Work Day 27th April 2019

T86
Work on the rear cabin continues with the floor now ready for a repaint. Due to water ingress when in open storage for many years the original lino and plywood floor covering had to be removed as it was completely rotten. The floor being prepared is the base alloy sheet covering the cabin floor. See accompanying photo.

General preparation of the inside of the radar doors for a repaint. Over the years there have obviously been many ‘things’ screwed to the inside of the left hand door so a good number of holes need to be filled. Work was also carried out preparing the bearing Ward Leonard for a repaint. See accompanying photo.

LCP. Unfortunately the Argus computer is still U/S and work away from Cosford continues on the repair of several U/S cards, a major challenge for the team. It’s not only the electronics that require repairing; an accompanying photo shows work on fan replacement in the Argus fan tray. Two trays are shown, one spare.

Pete

Work Day 13th April 2019

LCP
As previously reported, the original LCP main door handle lock had become so worn it no longer operated. Visits to a local lock smith simple met with a ‘It’s no good mate, it’s completely knackered’. We were fortunate to have recovered a door handle from a derelict T86 so the task was to replace the LCP door lock with the lock from a T86 door handle. Simple it may sound, in practice not so. We had no keys for the new lock and after yet another visit to the locksmith to get keys cut it was found that the locking cam on the rear of the original lock didn’t locate correctly with the ‘new’ radar lock so the yet another problem. Dave set to and resolved this with a bit of fine tuning. LCP door lock now refitted and working but it has a different key to the E.C.’s door, the reason being that radar door locks have a different key profile to the LCP locks. Nothing is ever straight forward! Accompanying photo shows the new lock fitted to the LCP door handle.

T86
Work carried out in the rear cabin of the T86. Both steel wheel arches now treated for corrosion and ready for a coat of primer The original plywood flooring had been removed some time ago (rotten due to water ingress) and before a new floor is fitted the rear cabin floor has to be primed so in preparation the rear cabin needed a good clean which was carried out. Accompanying photo shows work in progress in the rear cabin.

A new Ward Leonard support bracket has now been fitted and further work was carried out on fabricating the support mountings for the Ward Leonards. Easily said but doesn’t reflect the work involved. Pete M leads this challenge.

An additional task on the rear wall of the cabin is to replace the corroded edge of the pedestal roof and the accompanying photo shows Pete M cleaning up the roof edge after re fixing the sheet roofing metal to the cabin frame, this part of the roof having lifted at sometime in the past snapping the roof fixing rivets to the cabin wall.

Pete H