My Single Dutch Delight

[Bib Overalls]

Sadly no. I'm still upset about it. I called what time they needed me to be there and they told me it was sold. ............

..............I'm slowly getting over it but I'm not running into nice deals on machines like these every day. I'm not really searching at the moment. Since I've got my work cut out for me but a nice small lathe would make me really happy.

That *****.


I am also looking for a nice used hobbyist sized lathe. My friend Barry, who buys and sells used industrial machines on the side tells me I need to be patient and a good deal will come along. Been patient a long time. But he is right. Both of the lathes I bought on impulse are junk. Have your money handy, keep your ears open and be ready to jump if the stars line up right.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I should really update more but I'm kinda bad with pictures and you're all visual people...

Painting the garage cabinets are currently kicking my *** as it's a lot of work. I went for a dull super clear parquet two component lacquer of commercial quality. Which is way way way over the top but it's in line with the rest of the cabinets so it feels just about right. It's resistant to almost all chemicals and extremely wear proof. It also does not add any colour to the wood it simply looks like it's just not there. That means I really need to work in a structural consistent method since it's really hard to see which side of the boards I'm working on .

I don't have the room or tools to spray the basterds so I'm using a roller on them, which sounds crazy but I'm getting pretty good results. Made a storage rack to be able to work in batches.

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A cool trick I found is to wet the boards and than letting it dry before initial sanding. It makes the end grain straws absorb the water and stand up. (Like a first layer of paint would do.) Does that make sense? It's a lot faster and cheaper than doing this with paint.

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Now why is this kicking my ***:
It's about 50 square meters in surface needing four layers of paint. I can paint about 10 m2 in an hour so that's 20 hours there. Wetting all is 2 hours, initial sanding about 5 hours and intermediate sanding about 2. So it's about 30 hours of work to get them all painted! I can spend about 8-10 hours a week so that's why they are kicking my ***....

Biggest lesson learned is that a shop vacuum is the single best purchase a man can do! The results get much better because there is less dust in the air. On top of that there is really little clean up time and be honest, cleaning is not why you have a shop.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Second spare time vacuum is a short story about a drill press, a redundant car and bad luck. Luckily I painted the dark clouds a silver lining.

The story:
I bought a cheap (50 bucks) new Chinese drill press about 10 years ago. Belt driven with pulley's to change drill speeds. I started by being happy with the purchase and over the years of use this deteriorated to absolutely hating that thing. Which ended up by giving it away about a year ago and followed by starting saving money to buy a new quality drill press. With some demands:
-Heavy/bulky without flex
-Powerful
-Enough work height
-Gear box to change speeds
-Overload protection by a belt driven motor setup

Then I found the garagejournal and specifically: yaidonno's post here. It made me realize I should not buy new but restore old. I started searching the internet instead of saving insane amounts of money. After months of searching I came across an "Original Renner" which checked all the boxes, actually it superseded all my demands and I got it for 75 bucks. I'll properly restore it and follow up with better pictures later on.

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On to the redundant car:
After moving close to work I'm now cycling or even running to work which makes my E39 530D redundant. It's a great car but very expensive to own, especially if you don't use it anymore. So first thing I wanted to do in the new year was putting it up for sale.

The two combined:
I set off to pick up the drill press. Borrowed a trailer from a friend of a friend who needed it the next day. Picked up my engine hoist which I lent to a friend. At arrival the drill was perfect, the deal made but getting it on the trailer quite difficult. It weights 350 kg but we got it done. The seller was a great help as well.

When I left I saw a small puff of smoke from the exhaust so I stopped at the side of the road to see what was going on. Popped the hood and didn't see anything wrong. All hoses where there. No leaks etc. But it gave me a bad feeling. 5 kilometres I lost all power. The turbo died... I slowly continued trying to stay out of the boost zone. But about 5 kilometres from home a huge cloud of smoke appeared and I quickly shut if off. I don't want an engine running on it's own oil....

