The French

Everybody hates the bastards.
Say what you like about them but you've got to admire them.
Here's for why:

They have one of the shortest working weeks in Europe.
They eat rich food, drink strong wine and have a kip in the middle of the day to sleep it all off.
They smoke with reckless abandon and live to a ripe old age.
They pay less for food, fuel, drink & fags than we do and still kick off at every opportunity.
They strike at the drop of a hat to get better pay and conditions, usually successfully.
They send all their unwanted "visitors" across the channel to soft-touch-central.
Their president is cool and is boning that supermodel bint.

Who's the mugs?
Not the froggies that's for sure.
Vive La France!

It's the Canadians I feel sorry for though - Living between Americans and French...in the snow.

Why bother to queue?

Time for a righteous rant methinks.......

I was sat patiently in a queue of traffic waiting to join the M1 the other day.........as you do.
I inched my way alongside a slip-road joining from the left, leaving a nice gap between myself and the car in front to allow merging cars to join the motorway shuffle.
Not a single driver took advantage of this invitation, instead they all followed the queue and attempted to join right at the very end of the slip-road.

Why would they do this?

Easy, they are all selfish wankers whose journeys are obviously far more important than those of mugs like me who wait in line.
Then there are those geniuses who leave the queue, blat down the slip-road and try to shove their way back in at the end...........pond-scum.
They'll have my front corner off before I let them in, behaving like that.

Also amongst this long, sorry line of wretched souls was one dude who'd clearly not finished his daily ablutions before taking to the road....there he was, contentedly having a shave without a care in the world.

Grow a beard, fuckwit - leave home later!

Some silly bint in a battered Ka was texting the entire time, far too busy to concentrate on driving - she was still at it when we eventually joined the southbound procession of fools.

Is is too much to ask that these cretins stay out of my way?
Or just crash into a ditch quietly and bother no-one?
I'd like to see my wife & kids at the end of the day.....that's not unreasonable now is it?

Book-Face

I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by some of the people on a well known social networking site.
You know the one I'm sure.

Now don't get me wrong, I use Book-Face myself and it has put me back in touch with most of my old schoolmates, at least those I wanted to talk to - this is a good thing.
It's also good for estranged friends or family members to begin communicating again without awkward face to face meetings that might otherwise never happen - this is a very good thing.

What does hack me off however is the absolute arse-water that some people insist on posting.

The "I've just got up" or "I'm watching telly" brigade.
For fuck's sake, it's not in the least bit interesting and it's your business and yours alone.
Why would you think anyone cares?

The world won't stop spinning for lack of updates of your dreary tat.

Interesting is the operative word here, say anything at all as long as it's not pap.
It's a waste of time and effort for all concerned.

As for the games and constant score updates, I can't see the attraction but maybe that's just me. So-and-so has just scored 325,000 points on bloody Bejeweled Blitz or whatever.
WHY??
Don't you people have anything better to be getting on with?
I'm sure I'm missing the point of it all.

They say television killed the art of conversation, maybe so but FaceF*ck has set light to it and pissed on it's grave.

I fully realise a lot of what I post doesn't interest everyone (or even anyone) but it is at least thought out beforehand.
Think before you post, If you don't have anything interesting to say - then don't.

That's me off the Christmas card list then......oh well.

More heater channel flannel

Man-John brough the gas for the MIG and I resumed welding the heater channel and quarter panel.......proper mester's welds that is.
The back end of the quarter panel took a bit of thrashing into shape but it was no match for my 2lb. ball-pein persuader.

Now I was all for fitting the closing panel, but by this time John had started to chunter about being starving so the two of us sloped off to the chippy leaving Matt to tidy the progress so far.

Looks OK when dressed with a flap-wheel


Dinner time, John really looks forward to the chippy all week - Matt likes it too!

Matt chugging down some cloudy lemonade


Apres les pomme frites avec goujons de poisson (chips and fishy bits in batter) it was time to close the gap at the rear........fnarrr fnarrr!
I had peas as well so my "gap at the rear" was preparing to open.

Of course there's another nearly-fits panel for the job, why wouldn't there be?

John offers up said panel


Fits like a dream, a slightly disturbed strange smelling one.
Just a small patch left to drop in now, John's bringing some steel sheet next time out.

Welded shut inside and out


Belt and braces; join is joggled (step-overlapped), seam-welded on the outside and tacked inside. In case you're wondering, the seam-welds are actually many small stitches done in seperate sections of the join until they all merge together.
It's more time consuming and not as neat but a continuous seam-weld would produce far too much heat and distort the thin steel of the panel. If a job's worth doing it's worth overdoing.

Needs dressing but will look sweet when smoothed and painted



Door pillar bottom to sort next time out......

Fitting the heater channel

We fitted the heater channel today - didn't take too long, went in easy and fitted quite well.
The shell hadn't shifted due to the bracing we used in the door aperture.

We used a pair of scissor jacks to hold it while we checked measurements and tacked it in place
What didn't go quite so well was fitting the rear quarter panel repair section - the panel isn't a factory grade one to say the least.....A classic case of one size fits all, or rather doesn't.
Pressing on regardless we marked the extents of the panel and removed the old rotten metal.

No going back now

Matt prepping the car to accept the repair panel
The panel is a bit short front to back so we have opted for a best-fit approach and we'll thrash the reluctant bits into line later.
You can see the panel tack-welded into place and that's where we've left it - no choice really as the bloody MIG has run out of gas so it's game over boys!

Looks better already though.
You can see the panel fits nice at the rear end and is a bit shy at the front, it's easier to adjust the smaller of the two ends to fit ie: the door end........Blimey,anyone would think we know what we're doing

John's bringing the spare gas bottle over next time and we'll finish welding the whole lot.
Just the other side to do then.......oh joy! can't wait.

Doggie doobies?

I see ASDA have a new product line......wonder if you can get them for larger people as well?

It's been a while

Well, summer's coming to an end and we've all been busy doing other stuff so no blogging has occurred.
Just not been arsed, simple as that - it's been much too nice by half.
It's about time we got back to working on cars I thought, so last weekend we popped all the glass out of the shells and took the driver's side doors off....As you do!
Today we made a start on the heater channels on Matt's Baja and My Semi.
We're doing them together as it seems easier that way, we're doing Matt's car first so any f*ckups don't happen to my car.

Before we started cutting we added a brace or two
Hopefully the bracing will stop the shells flexing or sagging
Matt set about drilling out as many factory spot-welds as we could find
We delicately ragged the old channel off
Matt started cleaning up the metal to accept a new heater channel.
John supervising
Next time out we'll fit the new panel......