[RHClarke]

Had to make a difficult choice this day. Stay at home and listen to 10 screaming kids attending a birthday party, whilst putting up with their mothers who get progressively anti-man as the wine flows, or go to the barn...

What a great day at the barn. Today we had some visitors - the first one arrived to take measurements of various CMP items and to bring Bob up to speed on things going on in the west end of Ottawa. Bob missed the Gracies call, so Don Dingwall had to repeat all of his Gracies banter. The next visitor was Rob Hutchingame, CO of the Manotick Army Cadet Corps and family friend. Rob had to make the same decision as I had to, and he chose the correct path forward. The morning went quite fast and we headed into Hammond city centre for a brunch at Mike's Place.

After brunch, Don headed back to the wild west, and Rob H was put to work in the HUP wagon lines. First, we tarped the Gough/Ginn HUP body. Then we filled her up with all sorts of HUP hardware that had been sitting on back of my Philips HUP. The other HUPs were suitably tarped and cleaned out. Then it was back to the barn.

Bob and Grant were dissecting Bob's drive train so Rob H and I decided to replace tire number three on the Prototype HUP. After the wheel was removed, we demonstrated the "new" and "improved" de-rimming technique. This involved the safe removal of all of the nuts on the rim and the judicious use of long punches to separate the bead from the rim. Once the punches were in, chisels were used along the rim to further move the rubber away from the rim.

Rob H and I think we set the new record for removing old tires from rusty HUP rims. It took 5 minutes. The local peanut gallery moaned that it was because the HUP rims were a different angle and therefore easier to de-rim. As well, a number of theories were offerred about the ease of de-rimming the HUP - it had rolled on it's tires and therefore were easier to remove, etc...

In any case, the official timekeeper verified that the 5 minute mark was achieved. I now offer the challenge to all - beat our record of a 5 minute Prototype HUP tire de-rimming, and I will let you have the first offical drive of the Prototype upon restoration roll-out.


After that fun, I asked Rob H if he knew what a needle gun was...he knows now. Being a good sport, he had a go at cleaning up one of the Prototype's freshly opened rims. After a good spell of ear-splitting needle-gunning, Bob took pity on Rob H and stood us down for a beer (which evaporated quickly).

That wrapped up the day for us. Rob H and I headed back to the city and to our wives and kids. They did not seem to miss us...