The day Cooper showed up to Help - 3-1-14

Cooper went in for knee surgery a few months back and hasn't been up to coming over to help. Then with some schedule conflicts, it just didn't happen. Finally he was able to make it over this day - and I know he did a fair amount to help. Or was it entertain?

Yup - there he is helping or was it supervising? 

First task for the day - pull the font tubing back off and straighten it. Decades of use had put some serious tweaks into the front tubing and we decided to get at least the majority of them straightened out

First step - driving a section of pipe into the end of the worst tube to be able to put force on it without crushing the shape. 

Here was the first attempt - Cooper checking out the 'jig' I setup so I could step on the pipe closest to us and attempt to bend it back. This did work - but not as well as anticipated. I didn't get any shots of the way we actually got it done - we took a metal pipe and placed it underneath one of beams of the house - using a bottle jack we were able to make a makeshift press and put some serious force on that piece of tubing. That worked fairly well. 

Dad attacking the tubing with 'locking pliers' - trying to get them a little straighter. 

Time for some explanation - one of the two reasons for tearing into this restoration in the first place was the aluminum angle iron that I found badly corroded. This is one of the replacement pieces I bought in probably 2005 or 2006 and had cut to fit then drilled holes into. Unfortunately - my method of drilling holes was off. Some were very close - others were a half a hole off in two dimensions. Apparently the steel angle I bought instead of the aluminum used by Fairmont is slightly different in dimension as well - I took a grinder to modify this piece in order to fit square with the rear tubing. 

This was a seriously frustrating piece - the bolt simply did not want to go in - and the hole had to be drilled, then redrilled in order to get it to line up correctly. Finally it did. 

With both front and rear (and side) bolts in we were able to drill the other holes since the spacing was now more or less correct. 

One in - one not so much...

This is why we put the front tubing on - we discovered that the front frame pieces were in different places at different angles then they were supposed to be - Since they were not being supported by the front tubing. Obviously this means that there will be some additional drilling required. 

Last shot of the day - the straightened front tube back on - holes drilled - bolts in them - We made some progress!

More to come!