It was a bleak outlook on Saturday morning.....

... but Sunday morning was more conducive to getting on with stuff in the shed. It was surprisingly warm in the sun too.

But where to start.

This 1908 Rover steering arm has been waiting to be made for over a year now, the delay being the threaded portion, the keyway and my thoughts on fabricating key components. With all that done, I hauled out the MIG, set it up as I'd been instructed and away we went. A bit of linishing to finish and I don't think that'll ever give trouble.

I mentioned that I'd broken next-door's press and had ordered a new one. They are the biggest load of junk! The return springs are of unequal length, so the jack had to be offset to accommodate the slew, and the brackets on the cross-beam are - well, I don't know what the manufacturer was thinking of. On the old press I welded some runners up the sides to take up the slack; this one's even worse and verging on the dangerous. I'll have to get around to sorting that out before long.

I had to use the press to extract a reluctant Riley kingpin. Even the 12-ton press and heat wouldn't shift it. Fortunately, now I have a mill with a substantial vise, I was able to remove most of the middle of the pin and that did the trick.

I'd messed about with the Riley's subframe for almost a week, tacking a bit here, offering it up and pulling it this way and that. Then, with all the bolts nicely slipping in and out of their respective sleeves, I would leave it until the next morning only to find they'd all gone solid again. Well, blow it, they can't have been that far out so I started to weld it all together. My initial thought was to use the MIG, but as that splatters all over the place and would mean taking the subframe up and down to the farm workshop to check the fit between operations, I broke out the TIG. I don't do it enough to achieve anything pretty to look at (though occasionally I surprise myself) but I know it's not going to fall apart.

On the old subframe there's a couple of brackets which act as water traps - I've put drain of holes in the new ones.

I couldn't complete the welding because I discovered the ruler gremlins had been at work when I was measuring up the wing stay plates. I cut off this original and dropped it at the laser boys - it was safer than my attempting to draw it up again.

Learned Counsel is getting on with one of his many 'next' projects. He picked up this Triumph Spitfire a few months ago and having stripped it down, it appears to be in excellent condition.

In essence, it's not a million miles away from his Lotus Europa - which was a 'next' project a couple of follies before this one.