Having successfully separated the body from the skate, I took this milestone, rewarded myself with a cookie and had a quiet five minutes. I spent the next couple of weeks clearing some jobs around the house, removing any last bits that I might need, generally tidying and organising the garage space ready for the next stage and pottering about the car.
The last of the fuel was removed with some slight creativity, and the fuel tank promptly followed. The vin number and plate were removed from the firewall officially turning the body from “a car” into “scrap metal”, another moment that gave me a small lump in my throat.
In the meantime, the hotel where my daughters swimming class is held happened to be hosting the Basingstoke comicon where we were lucky enough to spot Jason Momoa’s electric Rolls Royce Phanton II. If you haven’t heard of it then have a quick Google, while it’s probably not qualified to carry the ‘kit’ car handle, it’s a cool piece of engineering nonetheless.
Next came booking in the local scrapyard to come and collect the body, with a reasonable cost of £50 to pick it up. Turns out that the transporter had a crane, meaning that I could drop the body back on to the skate, roll it to the end of the drive and then we could use the crane to lift it straight off and onto the back of the loader. No enigne crane required and the skate rolled back into the garage. While a reasonably cool way to go, it still makes me a little sad sending more of the machine to the great scrapyard in the sky. All the more reason to do her proud.
While this was going on, I had realised that at some point in this process I was likely to need a bench vice. You know, the odd stuck bolt needing drilling and tapping, a bit of metal needing to be bent for a bracket, etc. And now you’re thinking “so you bought a vice, why are you telling me?”. Well that’s where the lesson (fun?) of scope creep comes in.
I need a vice —->
- A vice needs to be mounted to the bench, and my bench is cheap and just has a very thin top laid on a simple metal frame —->
- maybe I need to reinforce the bench? —->
- maybe I should build a new proper bench —->
- make sure it’s nice and sturdy, have a quick google —->
- makes sense to have a shelf underneath to reinforce it —->
- with a little more wood you could add a shelf above as well —->
- it’s a bit weird having a blank wall between the bench and the shelf, I wonder if I could get a pinboard that would fit the gap, or I could adjust my plans to fit the pinboard…
And needing a vice turns into a big order of wood, an afternoon spent in the garage while the car is on the drive waiting to be collected, and ultimately, this…