So I got brought home with the car, trailer with drill press on top by the AAA. The guy helped me push the trailer on the drive way but it had to be disconnected from the car. So I had a 350kg drill press standing on a loose trailer that had to be back to it's owner the same evening. So it started to rain.....

I really should have taken pictures but I was in a hurry since I needed to pickup the kids. But I can tell you that getting that drill off the trailer by myself with only an engine hoist (which I could not use on the trailer as it would tip over since it was not connected to the car). But I got it all done. Got a quote for the repair of the car for 3500 euros. That would make no sense so the only option is to repair it myself which I'm currently doing slowly. Hence the fast disappearing available spare time.

Now lets get to that silver lining:
I bought a long desired parts washer to clean the intake air parts from oil and turbo shavings.
I got it painted in RAL5002 which will be the main colour in the garage.

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You can also see the Janson arbor press which I found locally for 30 bucks.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Since this is keeping my progress behind:

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I'll update with small joys in between like the arrival of the cabinet hardware. Grass hinges with adjustable soft close hydraulic cilinders, and metal support pins covered with protective sleeves. (Did I mention I was going over the top on this....)

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[Sunbimmer]

That drill press is a thing of beauty

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

That drill press is a thing of beauty

It sure is! Can't wait to get it wired, cleaned up and start using it.

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[E12-535iTurbo]

The garage cabinets are still not finished but we're getting there, one cabinet at a time, slow and steady but we're progressing. In the mean time I'm ticking projects off that need to be done in the house. The latest is to make our open staircase safer four our kids (1 and 3 years old).

I tried changing my ways to better document a project and make this a pictorial one but of course I don't have a picture from the initial situation but you'll get it from the intermediate pictures. (I forgot to take some in between as well.)

Anyway, I wanted to make this a budget friendly project and I've managed to fix this without any costs at all . I've repurposed a children's gate from the previous owners to make the bars. They are of the same wood as the stairs (Wenge). The wood for the hand support and main post we're given to me. These are Meranti which I later stained to match the Wenge.

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I've needed a level surface on the original main post so clamped the rail of the TS-55 on it. This worked pretty good although I needed to finish the cut by hand because of the limited depth the TS could make.

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Put in the dowels and glue and then screwed them together with two screws on each side with the Kreg-jig. I couldn't clamp it so I took the kreg route. This post will take any abuse the children throw at it. It won't move!

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I now had a reference for the hand rail so measured where the posts should go. I made a quick jig to the spacing on the stairs would be identical for all posts.

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With the posts aligned I could make the mount for the hand rail at the main beam. Again with 10mm dowels:
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I nailed the intermediate posts to the hand rail and fixed the hand rail with a wooden spacer to the wall at the first floor. Then cut off the excess from the main post.

There you have it, the end result (before stain):
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Not bad for one of my first wood-working projects I'd say. My wife is happy so I call it a success!

I'm also very happy with the ugly *** dowel jig I made some time ago. I made it with scraps for free and it really helps to work accurately. I'm thinking in investing it the real deal to be able to switch to other diameters as well.

 

[Hostyle]

That's one good looking handrail! Great job!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

That's one good looking handrail! Great job!

Thanks!

Sorry for the cell phone picture. I'll update when there is more progress:

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[sakurama]

This is very cool.

Too bad about the Deckel but the drill press is the deal of the century. What a great space and I love seeing garages and shops from overseas.

Subscribed!

Gregor

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

This is very cool.

Too bad about the Deckel but the drill press is the deal of the century. What a great space and I love seeing garages and shops from overseas.

Subscribed!

Gregor

Thanks Gregor. I'll try to keep this entertaining.

Sorry for the bad picture quality but I put the doors up for the first five cabinets. I still have three remaining and need to source some nice handles.

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Last weekend we bought this nice playhouse for the children. It has a small boulder wall at the opposite wall so they can practise and join me in a few years.

