DASWOLFGANG

Seeing Red

—

by

Andy Burrows
in , ,

So my van has gearbox issues! But no reason to stop chipping away at the things that have annoyed me until that can be fixed. Basically, the gaps in my wheels aren’t massive because of the style of alloy, but annoying all the same to see the rusty drum behind. So yesterday / today I jacked the van up, popped the wheel off and set to realizing my goal. To paint the drum red.

Anyways, one thing leads to another, and before you know it (5 hours later actually), I’ve washed away all the mud, painted the trailing arms and stone chipped the wheel arch.

The finished article:

The replacement gearbox should arrive on Tuesday, along with new clutch and slave cylinder from Brickwerks (due to be fitted on Friday locally). Nothing like cutting it fine. We should be on the ferry for our Euro trip just over a week later. Lets hope there are no issues with the replacement box!?

Comments

2 responses to “Seeing Red”

  1. albell Avatar
    albell

    Hi Andy,

    Nice job. I do like the glimpse of colour behind the wheels. Ad the trailing arms look great too. Oh about the arms, ever noticed how much dirt ends up in the arms themselves? Hard to see without the arms puff the van. I’ve had a pair of arms off the van which I ground down the standing beam and welded on reinforcing strips, and when doing that I managed to get the dirt out. Oh and I think Bentley has a small section showing rust proofing wax application through some of the holes in the arm.
    One of these days I have to take my trailing arms off and out in noes inboard bushings ( I have a set of polyurethane bushings waiting).
    I notice you have the noise abatement shield on the diesel. As useful as that thing is have you noticed how much dirt and oil the foam padding accumulates?

    Cheers

    Alistair

    Reply
    1. Andy Burrows Avatar
      Andy Burrows

      Alistair,
      The trailing arms on my van are in pretty good condition. In fact the bodywork on my van is in pretty good condition in comparison to some i have seen of its year. On the other hand, the mechanical side of the van has been woefully neglected by previous owners. That said, with all of the money i have ploughed into this side of things over the last two + years, I think its now in a good place. Cleaning the arms in this blog entry was just a second thought when i started painting the drums. I am all for prevention rather than cure. If I see rust developing i like to nip it in the bud, but as you say, there are limits to what you can do without taking the arms off. Your probably aware that the trailing arms are now available new after years of none production. People have been forced to scratch round paying high prices for second hand ones due to the lack of availability.

      PS. Hope you are doing good. I’m still keeping tabs on your blog. Love it 🙂

      Reply

Leave a Reply