By The seat of my Pants!

OK, so the daily routine of kids + school started afresh on Monday morning.

As it was a Monday, this meant that Benny only went to school; whilst Danny got to stay at home & play with the Cub.

On today’s menu was seat striping for real. Although I strategically got Danny to "assist" in important jobs like tightening up the vice...

Danny "helping"... he decided to chase Lenny the Dog for about 10 minutes after this pic - but hey, he was having fun!

First up, the bolts that hold the strap to the bottom of the seat; a slap of pen-o-trene & a socket & this was done. Bummer, turns out the steel strap is totally rusted thru & buggered. Oh well, this is a hobby & I should be grateful for the additional challenge…

Underneath...not so bad

Next the old vinyl that was covering it… 10 minutes with a Stanley knife & I was looking at a rather tatty old seat innards that had seen the ruff end of some bad weather & a lot of abuse… still, it can’t be all bad can it???

Hmm, I suspect that this seat saw alot of action without a cover...

Oh Boy, look at all that crap - AND this photo is rather complimentary of the rust!

Then came the seat frame; I knew I would be spending a bit of time with a wire brush when I started this thing, but holly cow, I reckon that BHP could mine the dirt & rust that came from the base! The positive news was that the beading that I was going to araldite to the frame turned out to be in rather good condition, the splits that my upholsterer had seen were confined to two discrete wear points only, I was rather happy to see less work than I had anticipated on this front

That being said, I ended up doing a quick run to the local hardware stare to by one of those wire brush attachments for my drill. I also had to get some other stuff for “prettying” up the house that also took a bit of my time & detracted from my Cub-vana day…

That being said, I eventually got a lot rust off the old thing; there was still quite a bit left. So, I rang the upholsterer & asked what I should do. Again, his good advice was to use that rust killer stuff after removing all the loose material (as any paint or loose material will be lifted off by his glue).

Is it just me, or does the kill rust acid look totally evil when wet? - the "dry" after pic didn't work out

Cool – on with the kill rust (I wisely did this outside the shed so I didn’t get fumed out) & then, wiped the excess off with a damp cloth. I put the thing back in the shed & left to get changed to pick up Ben from school. Dam time flies when you are busy doing stuff doesn’t it!

The dust from the seat, not including all the dust I recon I inhaled into the mask...

 OK, so Tuesday saw me do the school run & then Danny & I head to a local steel supply place to get an off cut piece of steel that I could mold into a new strap holder. This wasn’t a huge issue & the cool bit was that Danny got to step on the foot trigger to trim the offcut. He then proceeded to carry the off cut around like a sword until we got to the car & I removed it from him (as I did not want a window broken!). This cost me some loose change.

Next, I gave the plastic trim bit a dam good clean; there was a veritable ship load of rust & grit in the channel, but my wire brush made short work of that & I then cleaned it with detergent (in the kitchen sink…!). I left it dry in the sun before aralditeing it to the stripped steel frame in the afternoon.

Then it was straight into the vice to cut it to length. The hacksaw was used (as I didn’t want the hot sparks from the angle grinder setting fire to the shed!)

Next, mark & punch the holes & drill out. Then the fun of filing the two end holes into oblong-ish shapes (like the original…) gawd, why didn’t I just buy something from E-Bay! Anyway, I found an old chainsaw tooth sharpening file that fitted the bill quite well & eventually I got there.

Start of the strap holder - I was hating filing after this...

The final product - yep, I should have put them side by side as they were not that different (just my new one was thicker!)

A couple of quick bends & a quick squirt of black cold-gal spray paint & voila! Slightly heavier (by about double the weight, but then, I don’t mind & I don’t think performance of the love Cub will suffer as a result

Well that was productive & just in time to go pick up Benny from school again. I am beginning to feel pleased with my progress!

Wednesday morning was a bit of a loss; unfortunately, both boys (& I) slept in, so I missed the chance to take the seat to the upholsterers in the school run, but after dropping both boys I got the chance for a very stiff cup of Goroka Blue PNG coffee before reassembling the seat, & printing out a couple of the pictures of the seat that I wanted him to re-create (oh thank you Mr Google Images!)

Underneath, bead fitter, strap holder in place

As sent to the Upholsterers...

Cool, now to deliver & do a whole heap of stuff (boring food shopping & paperwork-y things that I’ll not bore you with the details of in this blog!)

So this is all going very well, & the weather was even looking good for a nice spin on Thursday.

How great is it to be alive?

So Mote it be

Leigh