Oscar

Daisy

She's a 1983 Series III Land Rover - 2.25 Petrol, SWB. It runs fine, and will be staying on the road, unlike the Spitfire! But it's an off road project, and I've plenty of ideas for what I'll be doing with it - watch this space!

At the moment I'm sticking with the 18-55mm kit lens - it's not spectacular, but it's capable enough. When needs must, I'll probably pop for a Sigma 70-300mm or something of a similar spec.

Expect plenty more pictures to come, with any luck!

The alloy action and 28 inch barrels mean it's lovely and light at 2.8kg, and it comes up perfectly for me. The main criticism in reviews tends to be the rather strange stock dimensions - but it's fine for me, so I've obviously a strange shape of body to match!

Whilst it's a relatively low end gun, and hardly anything special, I'm very pleased with the gun, and Yildiz, the Turkish manufacturer, certainly seem to offer good value for money in my eyes!

Knowing what I'm like, I imagine when funds allow I'll end up going for something more expensive and relegating the Yildiz back to the gun cabinet, but it'll keep me shooting for the time being! Now, where did I leave my clay shooting vest...?!

Last Sunday I went along with a friend to the filming of Top Gear of the Pops but I stupidly forgot my camera, so not much to report really! Enjoyed seeing and talking to the Top Gear presenters, but the music was a bit of a washout besides Supergrass (with Ade Edmondson on guitar!) so I'll be looking out for more stuff from them in future!

The Spitfire has more or less been ignored since the summer, time, enthusiasm, funds and decent weather have all been somewhat lacking! It was never planned for a quick turn around, but I've realised I need a project to get some enjoyment from in the present, not a few years down the line! I've got plans for something else to work on for the time being, but the Spitfire will be going nowhere, I'll have it finished one day!

I'm tech savvy enough to keep my computer secure and not to go putting my details into phishing sites, but was obviously concerned that someone had my credit card details sitting about. Turns out that it was a genuine transaction, as the payment was later made correctly, so the buyer had managed to typo his own credit card details for my own - quite an achievement. Annoyingly though, it means the card has been barred and I need to wait for a new one to turn up... usually takes an age!

Just the one Spitfire picture today... forgot to charge the camera batteries! Nothing too dramatic from yesterday evening's session in the garage... Mainly tidying up/trimming back the A pillar and floor to weldable metal.

Unfortunately the top mounting for the front of the sill (the clean metal at the bottom of what's left of the A pillar in the below shot) is completely past it, so I'll probably snip a few cm off that and fabricate a bit of steel to run right the way round. I'll also need to fabricate a bit of the bulkhead (about the right hand third here) where past repairs have made a mess of the metal I need to weld to.

Held a few panels in place to get an idea for the fit - the floor and sill look to line up, but I'm struggling to fit the A pillar repair panels between them, so will need to take some measurements to work out what's out of line before I snip anything to fit! Just the floor sat in place on its own:

This is the foremost section of the rear wing... The red paint had a centimetre or so of filler underneath it, a fairly recent repair panel for that section of the wing, the original wing, and about two inches of filler where an interior panel should join it.

And this I suppose is the point of no return...

Cutting the front end of the driver's side sill away, peeling back reveals some old repair panels that have definitely seen better days:

Cutting the rest of the sill away reveals a manky old patch panel running all the way along the length of the sill where the sill strengthener should be... maybe it's still underneath? It'd been made with three panels welded end to end, and you can see where it's been marked up with pencil - it's a piss poor fit. These panels cost a tenner, so god knows why they made their own.

Once I'd cut the sill along the top, the only thing holding it onto the car was the filler along the bottom, there was no welding. I pulled at it gently and away it came... considering these are bits that seem to have been replaced, I dread to think what else I'll come across!

Cutting away the repair panel reveals the old strengthener underneath... nice and solid as you can see!

It was at this point that I realised there was nothing attaching the floor to the sill, other than filler! A quick stamp with my size nines proves this quite effectively...

And this is where I left it before coming in to give my back a rest...

I'm starting to think I made a good decision buying so many replacement panels, but I can already see I haven't got nearly as many as I'll need. I really should have bought a nice rust free Californian bodyshell instead, shouldn't I? Oh, and if you're wondering... the passenger side is the worse of the two. Lots of fun to come, it seems!

I'm planning to construct the replacement wiring from scratch, as things will differ so massively from the stock loom. I probably should have labelled things to make life easier when referencing the original, though!

