Having whipped the tub off last night, tonight I cycled home as fast as my little legs would carry me to check out what was underneath. Not much worse than I expected really; though there’s lots of cleaning up to do under there.

These two photos show the same part: the mounting for the right hand shock absorber. Before cleaning and after. When I first looked, I thought I’d have to fit a new one, but after setting about it with the wire brush it looks fine. This needs to go!

The rear cross member needs replacing as I’ve already said. Totally rusted away to little more than a flaky mess on each end. The big issue is how much of the chassis needs to go with it. The strut on the right hand side is rusted on the bottom but seems sound on the top. Hopefully it’ll be enough to plate that up, but when towing I don’t want the main load bearing bit of the chassis to be a patchwork of patches.

Underneath the right hand chassis strut with cross member at the top of the picture. Nasty!