Chapter 13 - Unlucky for some

You just know some days are going to better then others, like Mondays, generally a awful day, the start of the week, the return to the grind, etc, etc., Fridays though, you tend to look forward to, if you have big plans for the weekend - Me?  I had huge plans for this weekend, but as i drove home from work last night, the pouring rain reminded me how the best laid plans, often go astray.

Saturday arrived, and the dark skies the weather man had promised me, where missing, in fact i could just make out a little tiny bit of sunshine breaking through. Time to ring Lee, and tell him to get the kettle on!

My big plan's for the weekend were about to unfold, 

Take one rust step, minus a front arch,

Get out grinder, and remove offending rusty step, like so

I've covered the arch removal and repair to the inside of the "A pillar", so i cleaned up the rest of that area with the grinder and power file

Prepared it with some galvanised paint

Just in case your wondering, the clean spots are for welding the arch into place

Popped the arch on for a trial fit, so we tacked it on, so we could go back to playing with the step

This is from underneath showing the step fitting into the hole  we cut out.

You can see the lip of the arch in this shot isn't welded into place, this is because we had to get the alignment between the step and the arch right,

A lot of time was spent, opening and shutting the door, and clamping the two together, until we were happy, then we had to cut the bottom off the arch as both panels, have the bottom corner of the arch / step, and require one to be cut back, and as the step was thicker material, the arch was chosen, for ease of fit.

Once Lee had finished wielding his dark arts, i attacked the area with the grinder to smooth out all the welds

I went over some of the harder to reach parts with the power file, this was taken after the first pass with the grinder (the grey primer is covering the join between the two panels

No that's not some sort of poor product placement advertisement, the "CIF" bottle contains water, and is used to put out any little flames that appear whilst welding, as you can see, the arch gets the same treatment as the step, as that was finished after the step was completed.

Its been a busy day for us, dodging rainy showers, but the trick is:

Chuck it all in the van as soon as it starts to rain!

It feels really good to stand back, and to realize that were finally putting stuff back on the van, as opposed to just cutting stuff off it.
If i get a clear day tomorrow, that the rear arch is next on the list!
I love it when a plan comes together ;)