Sunday, December 2, 2012

134 Mile round trip to Trafalgar.

Headed off a 6.30 this morning on a mission, to help Grant fit front and rear bumpers to Monty.

Pointing the Red Chev in the direction of Trafalgar, the car ran without a hitch, comfortably sitting on 45 - 48 mph all the way. The trip home, apart from a few gusts of cross wind, the was again without any dramas.

Struck a bit of rain on the way up, but due to the wind and weather proofing I did a year or so back and a coat of Rainex on the windscreen, wet conditions did not detract from the enjoyable drive.

Ah, the purpose of the trip................... Bumper bars for Monty.

What I believed was going to be a very long winded job was wrapped up in a few hours, the front bar by lunch, and the rear bumpers by the afternoon coffee break.

Monty is now complete, a bit longer, complete never the less.

A bit of persuasion was used on the front bumper mounting brackets, in the form of yours truly on the oxy torch, and Grant swinging on the biggest pair of Stilsons I have ever seen.













The following is from Grants Blog  http://montythe1928chevrolet.blogspot.com.au/


Gidday,

A good few months back I stumbled across on ebay a matching set of 1928 front and rear bumpers, well I was the only bidder and got them for a great price but they were over in South Australia, so after a couple of calls I manage to contact a interstate truckie that I do signage for and he just happened to be passing through the town of "Mount Baker" in a couple of days time and would gladly stop out on the freeway in his B-Double, collect the bumpers and bring them back home... it all went as smooth as clockwork.

When I got them back to the resto shed and unwrapped them, the bumpers looked great, covered in just enough surface rust to suit Monty but the brackets were all "ass about" for some reason, maybe not from a 1928 Chevrolet after all as the seller had said, hmmm not to worry, we can correct and fix the problem.

With a few quick soakings and spray of "rustbuster" over a few weeks and then a hit with the wire brush the end result was just what I was looking for, now I just have to fit them up.

With the roadworthy and rego out of the way, Ray Dean and myself started to plan another day on the tools which were becoming few and far between now that I am driving Monty more instead of fixing it, so we pencilled in last Sunday and like always, Ray arrived bang on the money from his trip out of Melbourne and this time he showed up in his lovely "Red Chev"

We quickly had the 2 x front bumper brackets mounted and went to work asap with the oxy torch to get a lot of heat into the old thick "spring steel" which then had to be bent and re-shaped into place, but nothing that a couple a dodgy blacksmiths couldn't handle and when we held up the front bumper it fitted perfectly..

The rear brackets were much the same and it all came together very easily and the end result of our 5 hours work looked great..

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