Full steam ahead!

During the summer months when the country shows take place, we like to take a well earned rest and enjoy a day out at the local steam traction engine event in a nearby village. Despite being a couple of petrol heads and lovers of sleek and speedy sports cars, we can never fail to be moved by the power and majesty of these huge, heavy engines.

All the fun of the fair!

As restorers ourselves we admire the time and patience involved in renovating and maintaining these magnificent machines.  The hours of work and the endless elbow grease involved is very impressive as well as the individual style and character of these workhorses of yesteryear

Although they are all beautiful in their own way, there are some which really stand out for their glossy paintwork, gilt trim and polished metals. There are also the odd one or two that are clearly unfinished projects or a work in progress. I can’t deny that the temptation to take the rusty ones home to blast and polish is very appealing.

Could this be our next rust removal project? ......... Perhaps I should have left my business card on his footplate!

Make Hay while the sunshines

With such a wet and windy summer this year our farming friends and neighbours have some pretty narrow windows in which to cut and bale their hay. So when a local farmer asked us to strip down a baler panel urgently and return it the same day we were happy to oblige.

An electric sander is no match for stubborn paint



He had tried in vain to strip it with an electric sanding tool but the layers of paint were too numerous and too thick to remove. So he asked if we could help and of course we were delighted to rise to the challenge. 

 Our powerful blasting pot and specialist media made short work of the thick yellow paint and the panel was soon returned to its original, pre-painted finish without warping or damage to the surface.

Paint free and perfect for priming and painting

We coated the panel with a fine layer of penatrating oil which is light and easily washed off but protects the exposed surface from flash rusting in the period between paint removal and priming and it was ready to go. Its owner was delighted with the finish and we were pretty pleased with it too. Another satisfied customer!

What do you give a man that has everything?...A headache

Well Howard has a saying that you can never have enough of a good thing and I suppose that must be true. It would at least explain why having a classic car, a workshop, tools and a pile of car manuals would not be enough for someone with a desire to build something from the ground up.

So the day after we had decided to drive down the country to become the proud owners of a replica Type 35 Bugatti, we headed back down the country again to buy an unfinished kit car project . But I need to go back a step. I’m making it sound a lot easier than it was to decide on what we wanted to build or even if we should build at all but before we could track down an available kit car we had the difficult task of deciding what kit to choose.

A classic car and workshop was clearly not enough!

The Ronart W152

 hAlthough it was a difficult task it was far from unpleasant really, as it gave us an excuse to visit a variety of car shows and events looking for inspiration. When we had finished kicking tyres at a number of shows, auto jumbles and in car parks, we found ourselves at the Stoneliegh kit car show in 2007. After stroking the curves and sitting behind the wheel of what felt like hundreds of kit cars including a large number of Cobra and lotus 7 type replicas, we finally settled on a Ronart W152 

The car appealed to both of us instantly, and the minor practical obstacles of not having anywhere to store it at the time, neither of us having any experience of building a  car and not actually being able to test drive one of these before we bought the kit  were not enough to put us off. Nor was the prospect of owning yet another open top car in one of the wettest countries in Europe!

We managed to secure a Ronart kit at the rolling chassis stage and tracked down a suitable donor car  in the form of a Jaguar  XJ6, series 3, 4.2ltr with a manual gear box on ebay so our next project was underway.

The Ronart  is an ongoing (mainly winter) project which keeps us busy on  gloomy wet weekends. The body panels are now all in place and the component kit parts are  sorted and stored in the workshop. As some of the parts were missing and the ones that were there didn’t all have right part numbers on them, it gave us quite a headache while we tried to make sense of it all. It’s was a bit like trying to do a jigsaw when the lid of the box is missing!

 

 

That all seems like such a long time ago now but we did learn a valuable lesson which has stayed with us....Never tackle a job unless you are armed with a large mug of tea and a supply of biscuits!