Stop fuelling around

The last couple of days have been a bit frustrating. Yesterday I attacked the Zook with the pressure washer, which promptly punched holes through a handful of body panels. It’s not like the pressure washer is extremely powerful, it’s more like large portions of the car were being held together by the mud!

After pressure washing the outside I pressure washed the inside. Amazingly the inside is not the brown colour everybody thought, but a shade of white! Took a cold chisel and a bloody great hammer to the spot welds that held the excuses for wheel arches on, why is it that spot welds are always stronger than the 2 bits of metal they join? Anyway, the result is that all 4 of the wheel arches have gaping holes through them and you can sit in the middle of the vehicle and see the grass through the holes in all 4 corners! Pulled out my arc welder and experimented with trying to weld 2 pieces of 1.6mm off-cut sheet using 2mm rods. Not a pretty sight accompanied by much swearing.

Feeling slightly dejected I turned my attention to the front wheels, only to discover that the free wheeling hubs were both jammed in locked position. Lots of WD40, a hammer and a punch eventually free’d the drivers side up to almost normal, the passenger side required me to open it up and pack the bearings with grease before could get it to turn and it still requires some persuasion. I’ll keep dousing it in the magic spray and hope it loosens up. I’m a bit worried that towing it with the front wheels locked might have caused diff wind-up, really should have thought to look before e towed it here.

Today was equally unsuccessful. Time being in short supply this afternoon, I decided to drain the fuel system. Much to my horror the fuel that came out was a mixture of petrol, water and sand! It seems that every time I do something that should be simple I find half a dozen other jobs that I hadn’t anticipated. Still at least we’ll know that everything is fixed when I finally finish all the work. Looks like I’ll have to strip the carb and fuel pump to remove the mud; should be interesting I’ve never done a carb before…