The Name's Bond...

... Windscreen Bond, and I'm an utter, utter pain in the dick.

Having tried to remove bonded-in windscreens before and only ever succeeded in cracking them, a couple of folks on the HRG Faecebook page pointed me towards some guff you could buy from Screwfix that'd work to dissolve the stuff. A trip to Screwfix, and five minutes and £3.99 later, I have a bottle of 'No Nonsense' Sealant Remover. Whether this is the stuff I needed or not I don't know, but from my description it's all the monosyllabic acne-ridden knuckle-fuckers behind the counter could find that matched my - admittedly vague - description of what I was after.

I tried it on the rear screen of a Fox Mustang notch that had suffered from a previous owner's "oh-shit-my-carpet's-wet-I'd-better-go-round-all-my-windows-with-Sikaflex" attitude, so I tried to scrape away as much excess as I could before starting. The bottle comes with a brush built into the cap, like Kurust (or, as it should be called, Doesn't Kurust But Turns It A Slightly More Attractive Colour Before Creating Horrible Blue Streaks The First Time It Rains), and the product itself is like a gel, so I painted it around the rear screen bond.

I don't know what I was expecting - maybe somebody like Barry Scott to shout, 'Bang! And the Sikaflex is gone!' - but what it mainly did, after 15 minutes, is make the surface of the bead of sealant soft and gooey. Whereupon the now-nearly-liquid layer of Sikaflex goes everywhere. All over the paintwork, all over the glass, all over me, everywhere. So a second coat of solvent went on. After another 15 minutes, the Sikaflex still hadn't magically disappeared, but there was slightly less of it and what remained was a bit softer, so out came the old hook-and-rope windscreen remover. The screen came out pretty easily and ... in one piece! Result!

This was almost a week ago. I still have not succeeded in completely scrubbing all the dissolved Sikaflex off my hands. The patches of the damn stuff on the overalls I was wearing have since set solid. The lumps of it that I scraped off have got stuck in the treads of my boots so that when I'm outside I build up an accretion of gravel and pebbles that stick to it, but when I'm indoors I manage to leave little tarry smudges on the floor. And now I have a Fox Mustang notch rear windscreen that nobody wants and I have nowhere to store. Yet, somehow, the whole operation still feels like it was a success...

Eugene

The Daily Grind

At the end of last year, I went to the Restoration Show at Stoneleigh. It was alright, I suppose, but I did manage to pick up a few bits and pieces, one of which was a box of about two dozen cutting discs for the 4.5" grinder. These are those discs that are about 1mm thick, and I thought that a box of two dozen discs would last me forever.

So, anyway, there's me advertising two Fox Mustangs breaking for spares, and one chap wants the panel that goes between the bonnet and the windscreen. He had his bonnet blow open, and it's ruined the panel. Wahey, thought I, I get to use my new cutting discs! So, finally, Saturday, a day off when it's not raining. I went down to the unit and started cutting.

They go through steel really quickly and cleanly, but Jeeeeeezus, do they wear out quickly! Mind you, cutting that piece out was no picnic - the panel itself is nice and clean, but pretty much every surrounding piece of metal is rotten. From the looks of it, you'd have thought that a well aimed kick would have had the whole box section flying down the yard, but no, it took me two days. And because I had to work in some really tight corners, I had to take the guard off the grinder. So I was working away, dodging the shrapnel and sparks, just waiting for the grinder to hit the next patch of filler and make the car look like one of Charlie Sheen's sneezes, and wondering what that strange foul smell was. Oh, I've just sliced the fingertip off my leather glove. Fortunately my fingers didn't reach all the way to the ends of the gloves (there's a joke in there somewhere...). Then I found a large patch made of ally mesh and fibreglass resin. That was a treat to grind through.

No joy, and then it got dark, so I abandoned it and went back this morning. I finally cut the whole box section out, rotten bits and all. If the guy wants the whole thing, he can pick the bones out of it. The only problem is ...

...I seem to have used up half my box of discs. This was just Saturday's tally. Today's was the same again. Surprisingly, the one on the left was the only casualty of breakage. It got stuck, and the centre twisted out of it. Overall? Brilliant tools, don't last long.

Eugene

Worthless Tools

Nope, not another rant about the government. Just a rant.

Last night I took the windscreen out of one of the Fox Mustangs I'm breaking for spares. The windscreen was chipped and delaminated, but I've had a guy mithering me (you know the sort - "Hi, I'd like to give you money for something you don't want or need" - that sort of pain) for the cowl panel between the bonnet and the screen, and you can't cut that out with the screen in place.

The screens are bonded in on Fox Mustangs, so that, coupled with the fact that the sunroof surrounds leak for fun on Foxes but everyone assumes it's the windscreen so they gum them up with silicone, meant I'd need a special tool. Fortunately, I have one. It's called a Bonded Windscreen Removal Tool.

