philb

Fantastic work! Great skill as well as patience. It sounds like it's going to a good home and will be enjoyed by many people for a long time to come. Well done.

Offer to do some gardening, dig a sort of tank-shaped hole, put a plastic liner in it, do electrolysis for a couple of days, finish the "gardening".

When I cleaned my engine off I saw the original 1945 paint was a very much darker shade of green than Eau de Nil. The ancillaries were painted all sorts of shades but to get a pretty good match to them I used Dulux "Amazon Jungle 5" - water-based (yuk) can be bought anywhere and oil-based (paint that can be painted and then stays on) can be bought from trade outlets. The practical point of painting machinery light colours is that you can see where leaks are coming from and see what you are doing working on them in poor light.

Yes, that's the right way round. If you are cleaning low carbon steel or iron parts you can do it as quickly as you like by using large area anodes and high current (I've seen one chap who uses a DC welder at 30 amps to clean big generator housings in a few hours). the voltage you need to get this depends on the resistance between the electrodes, which depends mainly on the geometry of the set-up. 12 volts would probably do nicely for odd jobs. If you are cleaning high carbon steel that will be highly stressed in use, you must either prevent excessive hydrogen formation at the cathode (work piece) by using very low current densities (implies low voltages) and taking a long time over it or bake the work piece at 200C for an hour or two immediately after electrolysis to drive out any free hydrogen atoms from the steel surface. Parts are quite clean after electrolysis and a quick wire brushing so you might get away with popping them in the kitchen oven late at night without raising suspicion. (If you get caught, it wasn't me who told you to do it!) Have a look on U-Tube to see many good examples, and some nutters (it's fairly obvious).

Not so daft as it sounds - the Navy use the same scheme, but with Sodium Chloride mostly, to stop their submarines from rusting. I know, that's not quite what it's for but the electro-chemistry is the same. You don't have to treat the whole thing at the same time. There are lots of folk who have partly submerged awkward shapes and made special anodes that fit inside hollow sections and gradually treated the whole area. If there are exposed patches of rust you don't even need to immerse them. Use a wad of rag or old carpet felt soaked in the electrolyte solution and press it against the area to be treated with a steel plate, the anode. I'm not on commission, honest, just a bit excited to find something that works for once.

So, the pics are in reverse order, I'll stick to cleaning.

Background: The rear springs on my Matador have rusted so badly between the leaves that they have burst the clamps and buckled the upper leaves. They could possibly be given a new lease of life but the prospect is not good. A bit of luck: I was able to buy another pair of springs from a chap nearby, in much better condition but, having been laid on their side in a field for many years, were still pretty rusty and I don't want them ending up the same state as the current pair. I'm sure grit blasting would have cleaned them up but my little compressor wasn't up to it and I don't like to give in straight away to getting someone else to do it. Make and mend is all part of the hobby. Testing the enemy: I dismantled the new springs (16 leaves and about 90kg each set) and attacked the rust with the usual DIY tools - angle grinder equipped with wire brush and polycarbide fleece, needle gun, files etc.. Most of the rust seemed to be annoyed by this treatment, it went shiny and gripped tight. A cunning plan: I'd heard about the use of electrolysis to remove rust (on this forum and elsewhere) so I read up about it. The process is dead easy to set up - the part to be cleaned is the cathode (-ve), some scrap iron or mild steel (nothing with Chromium in it) is the anode (+ve) and a weak solution washing soda is the electrolyte. They just need to be placed in a watertight container and hooked up to a low voltage DC supply. It's safe process (as long as the hydrogen that can be released is allowed to blow away in the wind) but it can result in embrittlement of high carbon steels (like springs!) if precautions aren't taken. Into battle: I made a spring sized (60 inches long) wooden trough from some scrap and lined it with a bit of redundant pond liner. I welded a few bit of scrap steel together to make two anodes (to connect together and place either side of the part being cleaned) and welded some long nails to them with bolts on the end of the nails to make electrical connections above the electrolyte level. Then used a lap-top power supply (a battery charger, but not a modern clever one, would do) with a current limiting resistor to supply the juice. Victory! (provisional - until I've fitted them and driven a few thousand miles): Well what do you know, it seems to work a treat. I set the current very low (about 1 Amp for the big leaves, ~4mA per square inch - to minimise the gassing and the likelihood of atomic hydrogen migrating into the steel grain structure and stressing it) and left each leaf in the trough for a day. After that. most of the rust just washes off and a quick buzz with the wire brush reveals clean shiny steel. If doesn't fill the pits but gets right to the root of them - nothing I know of except blasting would do that. Evidence: If I've got the hang of the process, the first pic shows, from right to left, a typical leaf before treatment, after electrolysis and wire brushing, a squirt of "metal ready" and a coat of Owatrol preserver ready for assembly and painting. the second pic is work in progress and the third pic is the trough with one of the last leaves in it. Voila!

