When the time is right, I wil service the auto tranny and remove the dent with a big stick.
Anyways, on with "THE" project.
The reason;
The belly;
The steel;
The front plate;
The welder, here it must be noted that I am a complete amature when it comes to weding;
The angle irons;
The welding, part 1;
The welding, part 2;
The angle irons finished, these support the front and rear plates. It is bolted to the 2nd cross member;
The front plate drilled, I even managed to find one of those illusive oval drill bits. Realy handy when measurements go astray;
The bash plate, top side. It even has some of those oval holes too!;
The bash plate, bottom side. My welding is improving here, believe me! The hardest part was figuring out how to prevent it all warping when welding the angle irons to the plate. The solution was to place the plate on the trolley jack, put some blocks at each end of the plate and jack it up under the truch's tow bar. This put a suficient bow in the metalwork in the direction I wanted, allowing me to tackweld it all together;
The front plate bolted in, just have to make some large (65mm?) holes in it sometime;
The finished article;
The mess, will I be more organised when I get my new shed? i don't think so somehow;
This fella turned up on the dif too, he was a great help with my hole measurements;
Here is a shot of the onboard air tank, snuggled neatly behind the spare wheel carrier. There were some minor adjustments made to acomodate it.
I am still waitiing time to get the compressor mounted to the engine, but this is another project for another time;
Keep up the good work Pete, everyone start welding as an amateur... apparently you get better at it by doing more of it... geez... I really should get back out to the shed and practice more myself 