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I hope to finally finish the cabinets next week so I can start the next project. I'm thinking it'll be focussed on the garage instead of the work-shop because I want to have my E30 back in business and make it capable enough to be daily driven. We'll see how that works out.

Oh an I made a huge score for the air plumbing when I walked into a deal (or should I say Steal! with capital S and exclamation mark) for Staubli-swivel and Staubli-wall quick connectors. I'm looking forward to have those installed!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

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So I finally finished the cabinets! Handles are stainless and all doors are matching grain although that is hard to capture.

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I put up the tool-board and hung the speaker. I put a matching multiplex board tilted below the speaker to carry the Tandberg. I left some space so I can put my phone there and connect it to the Tandberg.

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Some tools to grab.

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The Heuer vice is also finally mounted. The three bolts go completely through the bench top where a 4mm plate is mounted with nuts welded on. The vise can rotate too.

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It now time to put the bandsaw up and gain some floor space.

When I'm thinking things trough I can exercise on the finger-board:

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I thought I put some pictures up of my helpers.

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But it's hard to get things done when there doing this all the time:

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Now it's time to get work done in the garage. Just because I needed to work on something. So lets get a before shot:

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It's where it all started 19 years ago. I never sold it and I'm happy I didn't. It once was beautiful but it's been outside covered but still outside for too long. I crashed it a few times too. So it's now time to get love.

I'll be starting on that ugly fender.

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Closing holes and ditching ugly clutter:

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So that's where I am now. But I'm taking to many projects on. I sold my daily BMW yesterday and brought my E30 home. So I need to get working on that too. In between I'm working on rebuilding the house too, getting it more modern, better insulated and a bigger joy to live in. Busy times!

 

[Superbec]

love the parts washer, was it new? or marktplaats?

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Superbec The parts washer bought new and painted in a different color to my request.

Oh an I made a huge score for the air plumbing when I walked into a deal (or should I say Steal! with capital S and exclamation mark) for Staubli-swivel and Staubli-wall quick connectors. I'm looking forward to have those installed!

Promised you a picture:

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[sakurama]

Love the finger board - I used to climb as well and have taken the kids to the gym a few times. I'd like to make a wall to the treehouse that I'm hoping to build this summer. Looking great.

 

[LCG]

A lonely picture of the E12 under a rag... shame.... much shame....

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Love the finger board - I used to climb as well and have taken the kids to the gym a few times. I'd like to make a wall to the treehouse that I'm hoping to build this summer. Looking great.

Yeah it's a strange hobby to have in a country as flat as the Netherlands. I should post a picture of our attic. It's partly converted to a boulder cave. Not finished by a long shot but useable although I don't have to time to do so. But it's all part of my strategy to get the kids into climbing so we can go on family climbing sessions in the weekends. Yeah, I also have a masterplan somewhere to take over the world one day.

A lonely picture of the E12 under a rag... shame.... much shame....

To make matters worse I send it away and put it in storage. I need the garage for other things. One day I'll summon it again and give it some much deserved love, as it's a bad *** car.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
I quickly forgot my E39 530D when I brought this back home:

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I'll be slowly upgrading, finishing and enjoying it for some time. It really should be taken apart completely and get properly restored. Sadly there is no time for that so I need to enjoy it as it is now and get to that later on.

So I dug a ditch last weekend:

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Because I exchanged the pile of 530D cash to a big ugly brown cardboard box containing green friendly treehuggers ****.

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And that big box was accompanied by a smaller heavy box containing this:

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We'll be solar powered in a couple of weeks. This package should cover our annual need for electricity. AND I will have three phase power in the garage. So it will finaly make sense to put time and energy into cleaning and revising the antique drill.

 

[Hostyle]

Nice! Is it easily doable yourself? I've been toying with the idea to put some solar panels on the roof of our shed.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Nice! Is it easily doable yourself? I've been toying with the idea to put some solar panels on the roof of our shed.

