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Side Project 4: Nudge Bar Refresh




When we purchased Digby, we accepted that the front nudge bars would need some work. Not only did they show signs of discolouration and rust, but inexplicably, Mitsubishi decided that the nudge bars of this model of Delica should be white, and odd choice as the rest of the vehicle was predominately black over grey. I had previously seen a few similar models to Digby with the nudge bars painted black, which matched to the bodywork and which I thought looked bad arsed…


I could have decided to spray paint the nudge bars in place, but I thought that I would do it properly and remove them from the front of Digby, sand down the rust spots and flaky white paint, add a coat of rust-inhibiting primer, then respray the nudge bars matt black to key into the majority of the paintwork, and put them back on the van.



As it turns out, the nudge bar assembly is quite heavy and as I was removing it from the front of Digby, I lifted it incorrectly and managed to pull something in my back… Dam…!! At first, it was just a small niggle but I carried on with the disassembly and preparation work, but by the time I finished up the sanding and priming towards the end of the day, it had become a massively debilitating pain and I could hardly walk. There is a lesson here that I should have learnt some forty years ago about lifting from the knees, and after having to take a few days off work and visit the doctor & physiotherapist, it just goes to show that it is never too late to learn.


Anyway, this put that project on hold for about 3 weeks while I recovered, but when I was fit enough I spent a day putting 2 coats of paint on the assembly and managed to put the nudge bars back on the front of the van without hurting myself again. To finish off the work I used the old heat gun trick I learnt from a YouTube video, (here), to bring back the fading black plastic trim that sits over the front of the nudge bars, to an almost new condition. It worked out a treat.
 





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