Pretty self-explanatory, right? The little tungsten-carbide* hook cuts through the bond, and you work it around using the two handles. Wrong. I've only ever used it twice before. Once, I chipped and cracked the screen, but I assumed that was me being a novice. Last time, Chubbs used it and the same thing happened. Bad luck. Now I'm convinced that this tool is in fact about as much use as tights to a mermaid. On the instructions, it should say:
1. Jab hook through bead of bond. Keep handle at 90 degrees to the screen.
2. Wiggle it along using both hands and every ounce of strength you have until you are sweating profusely.
3. After 10cm/4", the screen will crack.
4. Carry on, because you've got to finish the job now.
5. Crack the screen at 10cm/4" intervals for the entire perimeter of the screen.
6. Remove the screen and take it to the tip.

I've been told by Wacky Mick, who used to work for Autoglass, that those special tools are in fact worthless, and only good for removing a screen that's already damaged. To remove a good screen, you need to spend hours working from the inside with a long, sharp blade and a bucket of patience.

Here are the instructions according to me, yesterday evening.
1. Wait until it's a cold day, so the bond will be almost rock solid. Ideally, wait until it's nearly dark, too.
2. Jab hook through bond. Immediately crack screen.
3. Heave and strain so hard trying to pull the tool through the tar that you are on the verge of involuntarily dropping a pound of bum-tripe in your strides.
4. Have a bright idea - a blowtorch!
5. Hunt for the blowtorch until it actually IS dark outside.
6. Use blowtorch to heat cutting tip of worthless screen removal tool.
7. Find this makes it marginally less ineffective than it was before, but you have melted the little nylon wheel that the wire rope attaches to that serves no other discernible purpose.
8. Have another bright idea. Heat up the edges of the screen to soften the bond, 10" at a time
9. Go around the screen in 90 seconds.
10. Find that this has worked a treat, except for the bottom corner bit where it seems that, instead of having the cutting hook between the screen and the surround, you actually had it between the inside layer of glass and the sheet of plastic laminate. Crack. The inner glass laminate is still bonded to the car, and you've got Bob Hope of getting that out with all your fingers intact.
11. Go home in a strop.

I hope this has been helpful?

Eugene

* - I'm not sure it is tungsten-carbide, and think it might, possibly, be chocolate.

NSCC AGM WTF?

Saturday just gone saw the annual drivers' meeting for the National Street Car Challenge. Last year's discussion got a bit heated over several issues, so would this be the same again? Would there be the beer-fuelled bun-fight we've become accustomed to? Would there be hair and teeth flying in all directions? No. Quite the opposite.

Last year, I'm sure we filled that room three-quarters full. This year, we barely half filled it, and it doesn't half come to something when Kelly is complaining that she can't hear over the noise of some Glaswegian pensioners giggling in the next room. Although to be fair they were doing some shrieking in there - were they having an Ann Summers party, or was Biff showing them his camera-phone "self-portraits"?

So where was everyone? Every year, there were people who'd come along to the drivers' meeting and I wouldn't see them again for the rest of the year. Even those guys stayed away. Is it just that everyone's skint? For God's sake, give us a clue...

Anyway, on to the meeting. We had some proposals to put forward that we just knew would cause a riot. We were thinking of having chicken wire at the front of the stage, Blues Brothers-style, to deflect the barrage of empty glasses. Full ones would be too much to hope for, I suppose.

And the objections didn't come. We suggested allowing slicks to be used at race meetings on any car that had already fulfilled the qualifying criteria of one show event, one race event and two cruises. Most people agreed. We suggested opening the entry rules to allow 'retro' front-wheel drive cars over 25 years old like MkI Fiestas and Golfs, Minis and older Jap stuff to join in. People said "Why the age limit? Let everyone join." We suggested that every car should have an MoT certificate to compete, even if it's pre-1960. We got a brief round of applause. All the contentious rules that have previously been like lighting the blue touch paper went through on the nod.

What? Who the bloody hell are you lot, and what have you done with the NSCC competitors?! The guys who could start a 15 minute argument if you said "Good evening" to them. Have the bar staff at the Manhattan put Valium in the beer? Well, they should put SOMETHING in the beer, preferably something that makes it taste like beer and not that cold tea, cat piss and custard concoction that breweries like to call SmoothFlow. Or maybe that's it - maybe the Manhattan switched to alcohol-free beer to keep things sweet? Although that certainly would raise a few questions about how Gasket got into that state...

