With the
work on my Defender almost finished for the time being, I am slowly picking up
work on the FHC again. This weekend I disassembled the heater in preparation
for its rebuild. As all steel parts will be shot blasted and properly coated I
picked the heater unit closest to hand. It actually has been lurking in the cellar
for longer as I can remember. But it was more than good enough to rob it of its
steel parts ...
It all
went fairly straight forward, although some of the steel spring clips, keeping
the various flaps in their correct position, had a mind of their own. This made
removing some of the clips rather awkward. Knowing you have some spare parts
left certainly helps here.
The same
could be said of the pop rivets that had to be drilled out. Some were so badly corroded
that they had lost their clamping power. So as soon as the drill got a grip
they started spinning! Luckily I have a very small Vice Grip that could be used
to lock them, thus enabling me to use the drill to the other end ...
Of course
lots of pictures were taking for future reference whilst I took the heater
apart. I won't bore you with them all ...
And 4 hours
after I started, I had a large pile of parts lying beside the work bench. A
close inspection of these turned up some damage to the lower half of the
plastic heater casing. So that one was discarded. Luckily some loose parts from
another heater unit yielded an undamaged casing. Also the heater's matrix
showed clear signs of a leaking core, though none were visible around the infamous
rubber seals. But the matrix will be
replaced too. But that will get a rather non original substitute ...
So at the
end of the day I was able to add another few parts to the ever growing collection of
parts that need a new coating ...
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