Cheer up, I've seen worse. It doesn't look like the crank journals are badly grooved, so you can probably build up the white-metal enough to take a re-grind. Modern alloys are a bit tougher and more tolerant than some older ones and I don't suppose you'll be doing enough mileage to fill them with debris. I imagine with your machining skills you could keep the cost down to a bearable level. Not knowing the marque, I guess under-size shells are either thin on the ground or very expensive?

oops, something automagic got bigger than its boots :embarrassed:

A quick search came up with this firm: H. Matthews Mirrors Address: 726 Heywood Old Road, Heywood, Lancashire. OL10 2QQ Phone: 0161 6434714

By the way, look at this lot and don't let anyone tell you you've got the "wrong" tread on your tyres:

If you haven't seen this already, "Contribution to Victory" http://www.aecmilitant.co.uk/downloads/contributiontovictory.pdf shows a few interesting war-time variants - and some other military machines.

Oh, thanks for the education. I still don't think I'd want to ride it in other than a straight line on a smooth road, even then it might have some weird behaviour. I'll stick to trials, trees are tougher than they look but bushes and mud are fairly forgiving.

What make is it? It looks like the engine is in the front wheel, that would lead to some interesting cornering characteristics (serious injury I'd guess).

Follow the you-tube link to the article from the Aussies, they're not too pleased with it..... understatement.

I can be there on Thursday and would like to do the town trip. Which key do you press to indicate a fixed grin? got it.

and... there are two, still in use, currently moored off the Plymouth Yacht Haven marina. (they're not in the Google map photo)

Rob, if it's like the Matador axle, and it looks like it, the book says take the whole hub off the swivel joint first then (eventually) drift the centre (the bit you are trying to remove) out from the whole unit. Having spoken to a few people who have done this, it seems to involve a lot of blood, sweat and bad language - as well as taking a long time. If you do decide to take it apart, give us a photo diary of it!

It's a similar story regarding age related plates for specials (kit cars in modern speak - even if they're not from a kit) most of the power train and running gear must come from the same age/type of vehicle.

Oh yes please. The Matador with me and Mrs B.

Here's a reference: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1953/apr/24/new-clause-rear-lights-on-vehicles-with

In the old days (1950's) there was a limit of 3' 6" projection beyond the tail lamps. Does anyone know what the current limit is? Doesn't look like you'll exceed that, Rob.

They seem to: http://www.spaldingfasteners.co.uk/index.php?option=com_hikashop&ctrl=product&task=show&cid=1275&name=imperial-copper-washers&Itemid=7&category_pathway=57 and in small numbers.

How about http://www.spaldingfasteners.co.uk? Within walking distance?

Vince, can you say what the sulphur substitute additive is and what the MBC killer is, please? The reserve tank on my Mat, through which the main tank is filled, was half full of a horrible slimy substance a while back. I don't think it got into the main system because it couldn't climb over the weir into the main tank but I don't want it appearing again. Phil