Progress....but no pics

Right, haven't had much time in the garage last week, just kept popping in every day just to check on bits electrolysing.

Anyway, have managed to clean one and a half brake calipers and one of my rear hubs. I've also painted one of the calipers, and it's looking pretty neat. I'll be working in the garage for the next couple of days, so will hopefully have some pictures of two fully refurbished brake calipers to show next post.

I've also been working on my oven for powder coating. I'll be able to better describe what I've done to it next posting, but it's going to involve loads of cutting with an angle grinder, and some welding to make it look nothing like it did when it was a cooker in someone's kitchen. The cooker in question was bought off ebay for 99p, fully working oven with a faulty hob. It was actually in really good condition, and a total bargain, but I've spent an hour tonight dismantling it and it doesn't look much like someone's cooker now.

I've also bought my front and rear bearings for when my hubs and uprights are cleaned and powder-coated, and bagged another bargain off ebay where I bought some brand new shiny alloys. I know I'm a long way off having the car on wheels, but they'll be needed eventually.

Electrolysis

Hi again

I've started to clean up the rusty donor parts I have for my car.

I read about using electrolysis as a way to remove rust and liked the idea of it because it was cheap, easy, and almost zero elbow grease.

Anyway, the science is far too complicated to explain, in fact after reading several articles about it I'm not sure I even understand it myself. It basically involves submersing the offending part in a container filled with water and a little soda crystals (92p from Tesco). A negative voltage from a small car battery charger is supplied to the piece, and the positive charge is supplied to some good sacrificial steel.

Here's my rather simple but effective set-up after having a brake caliper part submersed overnight. Looks a bit manky now, but the solution is still effective as long as you clean the positive sacrificial steel anodes.

Here's a pic of one of mine. It looks like it's been at the bottom of the north sea for a couple of hundred years, but it was only cleaned a few minutes before this pic was taken, it attracts the crud to it rather quickly. I'll probably get a couple more parts cleaned with this piece before I have to discard it.

Here's a couple of close-ups of the piece I was working on before I started. Pretty grubby aren't they.

Here's the piece after electrolysis, just in the oven drying out.

And here it is after drying, quite an improvement. On reflection I've decided to pop it back in to some clean solution to clean it a bit further.

So now it's just a coat of caliper paint tomorrow and then do all the other parts. I've ordered a rebuild seal kit so by the end of the week I should hopefully have two nice shiny calipers ready for my roadster. I'll try and stick a couple of pictures of the finished article in the next few days.

The build begins!!!

Hi folks, welcome to my build blog.

For anyone unfamiliar with the Haynes Roadster, it is a self-build sportscar designed by Chris Gibbs and published as a book of plans by Haynes. The idea is to build the car from scratch, but a whole industry has sprang up selling everything from a set of bolts to a completed car. Along with this is a dedicated forum designed for the discussion of roadster related topics. Anyone considering building a roadster, and in fact any kit car, should pay it a visit to see how helpful people can really be :- www.haynes.co.uk/forum

I cheated and bought a completed chassis, along with everything required from the donor car ande various other parts from a bloke who had started the project and had to quit halfway through.

Anyway, the current state of affairs is I have a chassis finished in grey primer up on trestles in my garage along with loads and loads of other bits. My garage still needs a fair bit of tidying, but work will be beginning very soon.

Thanks to Andy, a forum member, who has loads of experience with all things roadster, I now know where to begin my build. He called around today, despite living some 30 miles away, and give my chassis the once over, pointing out some minor problems, and even volunteering his services to help put them right.

Here is a picture of my current garage situation, and hopefully by next blog things will have changed a bit.