Should be super easy. Ask me again after the 21st

 

[Hostyle]

Will do! Take lots of pictures please

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

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That was easy.

 

[longlivepunk]

Awesome!!

Sent from my B15 using Tapatalk

 

[Bib Overalls]

Looked at the compressed air fittings you scored. Very nice but also a bit expensive. You must have gotten quite a deal. Did you get any tubing? Post some pictures when you set it all up.

 

[madoc1]

just found this. very nice work! i can see the sakurama and yaidunno influence showing thru. lol. in the solar panel pic, is that your back yard? also, never any pics or mention as to what you did to repair the 530. was it a blown compressor? also again ,did you finish your custom ccompressor, which i think is awesome. keep it up.

jim

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Awesome!!

Thanks!

Looked at the compressed air fittings you scored. Very nice but also a bit expensive. You must have gotten quite a deal. Did you get any tubing? Post some pictures when you set it all up.

I paid around 35 euros. Internet retail prices are close to 8-900. Made me happy .

just found this. very nice work! i can see the sakurama and yaidunno influence showing thru. lol. in the solar panel pic, is that your back yard? also, never any pics or mention as to what you did to repair the 530. was it a blown compressor? also again ,did you finish your custom ccompressor, which i think is awesome. keep it up.

jim

Thanks Jim! Sadly I don't have my priorities straight to display more speed in my projects but I'd like to keep the finish high. So if you see a glimpse of either of those in my projects I'd be honored although it's probably more the subjects of my projects then the shared outcome .

The backyard you see there is of my neighbor. Ours is looking like a poorly maintained building site but I just gave the gardener green light to fix it.

The 530 was indeed a broken turbo. I replaced it and all was well again.

The custom compressor is still left unfinished. I'm currently working on many things at the same time but I'd like to finish that project as well so I can start using it. It's small steps but they all bring me closer to that dream garage where I can finish my dream cars. I'll try to keep you all in the loop.

 

[Hostyle]

The solar panels are looking good. Did it require any work to your roof?

It might be an option to have one or two rows of panels on our shed roof. Our garden faces west and the shed is in lengthwise, meaning the panels would be south facing. Only issue I see now, is that our existing electrical set-up is quite old. Replacing that would probably snowball into redoing all the electrics.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

The solar panels are looking good. Did it require any work to your roof?

Nope. There is 84kg of weight placed at the two supporting feet for each panel. The roof can easily support my weight. And my footprint is much smaller so I recon it should be ok.

It might be an option to have one or two rows of panels on our shed roof. Our garden faces west and the shed is in lengthwise, meaning the panels would be south facing. Only issue I see now, is that our existing electrical set-up is quite old. Replacing that would probably snowball into redoing all the electrics.

I got the same snowball but I usually welcome those kind of things as they are great opportunities to upgrade/learn. The solar panels were a great excuse to install a remote fuse box in the garage. And the new power line to it was perfectly inline with putting a wire gutter below the drive way. Which should then be large enough to hold:
-a new 5x4mm for three phase power
-LAN cable for fast internet etc.
-Door bell signal cable
-Signal cable for a separate heating valve.

You see? It's a win win win situation. Only my bank account suffers.

(More so because we decided to upgrade the primary fuse box as well.) It's all a great learning experience!

 

[Hostyle]

Our primary fuse box would need to be redone to, as would the downstairs electrics... but then I'd want to redo the ceiling and walls. Then I might aswell do the flooring... and the kitchen, and knock down a wall, and... You get the jist I believe.

It's not that I don't want to, but as you say, the bank account should be able to live through this. That's a bit of an issue at the moment

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

It's not that I don't want to, but as you say, the bank account should be able to live through this. That's a bit of an issue at the moment

That's why you should do the work yourself so you progress so slowly that you make enough money in the mean time to be able to buy stuff as you progress.

1) If you don't have enough money to keep going you have to much free time opposed to money making work hours.
2) If you have more money then time you have the luxury to work less or opportunity to outsource the dirty work.