So what's going on? Is it that everyone's finally realised that we can't afford to be narrow minded any more, and that in order for the series (and the scene) to survive, we're going to have to bin a few preconceptions and broaden our horizons a little bit? Or have people just given up? Stopped caring one way or the other? Or, rather, is the NSCC going to shrug its shoulders and accept that change is inevitable, or are we going to embrace it as an opportunity to spread the word, get some new faces and new blood into the scene, and, somehow, no matter how impractical it sounds, give ourselves a damn good kick up the arse? Watch www.nscc.info for rule changes and other such rot.

Oh, and congratulations to John Peace, the newly-crowned NSCC champion of 2012. A worthy winner, a well-deserved title, and one of the nicest blokes you could wish to meet. Good health, John.

All Hands On Dexion

Last post, I was rambling on about the need for shelving. Last time Machine Mart had a VAT-free day, I went and bought two shelving units, each of which had five shelves, and each shelf was claimed to be able to carry 350kg. That's actually THREE of me per shelf. Yeah, I don't believe it either. That's well over 1.5 tons per unit, but you don't see axle stands made out of nasty 1.5mm steel, do you?

Anyway, the two units on VAT-free day cost me £100. So when I realised that I needed more, I went on eBay and bought 10 bays of it. They were in Bolton, so on Saturday, me and ar wench took the seats out of the Grand Voyager and went to fetch it. We arrived at the shop - the shelving was warehousing shelving - to be told by the 5'0", six-stone asian girl behind the counter that it was up a long flight of narrow stairs, but there was a lift we could use to bring it down. Terrific. The lift was about five feet across, three deep and three square, but anyway, we got it all into the car.

Once I'd got it down the unit I found the old dilemma - I needed to clear everything out of the unit in order to get the shelving in. Then, while clearing a pile of mouse-eaten carpets, I found a gearbox. A FWD gearbox I didn't know I had. Damned if I know what it's from, so it's going in the scrap. I managed to get two bays of shelving up

Now, let's see how long it takes me to fill that lot with crap. Will I have enough shelves to accommodate all my crap? Will I have enough wall space to accommodate all my shelves? Will the whole lot come crashing down in the first gust of wind (of which there is a sod of a lot about at the moment)? Let's see. I my have some left over, so if anyone wants and 7' tall, 3' wide steel shelving units, let me know.

Eugene

Hot Rodders are Revolting

On the HRG's Facebook page this evening, a seasoned drag racer who really should know better has suggested that the HRG should stage a revolution and take over the reins of the country from the inept crowd of dullards and fudge-nudgers currently polishing Whitehall chairs with their arses. We should call it a Coup d'eTwat.

And what has brought on this sudden burst of political unrest? Is it a backlash against the recent 'double-dip' recession? Is it that the coalition seems hellbent on grinding the average working Joe into the ground via taxes upon taxes, especially the most cynical of all, 'Bedroom Tax'? Is it an outpouring of feeling from a country suffering from a dilution of its national identity in the name of multiculturalism?

No. It's because the Office of Fair Trading have looked into the price structure of forecourt petrol and diesel sales and said, "Nope, nothing amiss there." They were basically investigating oil companies and price fixing. Yeah, we're always going to get a fair inquiry into one of the richest industries on the planet. Let's face it, if there's one by-product of the oil industry, it's grease. Good for greasing the wheels, greasing the skids, and maybe greasing a few palms at inquiry time. Not that I'd dream of casting aspersions on the integrity of the government and its agencies, much less to suggest that most of them are so bent they could walk through a spiral staircase without knocking their hats off.

But the problem doesn't lie with the oil companies when it comes to filling the tank at the forecourt. My own integrity says that I should do some thorough research, but the rest of my brain is telling me to sod that, so here are some rough (read: wildly inaccurate) figures. Of the £1.30-odd you pay for a litre of petrol, about 50p of it is the wholesale cost of the petrol. A few pence - literally a couple of pence - is profit for the retailer. They work on volume - those few pence certainly stack up when you're flogging thousands of litres a day - and shop sales. That's why so many petrol stations have groceries, coffee shops, Ginsters pasties, off-licences, lapdancing clubs etc built in, because they wouldn't survive just on petrol sales. Well, maybe not lapdancing clubs, but give it time... This is also why everything's so sodding expensive at the fuel station.

The rest? The remaining 80-odd pence? Duty and VAT. And the VAT is calculable on petrol + duty, so yes, you're paying tax on your tax. Is there anything else on retail sale in the UK that attracts more than 100% in tax? Possibly tobacco, I don't know. Either way, I don't think the Office of Fair Trading should be investigating the oil companies; they should be investigating the bloody government. For instance, the road tax on the Bedford runs out tomorrow. That's £121 for six months' road rent. Will that £121 be put with everyone else's road tax and get spent on projects to maintain and improve our roads and transport infrastructure? Will it arse-biscuits. Some of it will, although nowhere near as much gets spent on the roads as gets spent on the rail network which, last time I looked, was operated by private businesses... which are still making a monstrous loss! Road Fund Licence - there's a clue in the title! It's like going to Tesco and buying a loaf of bread for £1. When you get to the checkout, the lass behind the till opens the packet, and takes out half the slices. Some she makes herself a sandwich with, some she feeds to the birds in some godforsaken third-world country and the rest she throws down the toilet. You get half a loaf of bread which is rapidly going stale and a bewildering, disquieting feeling that you're being done over somewhere along the line.

