Friday 2 April 2010

Uh oh... Damian's using power tools unsupervised!!

Good Friday rolled around, so Damian decided he'd spend a bit of time in the shed while his boys watched a DVD... little did he know, he was embarking on a journey that would last the whole day!!

First job was to paint some bits of metal black... what day in the shed (or blog post for that matter) would be complete without Damian having painted something???



Next, Damian collected the plywood sheet that he had purchased the previous night...




And after careful measurement and using the old ratty parts for a template, the bits were all marked out ready to cut...

However, before getting down to it, Damian realised that he could kill two birds with one stone if he went about it completely differently, and would make his cutting job much easier... So he remeasured and remarked the main section, before setting to work with a hand saw to get the nice straight cuts done...

Of course, once the new section was cut out, some of the original markings were now not valid, so Damian retraced the templates and cut out the shapes, both with hand saw and jig-saw...



Damian then grabbed the orbital sander from the floor of the shed, and some brown stuff fell out of it... Damian figured it must have had a bit of dust, or mud wasp nest or something in it, so he plugged it in and turned it sideways to vibrate the grunge out of it... He switched it on, and SPLAT... something squishy and smelly flew up and smacked him in the face... shortly after several fat cockroaches and 1/2 a cockroach flew out the other side onto the ground...

GROSS!!

Once the cockroaches were gone, Damian sanded the board edges and did a test-fitting... This is what it looks like from the boot side!


And from inside the car...



Damian started to paint the insert, and found that the amount of grey paint that was left was barely enough to do a dust coat...



So off to the auto shop Damian went, to get some more grey paint (and black paint, and windscreen wiper blades while he was at it)... Only to find...



After mucking around with the air horns, Damian went back to painting the inserts for the boot... this is what they look like before painting...




Nice snug fit there!! It's amazing how good it turns out when you use the template!!


So outside Damian went, painting like there was no tomorrow!!



While they were drying, Damian decided to install the UHF radio... first task, the aerial... This would be a simple task - Damian had a gutter mount from a previous radio he owned, so all he had to do was attach it, right? WRONG...

As with all things Booger Mobile, it was nothing so simple... Firstly, Damian's allen key to fit the gutter mount screws seemed to have magically disappeared... so he searched high and low, eventually finding a small allen key drill bit that would do the trick...

Next problem - the locating screw to keep the gutter mount on the correct angle was stuffed - time hadn't been kind to it... so Damian located a new screw for it... fit perfectly... only it was about 2mm too short...

Eventually, Damian located a new screw with the same thread, and hey presto, it was perfect... except it was about 20mm too long... no worries said Damian, he simply used the hacksaw to lop the extra 20mm off...

Gutter mount installed... now all Damian had to do was line the aearial up so it's nice and straight, and hey presto it would be finished... But no... of course not!!

The mounting point for the aerial (at the end of the coax) has a star-shaped end... gutter mount has a square hole... does the star shaped end fit through? No, of course it doesn't...

Damian grabbed out the angle grinder and adjusted the star-shaped end of the coax, and finally (several hours after he thought it would be finished), the aerial was attached... Damian decided to leave the rest of the installation for another day...

All the painted bits of ply were then dry, and ready for installation...


This is what the bit for the boot sides looks like... (Driver side)


(Passenger side)... It kind of makes the carpet look bad now!!



And last but not least, the bit to close off the hole between the boot and the rear seat...



That's all Damian managed to achieve during the day... he had such high hopes of getting a whole lot more done!! Scottie will be down on Saturday morning for the official day of Booger Mobile work for the Easter weekend...

Stay tuned for anther exciting blog post!!

2 comments:

  1. DAMIAN//////// using power tools unsupervised
    "COME ON" it all good because he is now an expert, with a lot of experience behind him now.Hmmmmmmmmm plywood wood for the boot lining not too sure on that one, but what a great job Damian did cutting painting and fitting it perfectly looks the part now.(A hair dryer in the boot what a handy tool)
    OMG OMG OMG what a hilarious video of Damian trying out the new air horns replay replay again and again what a great laugh we all are having, and how ear splitting was that.
    Damian should have asked his sidekick Tonka if he had seen the allen key he needed, I m sure Tonka knew where he had buried it along with all the other things he had found on the shed floor ha ha.
    What a day in the shed working on the Booger Mobile Damian had. The Booger Mobile is really coming along in leaps and bounds with minor set backs now and then.
    Well done once again Damian doing it for the kids, keep up the Fantastic job that you and Scottie are doing thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Reporting the gunge on top of the car to the
    R.S.P.C.C.
    (Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Cars)

    Signed
    Beauty1976XB

    ReplyDelete