More goings-on at Kelvin's

Click on happy Kelvin for more photos of work-in-progress

       Lunch this week consisted of ground rust and paint chips cradling a selection of cut-off bolts-n-nuts.  This was sauteed in a mixture of ATF* and acetone, and washed down with fifteen year old stale gasoline.  And yes, it tasted like excrement.   I hope it's better next week.
       The goal was to remove the seat box (and it's integral fuel tank) and rear cargo box. Both jobs looked like they where going to be easy-peasy but proved to be anything but. Confirming the truism that the perversity in the universe tends towards a maximum, all easy to access fasteners came out almost laughably easy.  The ones that were buried or recessed were all solidly rusted in lace.  Many of the bolt or nut faces were already rusted to an ungrippable round shape compounding the problem.  We couldn't even reach them with a small grinder and the only tool Kelvin doesn't own, a die grinder with a metal burr tip, would have been perfect here,
       This forced us to bang, hammer, drill, bash, curse, threaten and eventually chisel off a few of the worst offenders.  We both came away with serious bruises on our hands.   Jennie (Kelvin's puppy) helped out by washing the rust flakes off my face as I lay on the ground.
       A further problem came to light when we discovered that the floor area was covered with layers of metal sheeting pop riveted to rusty bits and cemented in place with tar that had hardened over the decades.  The finger-numbing task of chiseling it off was made significantly faster and easier with the introduction of a strange vibrating gizmo from Kelvin's tool repertoire.  Despite my initial misgivings, it worked great.
       Eventually the cursed seat box was triumphantly lifted away and we broke for lunch (finally!).
       Returning to the garage we tackled the cargo box.  It was much easier to access the fasteners but we were hampered by a slower work pace caused by warm-lunch-belly-syndrome (WLBS). As the afternoon wore on we finally dropped out tools and decided that we'd made enough progress for the day. The cargo box still stubbornly attached, awaits another day to reveal its secrets.

Bob E (nursing several mashed fingers)

* Automatic Transmission Fluid