Boot work

 To get a few parts fitted and safe I decided the tank was long overdue. It was held up a lot by other jobs being done before it could go in. But they are done and it is hard to describe how annoying the tank has been just laying around. Well massively and constantly just in the way. I have lost count of how many times I have painted it, because I wasn't happy or I'd just scratched it again.

On the latest stint of paint the tank again I was not happy with the metal tank strap. Yep it got ground back to metal and painted. It just looked bad against the nicely painted tank and the paint was out any way. 

All of this led to a desperate need for the bottom bracket for the strap around the tank to bolt to. I was told it could be bought and was expecting a little bit of welding it to the boot floor. Well I couldn't find it any where, so I made my own. Much smaller but much stronger. 45 mm x 5 mm thick angle cut, drilled and edges eased. Sounds easy, but I might have over heated the captive nut I welded onto it, but my neighbour had a m8 tap and corrected that. I also had to go visit Emma and double check her mini to work out the exact location for the bracket. There was just no reference point I.could find for it and having moved the neck, I really wanted to double check this.

To mount the bracket I decided on just drilling through the boot floor and fix it with just a nut and bolt with a nice penny washer. Until the hole lined up with the side quarter bottom valence, yep the enclosed quarter section. A day later I had the rivnut set and was back on track. So at present the tank is in the final position, with padding under it on the boot floor and the strap round it waiting for a longer bolt to do the final fixing. Even put a boot strap on as well.

I do try to save time occasionally, and the black paint was out doing the tank. The windscreen wiper is another item that always seemed to.be.in the way. A replacement wheel box had arrived and it was looking like that could be finished. The plastic motor cover I picked up wasn't looking so appealing any more so the partially black painted motor was sanded back and painted. The wheel box was removed and all parts got a good clean then grease before re assembly. The original wheel box took quite a bit of cleaning, getting the gunk out from behind the main cog was slow work and a lot of wd 40. But with a  careful poke to get the soaked cloth behind it was turning nicely.

I ran out of time and motivation tonight to install this last part but the motor has been.tested now, so a little patience and it will be finished soon.