26 Days and Counting

[Twizseven]

I've finally decided to close my business down and enter the world of retirement and hopefully lots of workshop time.   I may make brackets etc. for one of my main customers if he requires them, but no site surveys or installation or major  hardware builds.

Ltd. company, insurance and VAT registration will all cease so will not be able to relent and go back onsite.   Out of those 26 days 5 are holiday and 8 are weekends, so only 13 work days and its is currently very quite on that front.  It may take a month or so, at least, to try and get rid of lots of IT hardware and cabling/installation components but hopefully this will free up some space.

I did not expect  it but I actually feel relieved that I have decided to do it.

Colin

[Vixen]

Hello Colin,

But have you considered what it actually means?  No weekends off, no Bank Holidays, no annual leave, nothing ? You will have to go at it 365 days each year, non stop, without a break.

Well done, enjoy your retirement

Mike

[Jo]

As Mike says you don't get time off any more 

Jo

[stevehuckss396]

Good for you Colin. I'm staring at 3 more years and cannot wait! Enjoy.

[b.lindsey]

Congratulations Colin. you will LOVE it!!!

Bill

[Ian S C]

You'll love it, but you may wonder how you ever got time to work, specially when the night shift kicks in/you get carried away with some project, then look at the clock and find it's coming up mid night, an if your like me, no one to call you in for your evening meal.
Ian S C

[Twizseven]

Thanks guys and gals for your thoughts.  Having been in IT installation and support all my life and having in some cases done lots of 120hr weeks and I know in some cases at least 3 years where I worked 350 days out of 365 and most of those at 10hrs plus per day I reckon I have actually worked around 60 man years in a 50 year period (1969 to 2019) so I thought better do it now whilst I can.  Sitting in a cherry picker dragging cables across in high bay racking and dodging lunatic  fork truck drivers, can be quite nerve wracking sometimes and although will miss some bits of it, particularly some of brilliant users I have had to work with and gradually feeling much relieved.

Trouble is it means I cannot put off looking at the various sets of castings I have been accumulating, I will have to do something with them, even if it is only b....r them up.

Colin

[Jo]

Trouble is it means I cannot put off looking at the various sets of castings I have been accumulating, I will have to do something with them, even if it is only b....r them up.

Castings 

Quick while Surus is otherwise engaged (eating his birthday box of Snickers bars    ) anything interesting in your casting collection, one cannot have too many sets of castings   

Jo

[Twizseven]

Jo,

I think you should be supplying me with castings.   I am sure you have a bottomless pit full of them   Perhaps Surus is sitting on top of it.

All I have is a Stuart S50, Stuart No.9, Stuart Half Beam, Sanderson Beam (courtesy of your good self)(the casting set now has the few missing bits and the gears and plans to go with it.), Stuart V10 to refurb, Anzani 'Y' to make a start on.  I have a few sets of plans for things to be made from barstock.  Possibly looking at a McOnie.  So as you can see nothing as exotic as the castings you keep obtaining.  Your supplier  must also have a bottomless heap of castings.

Other things get in the way.  My Caterham 7 had nice new race spec shocks and springs fitted a couple of weeks ago.  Went round The Yorkshire Dales for 600 odd miles, went to have in flat-floored (i.e. suspension all set up correctly to find that the nearside rear had ripped its mounting out of the De Dion tube.  Have  just obtained a nice new one but need to strip all rear suspension to refit it (and paint other bits).

The other job I am trying to do at the moment is make a pair of support arms for the Excel Die Filer.  I have made a pair of patterns for the arms, I just need to make one for the pillar base and them get them cast at a local iron foundry.  Then machine them!!

 


Colin

[Roger B]

Congratulations on your decision        Was the De Dion tube failure due to the harder springs and dampers? I had a lot of cracking problems when I mounted the top end of the telescopic dampers to the body on my Triumph rather than using the Vitesse lever arm units 

[Twizseven]

Roger,

The new springs and shocks possibly helped, but the shocks are adjustable.  They started of quite hard but as the weekend went on I softened them off several times.  We went over a few good bumps at quite high speeds so I guess part fault of shocks and partly old age as the car is 22 years old.  The old shocks did not appear to be doing their job so it may have cracked prior to fitting the new ones, but it was certainly not visible when they were swapped over.  The new dedion tube has the mountings reinforced and braced as I understand they are a little prone to ripping out.  The good thing is that it did not fail catastrophically whilst driving it else I could have ended up in a bad place.

Colin

[Admiral_dk]

to find that the nearside rear had ripped its mounting out of the De Dion tube.

Oh man, you must feel rather relieved that you did not discover this while driving 

I will agree that 22 years and a lot of hard driving (?) will put quite a bit of strain on all parts - perhaps time to take everything apart and thorley inspect them before reassembly 

In my youth when I was really driving like I was still on the race track on the road bike - it was completely torn apart down to single nuts, bolts, gears, valves etc. every winter and rebuild again in the spring - and I can tell you that I always found important parts that needed to be replaced ...!!!

Best wishes and enjoy retirement 

Per

ps  I'm still nine years away ....

[steamer]

Congratulations Colin!

Dave