Dear All,
Many of you will be aware that I have been planning to fit a pair of
original quarterlights to my hardtop in place of the Perspex ones that I
have been using for the last year or so. Well, today was the day.
All I needed to do was remove the tiny nuts and slotted-head bolts
holding in the Perspex and rubber seal; drill out the old rivets that
had been used to fill the hinge mounting holes, add the fuzzy seal, and
rivet/screw in the new quarterlights. An hour, tops, right?
How about five hours?
First of all, Carly has been garaged for the last couple of months, and
it takes me a hell of a long time to get her started, so I go for a
quick burn up the bypass to recharge the battery.
(Elapsed time: half an hour)
Then I go around to my mother's house, where there is a garage I can
work in, and start work. Only I can't start work until I have chatted
to her gardener, and bolted her dodgy skylight in place. Both of these
I manage to do with good grace.
(Elapsed time: one hour)
OK, time to get stuck in. I take out my trusty cordless drill-driver,
and start unscrewing the Perspex sheets. I stop to go and find a
spanner or a pair of pliers in my late father's tool cupboard. I stop
again after five minutes when the drill-driver's battery runs out.
Unscrew one Perspex sheet manually.
(Elapsed time: an hour and a half)
I consider my options with regard to removing old rivets. The cordless
is dead, so let's see if I can file the heads off. No - or not before
I get deeply bored. I remember that my father used to have a decidedly
dodgy old mains drill (intermittent operation of "Off" switch; frayed
and worn flex). Rummage around the garage looking for the old drill.
Find it, plug it in, and try to drill out the rivets with a 1/8" bit.
Damn. They're bigger than that. Change drill bits, and drill the
*()&^)*(&^s out with a 3/16".
(Elapsed time: two hours)
Ponder the likelihood of me being able to use my 1/8" pop rivets in a
3/16" hole. Swear profusely, and drive off looking for 3/16" pop
rivets. After a while, I end up in Halfords. "Three sixteenths?
What's that then?" "Four and a half mill', give or take a few thou."
"What? Oh. Let me pass you to my colleague..." Said colleague does
the sensible thing, and simply dumps a box of assorted rivets in front
of me. I find a section marked "4.9mm" and decide that I'm just going
to have to open the holes up a bit. I have brought with me my father's
old pop-rivet gun, which has been set up for 1/8" pop rivets since
before my Spitfire was built. I ask to borrow a screwdriver to change
the aperture. I am given something that looks as though it has been
used in the World Screwdriver Ruining Finals for the last three years.
The tip is so damaged, it won't even go in the slot. I ask for another
screwdriver. The next one is even worse. I ask for a third
screwdriver. This one works! Unfortunately, the stem of the 4.9mm
rivet won't go in my rivet gun. B*gger. "Do you sell rivet guns?"
"Yes, sir." Anyway, to cut a very long and tedious story short, I
eventually manage to buy a handful of rivets (at 25p each!!!) and a
rivet gun, and head back to my mother's house, two miles away.
(Elapsed time: three hours)
To be honest, it all went reasonably straightforwardly from then on,
except when I managed to rip the quarterlight catch retaining clips out
of the hardtop, and decided to replace them without first undoing the
screws that held the catch to the clips (a dirty great mallet is a
wonderful thing). I had to drill the hinge rivet holes oversize on
both sides, and cut down 16mm-long rivets to fit the amount of space in
the void, and then I had all the fun of converting two meters of fuzzy
door seal into neat quarterlight seals, using nothing but a hacksaw and
the rapidly fading daylight, but, in comparison to what went before,
this was a piece of cake!
(Elapsed time: five hours)
The fuzzy door seal, by the way, is a very indifferent replacement for
the original seal. Whilst it is possible to achieve a reasonable
all-round waterproof seal with the O-section rubber half , the fuzzy
interior has gaps at each corner, and does not look neat or
professional.
I was warned that there might be problems closing the quarterlights, as
the fuzzy door seal is rather thicker than the original seal, but this,
thankfully, turned out not to be a problem.
This was the only thing that wasn't a problem today!
ATB
--
Mike
Ellie - 1963 White Herald 1200 Convertible GA125624 CV
Connie - 1968 Conifer Herald 1200 Saloon GA237511 DL
Carly - 1977 Inca Yellow Spitfire 1500 FM105671
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