Valleri under the knife

The spit has now arrived, and what a lovely piece of kit it is. Very hefty, beefy and well made, and crude but effective. Once she's on the spit, she can go on her side and I can remove the paint from the underside and see what I can find. Then I can make final decisions on what sort of repairs will be needed where. I will also have a bare shell, so things won't catch fire when the welding starts. Speaking of which, the trusty Mig is now running on BOC Argoshield Light, which is giving superb quality welds.

One large spit. One or two people, to whom I announced the arrival of my spit, were concerned I'd packed the project in and bought a Triumph!

A lot of this will be replaced. Why am I so pedantic and obsessive? It's bad to the point it's costing me money now, not to mention time and effort!

But I'm not putting the shell on the spit until the offside chassis rail has been repaired. It has corroded and thinned in several places, the worst being around the front crossmember mounting point.

Fresh air does not make for structural solidity.

So what do we do with corroded steel? Cut it out, obviously! This was done with an angle grinder, I'm getting quite precise now after making Rich his flamethrower mounts!

Look at it inside! I really want the chassis rails gone!

I'm going to patch the chassis leg with repair pieces for now, at least. That way, I can put her on the spit with no risk of bending a chassis rail.

What to do with the chassis rails is still something I'm unsure of. I can't really decided until I've taken the paint off the underside and examined that closely. I could get away with patching the chassis rails up, but I'd feel much happier if I could replace both. I am currently thinking I might be able to replace them and get them aligned accurately myself, by doing one at a time (obviously) and making jigs to keep it in the correct position, by having spacers going between each chasssis rail at regular intervals, another using the bolt hols at the front of the chassis legs, and another, using the front crossmember bolt holes (the alignment of these is the important thing). Am I a complete fool? Maybe.