This has been a party political broadcast on behalf of the HRG.

Eugene

Going nowhere...

Had a good day down at the unit today. Graham, an NSCC competitor from days past and all-round nice bloke came along and bought an axle for his four-pot Fox. It was still attached to the car, so we (I say "we" as if I helped a fat lot at all) jacked the car up, undid the shockers, undid the axle ends of the trailing arms and removed the springs, then undid the axle ends of the upper arms, cut through the brake flexi and handbrake cables, and dragged the axle out. And here's the kicker - it was that easy! Nothing was seized, nothing snapped, there were no trips to casualty... a handful of spanners and sockets and out it came. It was so quick that we were convinced we must have done something wrong, even though the axle was now sat comfortably in the back of his pick-up. He suggested that we put it back on again and do the job properly, sweating and swearing and breaking things and ending up just cutting through everything with a grinder. The only problem was the sudden attack of high-velocity horizontal freezing rain that rocked up just at the point where we both needed to be lying on the ground under the car.

After Graham had gone, I took off the fuel tank and the exhaust. What special steel do they make fuel tanks and exhausts out of? The rust that you get on fuel tanks and exhausts is unlike any other sort of rust (and, believe me, I've been around the block a few times when it comes to rust) as it seems to stain whatever it touches and won't wash off. It's like the hot rod equivalent of a henna tattoo. In the fuel tank was some fuel. Bonus! God knows how long it's been in there, but I decanted it into a five-litre fuel can, found it was a strange brown colour like a very weak tea, but it smelled like petrol and there was nearly a gallon of it, so I wasn't going to waste it. I got a funnel and a filter (a bit of old T-shirt) and poured it into the Mustang's fuel tank. Job done. I removed the "filter" from the funnel and found it full of petrified insects. What kind of numbskull bell-end insect crawls into a fuel tank? What sort of food do they expect to find in there? I may pose the question to Springwatch in the hope that Kate Humble might show up to investigate, but knowing my luck I'd get Bill Oddie come round and gibber on about how this was the larvae of the endangered Four-Star Beetle and have a preservation order slapped on the bloody workshop.

I've now hit that point in my various ongoing projects where everything is waiting on everything else. The Mustang now has four uprated dampers and three lowering springs. I've got a bolt seized in the rear trailing arm so I can't change the fourth spring. As soon as I get chance, I'll head down to one of my mates' garages where there's compressed air and an impact wrench and try to free the bugger off, but if that doesn't work I shall have to cut the head and nut off the bolt. Then, with matching springs on the car I can finally get the tracking sorted. Note - local independent tyre place, "tracking, £28". Local ATS or Kwik Fit, "four-wheel laser alignment, £80". Well fuck my flat cap. Hmmm, but even though it's the latest space-age high-tech laser technology, it's still being operated by the sort of YTS knuckle-dragging grease-weasels who I wouldn't trust with any machinery more complex than a ring-pull can. And what's the point of four-wheel alignment on a car with a solid rear axle? If it does turn out that the back axle's on the piss, what are they going to do about it?

Still, once the tracking's been sorted, I can finally put the steering wheel on straight - I changed the rack and now the steering wheel's at 90-degrees in the straight ahead position, nicely obscuring both the speedo and the tacho. And then I can put my "new" wheels and tyres on. The ones with tread on, which can come in handy with all this snow about. Damned if I'm going to fit them now so that my out-of-alignment front end can scrub the tread off for me...

Likewise I've been dragging Mustang spares into the unit and stacking them up in front of Andy's Chevy. But now I've actually achieved gridlock, and having used all the available floor space in front of the Chevy I've started stacking it behind the Chevy. So I decided I needed some shelves. So I bought a whole bloody load of shelves off eBay, thinking I'll collect them with the CF beavertail. But they've been dismantled, and even with a country mile of ratchet straps I can't imagine I'd get home with anything like as much Dexion as I set off with, having just distributed it down a 30-mile stretch of the M6. I'd have the gippos following me like Hansel and bloody Gretel... But when I do get it home, I'll have to shovel out all the stuff I've just put behind the Chevy, then roll the Chevy out, then shovel out all the crap I've put in FRONT of the Chevy so I can drag in all the new shelves, build them back up, then put all the crap on the shelves... This quick tidy-up looks like taking at least two days.

Eugene