Saturday 20 April 2013

Fire Truck. Rear control panel overhaul

I decided that I would get the seat section of the cab completed first, leaving the main part of the cab for a bit later in the year when the weather is better as I definitely have some woodworking to do on this section of the cab and my space indoors is limited to say the least. Anyway I thought a good place to start was on the Control panel, below is a photo of how it currently looked.

Original rear CP condition.
As you can see, it was pretty grimey and one of the buttons was missing a cone and it was also broken. The steering wheel also wouldn't freely spin.
Below is a close up of the wheel showing the surface rust that had built up on the wheel over the years in storage.

Steering wheel before a clean up.
The steering wheel cap showed how clean the wheel could be and would have originally been. After a good scrub with a metal scourer and some metal polish I found in one of my old tool boxes it now had a very nice shine!

Steering Wheel with a shine!
The wheel has cleaned up lovely the Control Panel is clean but does have some signs of rust coming through, there's not much I can do about this, but hey the machine is 34 years old so its allowed to show some signs of age.

Rear CP after being cleaned up.
As you can see I've replaced the broken button and put a cone on it, but I will be replacing all three so they match before the project is over. I'm assuming the front Control Panel will come clean up into a similar condition. More on that when I get to the main cab.