Yesterday and the day before yesterday was a blur of tractor visitors (a big Massey Ferguson turned up (driven) to have a chat about another tractor followed by some interesting people looking for a Ferguson for a community composting scheme they are setting up which resulted in Jeff's being driven to South Norfolk to look at a possible purchase.

Jeff came back with a stack of pictures of all sorts of weird and wonderful tractors and implememnts for tractors and parts for tractors. In the meanwhile I'd taken advantage of an empty workshop to get on with the bonnet cleaning. I'd got about anothe six square inches to do when the (new) wire wheel started spitting out so many bits of wire that I knew it was time to stop. With most of it down to bare metal Jeff was able to see where there were dents and depressions and by five 'O'clock he'd knocked it back into a very respectable shape.

While he was doing that I started to take the frames off Charlie's rusted wings. The bolts with nuts came off relatively easily but there were also four 'rivetted' on bolts which eventually had to be ground down, then centre punched then drilled out, first with a small bit then one just slightly smaller than the hole. This job was finished off this morning by Steve doing the grinding and me doing the drilling out.  

Meanwhile Jeff had been checking Chester's brakes (Chester is the '35) and discovering that some rather strange thing had been done to the one which didn't work properly. I hope he's going to do one of his detailed technical accounts of what he found- the cracked drum was only part of it!. 

This afternoon found him muttering things like 'Why didn't I stick to jet engines?' and 'How could anyone have put this engine together like that!'  as he delved into Charlies block. (You may remember that Charlie had a mass of rust inside the rocker cover ). What he found 'ain't' too good. He will be talking to Charlie's owner as soon as the full extent of the damage is assessed.