Jackdaw 34

April 8th Easter Sunday
Found One! Petrol tank that is. A guy on eBay was selling this new tank but wasn’t sure what it was so the description was a bit vague. I asked for sizes and Andy reckons it will fit so I bid and won it this morning for £41 delivered

April 11th Wednesday
What a star that guy on ebay is, the tank was deliverd this morning super fast or what considering Monday was a bank holiday. I have slapped a bit of that cheap metal paint from Aldi on it and i will be taking it up to Andy ASAP

April 12th Thursday
Just got back from dropping the petrol tank off at Andy's.
The weather is beautiful and I can’t wait to bring the van home and start working on it. The sunshine just makes me feel like working outside. Chances are it will start to piss down when I do. Andy still has a few jobs to get on with yet though. Fit the fuel tank/finish brakes/fit prop shaft/sort cooling system. At least he seems to have worked out what to do with the front suspension. He has found that the right springs should be the ones from a 1600 Mk5 Cortina (God knows what was in) and the wishbones are wrong they also going to be changed to Mk 5 the ones fitted now are too loose. It’s like I said early on nothing seemed right with the front end and we cant work out what the parts fitted actually came from. All the bits he needs now are coming off the old gold Cortina so that’s well paid for itself. The front brackets on the frame are going to be cut then reshaped and re welded to take the suspension arms.
Just a tip about the bushes, don’t buy new “old stock” they are past their best and they just rot, same applies for pumps etc technically they are “new” but the rubber seals perish over the years.

May 3rd Thursday
Andy has been in touch. On Tuesday he emailed that he had started working on Jackdaw again and sent a couple of photo's, he has now fitted the prop shaft. I knew when we got the van nothing much had been done and slowly all of the problems are starting to present themselves. The van has never had a prop fitted and when he actually came to put it in it appears the chassis was designed to take a fixed prop. He has had to fit an extra cross member for the propshaft centre carrier. He has also done a sterling job in fabricating a new gearbox mount so everything is in now and looking good.