Well, after an absence of a couple of months I thought it
was time to go and visit 326 to do a few jobs now the snow and cold weather have passed.
First job, and perhaps the most time-consuming as it took two trips, was to load all the locker kit back on! After I
purchased 326 back in late 2011, I took all the fire-fighting kit off for safe keeping as the
lockers are a misnomer as they don’t in fact lock! Last summer, having seen an
advert for a green goddess for sale in Ireland which has discs made that fitted
into the handle recess and which then locked with a padlock, I took a spare
locker handle to a foundry in Loscoe near Ripley in Derbyshire (R&FD Castings). They were fantastically helpful and had a wooden mould made up from which they
then cast some very nice aluminium discs. That done, the long quest to find
suitable padlocks started. None seemed to fit until at Easter this year, by chance
I found that a Squire No 39 fits perfectly! So I managed to get ten of them –
all on the same key, which is handy as that saves multiple different keys!! Anyway, all done
– kit back on and secure.
The locker discs in place:
Tools back in apart from the axes which need some wax to stop them rusting:
Too many nozzles now - I need some more wooden stands for them to keep them in place:
At last - the ground monitor is in (it's only been sat in a cupboard at home for 17 months....!):
Once all that was done, I then changed the oil in the filters on the rocker
cover breather and also in the main air filter. I have no idea when this was last
done but it was filthy, a deep mahogany colour and full of sediment. Fresh oil
much needed!
Rocker cover breather filter off:
Yuk! very old, dirty oil:
The main air filter - a bit of a puzzle to get out:
New oil:
I then finally got round to wire brushing and painting the
exhaust with silver exhaust paint. A simpler job than I’d anticipated, it might
mean that the exhaust lasts a little longer – it looks less tatty alongside the
under-sealed chassis and axles!
The last job – replacing the chrome ring around the
dashboard that’s been sitting around the flat for ages. It was held on with
tape as the fixers had fallen off. Having got some more, it’s only taken just over a
year to put it all back together!
