Wednesday 18 September 2013

The first thing to start with when preforming a face lift is the face.  Here's Molly's befor and after surgery.  Twas merely a matter of hacking out her rotten bits, patching in some new bits and then a small injection of botox, commonly known in the automotive industry as 'filler'.






Monday 2 September 2013

Out with the old and in with the new.

First things first in getting Molly ready for the wedding is to give her a face lift.  She's getting on a bit and everything is starting to slip as it happens to the best of us.  We decided to respray her and make any required repairs along the way.
Here she is looking a bit of a sorry state after her rear door had fallen off.  This happened earlier in the year but other projects meant the repair was postponed.  In the picture you can see I have started the long and arduous task of rubbing her down.


 Now, Our Molly doesn't have an awful lot of steel in her compared to other vans of her size but what steel there is is subject to the same fate; rust.  We'd done a bit of welding to her before including repairing the bulkhead, a small section of chassis and the NS inner wheel arch.  But I also knew there was some lurking behind her front panel so I removed it to make the repairs.
Here is a section I removed and next to it is the new one I made to replace it.  At the bottom is another replacement although I've not yet made the square hole in the pic.


 The next sequence of photo's show the section being installed.  The top of the panels either side of the radiator were also rotton and needed replacing as were the forward part of the front wheel arches.  All the metal is good nick was ground back, treated and then primed.  I'll paint this all and waxoil what needs waxoiling in the near future.




Bloody hell, it's been nearly a year since the last post in this blog.  Well that shows how savagly neglected poor old Molly has been.  Not to fear however, her spirits have been lifted by a most unusual request.

While Molly was gathering mould beneath the Sycamore and spending her hours knitting spiders webs things were happening elsewhere.  Just when she thought she'd been heartlessly abandoned for the second time in her life she was asked to take a young lady to her special day. 
"What joy!"  Said Molly.  "I'll be the belle of the ball!"
"Half a second miss."  Said the bride to be.  "I rather hoped I'd be the belle."
"Ah, yes."  Molly replied now rather embarressed by her outburst.
"Anyway" Contined the bride to be.  "You can't very well go like that now can you."
Molly limped over to the pond (for her clutch was seized) and gazed down into the misty waters.  The bride to be was right, Molly was not looking her finest.  She looked back sorrowfully at the bride to be.
"Come along now Molly, lets get you fixed up aye?"
The two walked hand in hand back to the workshop.