Krys' Garage

Things moved on a bit quicker this weekend, thanks mainly to £24 worth of wood for the roof trusses. Saturday afternoon saw us making up the remaining six trusses on top of the original one which we'd kept aside as a pattern. As they were made up, we lifted them into position. Once they were all in place, we worked out the spacing (33" centres) & cut the "rafters" to length, 60 in all are required... after a bit of hunting around we'eve almost got enough!
Sunday saw these cut to length & screwed in position, starting at the door end. Due to a change in roofing material, (we are now planning to use corrugated iron)  we will require fewer roof trusses, which will mean we will have to re-position the four we installed last year...
Sunday afternoon we were visited by a local phesant!

Honda NTV650 Deauville

My bike, been laid up all winter & now needs an MOT, but before that the split in the exhaust that appeared half way through last season has to be sorted. A new exhaust is out of the question until one comes up for sale at an affordable price. Honda OEM exhausts seem to be arround £800!

Of course, the area to be repaired is well hidden by the heat shield, which, in turn is held in place by bolts which have rusted in... drilling the heads off is, of course a possibility, but the force involved in that operation is likely to do more damage to the already weakened rusty split!

Next saturday.....

Lister D stationary engine

The meduim term aim is to build a gassifier & convert a car to run on the gas it produces, like most things, this will probably be easier said than done, but early research shows that its been done before! The goal of having a car with zero running cost is certainly worth persuing... if said car is old enough to avoid road tax the the Chancellor knows what he can do!

However the first step would be to get a simple engine & get it running from the gassifier, engines don't come much simplier than this. The Lister has the advantage of being water cooled which means the luxury of heating in the garage is a possibility

The engine will be hooked up to a generator, yet to be sourced, which will produce electricity for the garage, in the first instance...

All this is a fair way off, but at least the Lister is complete, although it has been partly dismantled & the starting handle & spark plug are missing 



Honda C90

The blue one... having thought about this on-and-off all week, I can only assume that the wear on the hole in the frame through which the bolt passes is the result of the nut being loose at some point in its past, possibly made worse by the chain being too tight? However on these bikes the front end of the swing arm is rubber bushed, all the boilt has to do is hold it all together (including the exhaust pipe bracket). It doesnt act as a pivot, the rotational movement of the swing arm is allowed for the the flex in the rubber bushings.

Going back together... come to think of it this would explain why the rear wheel has always been mis-alligned in the frame?

Krys' Garage

The end is now slowly taking shape & becoming more weatherproof, this afternoon we fitted some cladding above the windows, as well as the window cill. It was a nice aftertnoon, but the boards kept splitting!

The Whitemill, Sandwich

A mixed morning at the mill today, the first thing is to report that the guardrails that we started a couple of weeks ago are now finished...

However, most of this morning was taken up with sorting a theft of heating oil which occurred sometime Thurday night. The tank is a relatively new polyethere, bunded one, & is mounted some five feet off the ground. The thieves had drilled through both inner & outer walls & then presumably drained the contents (approx 200l) into containers. The tank will have to be replaced which, ironically will cost a lot more than they will get for the stolen oil!

We will need to re-think the siting of the replacement tank to make this sort of think more difficult in future...

Honda C90

There are two of these, both later 12v 85cc bikes. The red one is an  '88 electric start & is almost ready for its MOT. The blue one is in daily use, or was, & is a later bike, '99. It's Krys' ride to work, until today, that is, when I noticed that the rear swing arm pivot was quite badly worn, the pivot bolt was difficult to remove, when it finally came out, we saw how badly the hole in the frame had worn. Particularly, on the left side, where it was worn oval... an over-tight chain at some point in the past, perhaps? Not quite sure how we're going to sort that out but I'm sure we'll think of something!

Krys' Garage

Limited progress this afternoon, but at least we managed to do something today, the first time for several weeks... You'll have to look closely, but the cladding either side of the windows was the main achievemnet of the afternoon!
The tractor now runs, but has a hole in the float!

Richborough Power Station demolotion day

After being part of the landscape for half a century, the three cooloing towers & chimney were demolished today. I managed to get a good view...

Krys' tractor

Having wanted one of these since the age of about six! one finally came his way this weekend... a freebe too. So far it turns over on the starter & sparks at the plug.... tomorrow we try a pounds worth of petrol... ok, two pounds worth!







The white Mill Sandwich

This morning, one of the volunteers brought some grain to be ground on a pair of small stones that are usually used to demonstrate the grinding process to school parties... below is the result, a bowlful of whole grain flour... Scroll down to see a video of the process...

Following last Sundays activities, the workshop is much clearer! The weather today, however, suggested an indoor job so we set to work on a job that had been hanging around for quite a while... too long,in fact!

In the workshop, we installed two storage floors at a height of about 7ft from the ground. On one of them we never got round to installing guard rails... until today, that is!

For more info & details of forthcoming events at the mill this year, please visit www.whitemill.info

Yamaha Viragio 535

After a few months sitting around over the winter it was time of an MOT, tax & a ride out, followed by a clean & polish!