Unfortunately rain stopped play - I set up camp inside the garage with a few beers, but ended up packing it in for the week! Got back out there today, and set to work on bracing the door gaps.

Finally decided how I was going to do it... Bolted a short piece of box section to two holes for the soft top fixings, and another to holes drilled in the inside of the A pillar, behind the door hinge mountings. Welded a length of box section between them.

Not super strong mounting locations, but they should be strong enough. Should give me room for cutting and welding, and let me fit the doors to check door gaps as I go too. Of course, I could have spent £100 on adjustable door braces a year ago and started cutting at the rust! I seem to put money into all the wrong places!

Didn't get as far as cutting any old metal away... my garage is 50 metres from the house (extension leads galore!) and joins on to someone else's house - they're selling up, so I offered to pack up to make things tidier/quieter whenever they have a viewing - unfortunately they're having one the same day I start making progress! Will hopefully start hacking at the sills tomorrow, weather permitting!

So here you go, Chris... Enjoy!

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Managed to leave the last batch of albums up for six months - that wasn't quite the intention! If you can bear to move your eyes away from my ultra exciting main content, you'll notice I changed them! Might have to make an archive of previous albums listed, though I've bought a huge amount prior to listing them, so it wouldn't be much of a list!

The three added are my three latest purchases, though I've been listening to quite a few old albums of late, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, System of a Down, Nirvana to name a few - bit of a theme there, felt the need to reminisce, I suppose!

December Underground and AFI's previous album, Sing the Sorrow have been departures from the style of their older offerings, such as The Art of Drowning and Black Sails in the Sunset, but I can't help thinking it's a good progression. Unlike many albums, but as with AFI's others, I've really enjoyed listening to December Underground right the way through, rather than picking and choosing the tracks that I enjoy and stand out most. As with Sing the Sorrow, this won't be in its case very much!

St. Elsewhere is Gnarls Barkley's debut album, which didn't impress all that much at first. I decided to buy it after first hearing their single, Crazy, but that was a few months before it even got to radio play, and the excessive airplay ruined the track for me. Nothing like having the evils of local radio playing a track every hour the two weeks before it's release to spoil it for you! Sadly, I'm not kidding! Nothing seriously wrong with the album, its not all that similar to the single, but there's nothing that really stands out. Sort of album that fades into the background when you put it on and you don't even realise it's finished.

I haven't had much chance to listen to Twelve Stops and Home from The Feeling, but it seems to be fairly similar styles to their singles from the album, so it'll likely be a reasonable listen, but I don't think it'll hang around for much repeat play.

Here we have the rebuilt front suspension and brakes, all new fixings, stripped and painted over a few major bits, wishbones, anti roll bar, turrets etc. The rest is all shiny new. AVO height adjustable dampers, 330lb springs, polybush, rest is stock.

It took a couple of weeks (!) but I managed to tidy the garage up a bit...

...ready to start poking at the rot! Hours of fun!

The Spitfire is costing me a small fortune, which was to be expected, but I can't seem to stop dreaming. I really struggled to stop myself buying a cheap Chevy Blazer restoration project on eBay last week, and I've been pricing up some off road modifications for a Toyota Hi-Lux or similar. I really need some self control. Or a smaller project that I can get on with gradually, so I don't get distracted so easily.

I used to have a Hornby layout in the loft when I was younger, but the fun for me was always in the modelling and construction, never in running it. I did it gradually over a year or two, and then ripped it apart when it was finished and sold off all the track and rolling stock. Never even ran it.

Pondering last week, I mentioned to my brother-in-law that I could build a small scale layout inside a glass topped coffee table. Being a signalling engineer, he would probably be frustrated to find as much track as possible crammed into the metre square table, with plenty of intertwining loops and points, yet not a single signal. Might have to look into that one, would give me something to do, even if I don't ever play with it when it's finished.

Of course I could always get a cheaper hobby - I notice there are a couple of adverts for line dancing classes in the local paper...

All it took was a day with the angle grinder's wire brush attachment, and generous splashings of POR-15 paint. I've been waiting for a handful of cheap bits from Canley's for over a month, and it doesn't look like they'll be appearing any time soon, so the suspension rebuild will have to wait for the time being.

It's hardly the same effect as shot blasting and powder coating, but it'll keep the rust and the MOT tester's crayon at bay.