It's all about balance where progress is determined by how much money you make.

 

[Hostyle]

Uhm... yeah... about that. I currently neither have the money nor the time And if I move slowly, I'll be the next guy on "Help, mijn man is klusser!"

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Uhm... yeah... about that. I currently neither have the money nor the time And if I move slowly, I'll be the next guy on "Help, mijn man is klusser!"

I think (or atleast my wife thinks) we could be stars in the same show. Perhaps we should do a regional show together

 

[Hostyle]

"Help, mijn man is klusser... Brabant Power Edition"

My girl is pretty understanding, with me being away for 12-13 hours each day I only have the weekends for work at the house and being social, do some sports, ride our bikes, etc. So see kinda accepts that some things take a bit longer than hoped for.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I've been away from the forum for a while but I didn't do nothing. Actually I've had the bad habit of giving multiple projects a go at the same time. Everybody knows that just doesn't work so I've been trying to leave things alone but that's hard with the commitments I've made:

1) I've got a new job. Better returns but also more energy spend due to the new part.
2) My parental leave ended so I'm working full-time again
3) We've did the complete backyard (Almost finished now)
4) I started working on my moped
5) I found a few drops of fuel under my E30 which lead to...
6) We've started with the bath room
7) We've started replacing windows and glass
8) I started on the Original Renner drill press
9) I'm still working on the garage
10) Going towards the summer holidays I need to prepare for that. (Tow hitch and trailer)
11) I've committed myself to run half a marathon but at a higher pace then last year
12) I've committed myself to train more for climbing. We'll be going to El Chorro in south Spain early September.

Oh and I still have two children a full time working wife and a household to keep. Oh F*ck! It always feels even worse when you write it down like that.

Let's get to pictures (off my phone sorry):

Bath room:
We'll have the goal to lower our heating bill and modify our house to a more eco friendly home. That's a challenge since our house was built in 1969. One of the things on the list are the windows. So we're planning to replace all glass and if necessary the frames. That means the bathroom window needs to be done too.

Originally there was a small window and door to a roof terrace. We won't be using that terrace and were actually planning to put the bathtub in front of that door. The frame was decent wood and well installed to the walls so not wanting to make this a bigger job than it already is we opted to make a hardwood lower frame beam and reuse the upper part of the original frame.

I don't have a decent before picture but you'll get it.

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Backyard:
Should be fun to play in for the kids and better looking then the building site it looks now. We outsourced most of that work. I make a father son project out of the removal of two large trees including the stumps all by hand. We had great fun there.

It now almost all grass with a few borders with plants. And in the middle a swing with play house for the kids. In the back my wife has a small place for growing herbs and vegetables.

E30
I didn't get a lot of time enjoying that. It was real fun though. I found a few drops of fuel below the car and put it in the garage immediately. It turned out that the fuel hard lines were toast. So I tore them off. Then discovered that the brake hard line may have some issues too. So I took that off as well. But to get that out I need to ditch the fuel tank. That has rust too, so needs to be replaced. To get the tank out I needed to remove the rear axle.

Then I started looking at the body and that's toast. So I took the seats and carpet out. Everything that I had replaced 10 years ago by a 'professional' needs to be cut out and replaced again. So this is becoming a horror story.

I talked to my wife and some friends about it and I walked in the garage about a dozen times. Sat down stared at it, tried to get to work to fix it in a temporary way like everybody was telling me to do but I just can't. I placed a large order for replacement parts at the dealer and will be doing this the only way it should be done, the right way.

So I'm in for a steep leaning curve for handling sheet metal. Let's mimic one of my heroes here: MP&C.

I guess putting pictures here of large rusted piles of **** won't do much good until I really get going.

Misc.
Some random ****:
-We got a super cell unleashing it's fury here and the solar panels survived hail the size of 1,5 inch! I was stumped that there were no cracks!
-I tried derusting with vinegar and it works! I'll post a picture next post.
-I got some really nice tools for free! I need to take some pictures there, but it was like the best Christmas I ever had!

