The MOT went pretty as mush as expected. I now posses a fail sheet listing various deficiencies. While the rear valance wasn’t an issue but the MOT man’s hammer found another area of rot that needs attention.
The main problems are brake related. I could do these, I’m sure of it. If only it were possible for me to get the van in the air to a comfortable height, a few hours work with spanners should see the job done. My rosy view will ignore the skinned knuckles and stuck bolts reality normally throws in the way.
Lifting the van would probably have averted the welding too. Lying on your back crawling around under a vehicle isn’t pleasant and certainly is not conducive to taking a proper look. The nooks and crannies are ignored to punish me for my laziness at this time of year.
It’s a very impotent feeling. I could so nearly do this work. I want to do the work. What I don’t want to do is fix one side and then have to bleed the brakes so I can turn the vehicle around to get at the other side – I have park next to a wall. Actually I don’t want to be working in the blazing sun either. Lying under the axle and welding doesn’t sound too fun either – setting myself on fire is more likely than achieving a proper fix.
I imagine it’s like being a newbie model maker. You look at people like me with a reasonably equipped toolbox and think, “it’s easy for them, they have all the kit.”. Truth is that I acquired tools in dribs and drabs over a long period. Mostly they come as solutions to problems, or at least as ways of making the job easier. A good example is the box of reamers and cutting broaches. You can manage with a needle file but the right tools are so much nicer.
So I look at those with good size garage and some sort of lifting facility and envy them. I know they too have built a workshop up over years – indeed a proper workshop should have some very old but very usable tools, preferably from a long closed garage.
In the meantime I will contract the work out to someone for whom getting a one ton van in the air is easy. Someone who has done the job before and probably won’t bruise his knuckles as badly as I would. He won’t lavish the care I would like to think I would, cleaning and greasing every part, perhaps even painting stuff that has surface rust, but then I do get the chance to spend time doing things I enjoy. Perhaps I am happier with the dream and the reality wouldn’t be as good as I expect. Just like the newbies envying the modelling I do don’t see the burns and frustration when bits don’t fit together on the latest expensive kit.
Of course if anyone HAS got a barn they would like to let me use…
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