World’s Strongest Rivet….

Firstly, a happy new year to all who’ve been following our journey so far. Today Adam & I were once again working on the tank wagon so below you will find pictures as well as text to explain what we managed to get done!

Today’s most difficult challenge was removing the final rivet from the end of chassis that we’d recently removed the stanchion from. Adam managed to remove all but one with some heat and gas but unfortunately this last one required some extra work. After taking it in turns to crawl under the tank to try and force it out from either side, we eventually managed between us to get it shifted. This was done by wedging a 20T bottle jack under the rivet (once the head had been removed) and apply pressure until the rivet gave way.

Once all the rivets had been removed, it only felt right to test fit some of the new metal that Jim had sourced. We have the MagDrill on loan from our engineering department so that will make light work of making the correct size holes for some new bolts. Still lots of prep work to be done to the actual chassis before these bits can finally be installed permanently.

The above two images show a job I got on with in the afternoon. This was to remove the remainder of the old metal panels that sat under the saddles for the tank. All were extremely laminated and corroded as you can see from the second image. The only way to get the metal off was to cut it away in smaller chunks, however the rivets were proving once again slightly more challenging. A couple came out with a few taps of the hammer but the rest will need some gas & heat.

A couple of other jobs done today included moving the tank forwards a few feet to give us better access with the JCB for when the time comes to remove the second stanchion. Whilst I removed the metal, Adam completed a side mission which involved the removal of the air filter cylinder on the Ruston, a component we think hasn’t been touched for many years! You can find out more about this job over on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/share/15EjMbwxD9/?mibextid=wwXIfr

That’s all for this week, catch you in the next one!

Ollie 🚂