 

[sakurama]

Too many projects - I know that feeling.

Looking forward to photos of the E30. Keep up the good work!

Gregor

 

[Hostyle]

Glad to hear you and yours came though the super cell undamaged! Heeze was a mess, Geldrop luckily only had some minor hail and a lot of water.

A buddy of mine has a shop in Zandvoort that specialises in E30's for racing. If you ever get stuck, give TIM Tuning a call

 

[Bempa]

Do you have 36hrs/day? I just can´t believe all the things you do! Impressive, applauses for you!

You do alot and you do it well.

I know how hard it´s to find time with kids/wife/work etc.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Too many projects - I know that feeling.

Looking forward to photos of the E30. Keep up the good work!

Gregor

Yeah but how you handle your is beyond me. You never ever cease to amaze me. I need to check your project topics again if you've made some progress. I've been off-line a bit because of my new job among others.

Glad to hear you and yours came though the super cell undamaged! Heeze was a mess, Geldrop luckily only had some minor hail and a lot of water.

A buddy of mine has a shop in Zandvoort that specialises in E30's for racing. If you ever get stuck, give TIM Tuning a call

It sure was a mess here. I was stunned by the sheer force of that storm. I went running a few days after and came across a tree line on the "heide" where the wind has had free play for a few miles and came head on, full force on that tree line. Everything was pushed back for 15meters atleast. I'm talking about pushing back a forrest tree line here over approximatelly 200 meters wide! That's 3000 square meters of trees!

Thanks about the heads up for your buddy. Who knows I might need it.

Do you have 36hrs/day? I just can´t believe all the things you do! Impressive, applauses for you!

You do alot and you do it well.

I know how hard it´s to find time with kids/wife/work etc.

Thanks, your words mean a lot to me!

I've been a bit ill the last few days so didn't do much. Bought a lawn mower and put it to work. That's the downside of getting the yard done. It takes time and work to keep it that way.

Here's some pictures of our play garden:
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I need to build some kind of roofing at the back of the shed to put the garden tools, bikes and other random stuff I don't want in the garage. Yet another project!

I made this box out of one of the left over wooden fences to keep the garden a bit clean of all the toys. We had a lot of fun while building it. It first was a climbing rack, then a barn for donkeys, then a hide-out when playing hide and seak, then a motor way for toy cars, and finaly a place to put all the out-side toys. It's fun to include the boys when making stuff.

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But the last days I just needed a small project to work on and get the bench empty before I start working on the car. So I got into the on/off-switch of the Original Renner. Yes that's an 8kW switch! I love it and I love the fact that it will be fully operational and in my garage!

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I love it's patina and will keep it as it is on the inside of the lid. I'll work on the rest though.

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I got it derusted in vinegar, this is the base coat. I think I'll match it with the blue of the theme of the garage.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Awesome.

As for the switch, they don't make them like that any more, well done.

Regards

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Kinda like this grey color, so I'll just leave it at that. It might need some contrast on the arrow and characters.

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In the end it just got some new paint, a good cleaning, new grease and I ran the threads. There was minor pitting in one of the contacts which was out of line. I adjusted that and cleaned all the contacts. I'll put some contact spray on and it should be ready to go for another few decades.

Now let's mount it and get it off my bench!

I also picked up our trailer for the holidays yesterday. I'll strip it next weekend and go over it to make sure it is safe to travel with.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Got the Original Renner switch hung. Started on the carburator of the Honda and picked up most of the replacement parts for the E30 yesterday. I hope to start on that after the holidays in August. I'll spend the next few remaining weekends preparing for our trip to Italy and helping out a friend with some work on his apartment.

I'll hope to get some stuff done in the garage in the evenings to clear the space for the E30. I'm really looking forward to that and I'll definatelly need your help there!

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