - although an extremely entertaining (and successful) one. Excellent videos

In 1990 took the Spitfire on the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge, to Berlin, then via Dresden to Prague, Salzburg, Munich and back through France and Belgium to Holland for the boat home. In Prague we stayed in a B&B recommended by a friend of the friend we stayed with in Berlin. We met her in central Prague where I left her and my wife to get the underground to the B&B while I drove the car. Turned out that in the then Czechoslovakia they had normal house numbers but multiple streets with the same name in the suburbs which were identified by a number prefix. Only the piece of paper I had with the address was missing the street number and I was unaware of the multiple street business. However I only discovered this after I was on my own and in a Prague housing estate looking for streets that were off the edge of my map. No mobile phones in those days. Stopped by a house where two men were rebuilding a garden wall. They couldn't speak English or German, only Czech. So as a fairly large crowd gathered to watch (this was right after the Wall came down and the Spitfire was on GB plates with the roof down) a lot of sign language and waving arms explained to me the multiple streets with the same name thing and then how to get to the approximate area. After emptying the car of the various children that had climbed in off I went and found the place.

I got some good ones for the Scimitar which have done the job superbly. I got one for the Spitfire that lasted barely five minutes. When I cut it up there was not fabric reinforcement in it. The replacement was much better quality.

Jeez! Is it too early for another G&T?

This....

Well deserved John Things do seem to be rather less than stellar at the moment don't they.

This is true, however if you are careful it works fine and it's available at the local diy shop. It also comes on a coil whereas body solder usually comes in bars and is much harder to work in small areas and control heat into the solder. I have tried I had exactly the same leak problem on my rad as Pete and fixed that along with adding a drain boss and temp sensor boss to the Spit rad. Done a few others as well. What you can't do this way is solder up the matrix. And the join of the matrix to the header tank is pot luck. These took me minutes as well. Meant to add Pete that I think the reading my rad leaked at that point was because it wasn't quite lined up with the hose properly. Don't know of yours is the same but sorted that at the same time