I am sure that, in one of my Haynes Manuals (A.k.a. "The Haynes Book of Jokes") there is reference to needing the "special tool". A vague recollection lingers somewhere in my dusty memory of doing a job on a car, possibly the TR7, where the dreaded special tool gets mentioned. Usually those little words are buried deep into section 42.3, paragraph 48 of the associated instructions and the weekend spannering that you planned so well grinds to a halt, because you can't get the said special tool because it is Sunday and the shops are shut. And even if they were open, the shop wouldn't stock it and you would have to track down a mythical club member called Neville who was rumored to have one in 1974 but he now lives in the Outer Hebrides and is reported to be a little bonkers. So you throw yourself off a bridge and be done with it.
The reason I mention special tools is because I made one today. It's not as good as the BL item for removing the water pump on a TR7 (I think that was a slide hammer with BL stamped on it) but I am pretty chuffed with it nonetheless. It is a wooden, er, shape for use as a sanding pad for doing TR7 wheel arch lips. I am going to call it - drum roll please -
Special Tool For Sanding TR7 Wheel Arch Lips.
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| Neat, eh? |
Regular readers, all three of them, will know that the rear offside wheel arch on my '7 has been the bane of my life. I fitted a new outer arch in about five minutes and appear to have spent the rest of my life trying to get the profile correct with filler. Well, using this gizmo it is starting to get there.
The profile of the nearside equivalent area was transferred to one of those profile things (I don't know what they are called, so here's a pic) and the outline lined onto a block of wood. I then cut out the profile with a jigsaw and spent many hours sanding.
The profile is starting to look and feel much better now, although there have been many iterations.
So now that the profile is about right, I need to fill in the imperfections using stopper or knifing putty, followed by filler primer. The latter is very satisfying as it goes on nice and thick and smells a bit like vanilla, which can have the unfortunate consequence of making the user high as a kite by the middle of the afternoon. Wear a mask with decent filtration, obviously.
In between jobs some of the boot fittings were cleaned up and painted. These included the boot lock, striker plate etc and the washer bottle holder (which is nothing to do with the boot at all, unless you have been at the primer filler again).
Right, that's it for now. If anyone wants to borrow my special tool, I can be found sporting a big beard looking for metamorphic rock formations in Benbecula while listening to Jethro Tull. Or you could just make your own.
