Ran out of welding wire today. After a weekend of hardcore grinding and welding I got the last chassis plate fabricated and tacked on. Almost finished the last of the welding - thank God - but there’s a bit to do underneath so I’ll need to splash out on more wire ASAP.

Some welding left to do. Boo!

Since I was unable to do any more welding, I decided to swap the bent driveshaft out. As I’ve already said, it fell foul of some careless forklifting at some point in The Duke’s history and has a nasty bend. Since the back axle is up on blocks and the wheels are off, I started the engine and bunged it in gear… there was much wobbling!

Thanks to a thick layer of oil the bolts holding the shaft onto the axle assembly were as good as new. I removed and reused them.

Perfect condition!

Not so easy at the handbrake side. Has to hammer a socket on and use the breaker bar. Could only undo the nuts with the handbrake on hard, then had to spin it with the starter motor to get the next nut into position.

Nuts from the handbrake side don’t look so good. Three are OK to re-use, but one is dead!

The old and new drive shafts.

All bolted up again!

Spin spin spin! Got the engine running and worked through the gears. Even in 4th with some throttle it was totally free of wobble. Well worth the £20 I paid some bloke at Sodbury! Still some welding to do, plus the suspension needs putting back together, the wiring loom needs to be constructed and attached, the chassis needs undersealing on the outside and waxoyling on the inside and then… only then… I can bung the tub back on!

And finally: charging the batteries sorted the starting problem right out! They took 12 hours each to charge - I guess I should do it more often!