Kit 14A - Belly Tank

I am making some progress on painting my belly tank, although I haven’t yet finished the boiler cladding, so I won’t be able to fit it for a while.

Managed to make a start on the Belly tanks last week and luckily the sides and top lined up quite nicely with only a few holes having to be redrilled. I fitted all the brackets except the front boiler bracket as soon as possible. Having then coated the insides with two coats of cromapol. I am have almost fitted the smaller endplate. This has taken around 10 hours to line up and redrill numerous holes and fit around 3/4 of the rivets. A long but very satisfying job but sore wrists and arthritic thumbs and fingers.
Tony

Once your belly tank is constructed, and before you give it the final topcoats of paint, you might like to try it in position because you don’t want to have a problem fitting it when it’s all shiny and varnished.

Yes thanks for that. I have followed your excellent posts and read the problems you had. Boiler due in June so will get it primed and undercoated to protect the metal. Will need to give another coat of cropmapol in some places as some metal from redrilling holes stuck to previous coat despite protecting.
Thanks again.
Tony

I am going to paint the stripes on the belly tank soon… before I do that I want to get both covers on, so I have made gaskets out of silicone rubber which I am hoping will do the job of keeping the water in !!  After the stripes, I will varnish it and then final fit.

I have now finished painting and varnishing my belly tank and it is now mounted in position. I scuffed it a tiny bit whilst mounting it but luckily in an area that won’t really show, so a touch up and varnish and it will be fine. If you have read my previous posts in this thread you will know that I had an issue with the height of the bracket at the front of the tank and I had to re-position it, but that worked out fine in the end.

Stunning work as always!

It’s nice to have Lynn on board helping as we get complications to overcome.

I take my hat off to STW, yes we get some issues with some parts but without them I would never be able to get into this hobby.

Keep up the good work!

TheBurrell wrote:Stunning work as always!

It’s nice to have Lynn on board helping as we get complications to overcome.

I take my hat off to STW, yes we get some issues with some parts but without them I would never be able to get into this hobby.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks !

Yes - Lynn is very helpful and gave me some pointers when I had the bracket problem.