No pictures today, but the new gearbox is in and the clutch hydralics are all bled up. The PTO is swapped over and things are going nicely.
Tomorrow we will be going to get the Post Office Red paint and thinners and Saturday we should be able to start spraying – or, at least, get everything primed and ready 
Well, I’ve just had a very interesting chat with a chap who was actually involved with the build of Pod, back in 1980.
He worked at Victoria Road, Felton for…Chubb Fire
So, that one little bit of the puzzle solved. Pod was definitley built by Chubb Fire now. It’s great to have that confirmation.
Unfortunatley, all of the build records we desposed of 1999 when Chubb moved their Head Office. Oh well, at least I have one extra little bit of information I didn’t have before.
We have also been to see a Commercial Resprayed about getting Pod resprayed, and we have decided against going down that route as it would cost around £1200+ and waiting times are nearly 3 months – which is too long for us, at the moment. Instead, Chris will be respraying the panels and we’ll then replace them on to the frame.
As I’m typing this, the chassis has been Waxoyl’d and the engine will be coming out very shortly. Which means Paul will soon be able to have the engine back.
Update:
The engine is now out, which means we can get the gearbox and 200TDi in tomorrow. Whoop.
There’s likely to be a few updates today, as I’m sitting here working on some artwork so am not spending much time outside.
So far today, the wings have come off:
Chris has pulled lots of stupid faces:
Oh, and the engine is ready to come out..I knew there was something important I meant to add:
Update: come the end of the day, we had the gearbox out and the steel frame wire brushed and ready for welding:
And, as promised, the horns – all painted up and waiting to go back on:
A good day I feel.
Today, we managed to get the 1 cm thick steel flooring out – not an easy task! It weighed an awful lot and was welded to the frame in all of the most unreachable places.
We also managed to get the truck cab off, along with the rear bulkhead – leaving us nice and prepped for getting the gearbox and engine out tomorrow.
Update: Chris spent this evening cleaning, priming and respraying the horns. I will aim to get a picture of them for the next update
Okay, we got slightly sidetracked away from actually stripping down Pod and have found ourselves, instead, playing with actual working Fire Engines! Lots of fun..but with a real purpose as well.
We found out that Seething Airfield, about 9 miles from Norwich, has a rather interesting Fire and Rescue unit. They have a Series 3 “W” reg which is 99.9% identical to Pod, which answered one of our first questions: Who built Pod? The answer we now know to be ,almost certainly (confirmation pending), Chubb Fire.
We spent a good few hours there taking many reference photos and measurments and managed to gain a much better idea of what we should be aiming for with Pod.
After all the fact finding we then got treated to a ride in their Beford TK, which was marvellous fun!..although they shouldn’t have let on that they are selling it 
So, Day 2 has not given us any progress in terms of the stripdown – but we now have a lot more knowledge on Pod and what she will become in the coming weeks.
We’ve had Pod for three days now, so we felt it was high time we started work on her.
So, here she is – first thing this morning, after I played with a bit of Nitromors to see what the paint was like underneath:
I checked in all the usual places to see if there was any original sign writing left – or at least, some trace of it. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything – but it’s highly possible she would have had little or nothing on her, sign writing wise, due to her being a factory appliance.
While I was having a go at the paint, Chris cleaned out the horns – which had become clogged with years of dirt and water – and we got our first taste of Pod’s Blues (well..more purple) and Twos. It was wonderful.
Once we’d stopped playing with the horns and grinning to ourselves, we moved on to the more important side of things and began to drill out the many hundreds of rivets that held her together.
In all, we must have drilled out at least 200 each, and it took a good few hours to get through them all! Underneath all of the cladding we found a rather rotten steel frame and rear cross member. From what we could see at the time, we knew she’d certainly need a new rear cross member (of which we have a few lying around!) and various parts of the steel frame replacing entirely.
One problem we encountered while stripped the (aluminium) cladding off the frame was that where corrosion had occured it had often left the aluminium very thin and prown to snapping off or contorting badly.
To get round this we had to slow the pace down and make sure to slowly tease any problem panels away from the steel with multiple broad tip screw drivers, so as not to bend or break the think sheets.
And this is how Pod looked at the end of Day 1:
Both sides of her rear body fully stripped and only the 1 cm thick steel flooring to take out!
