For a long time, we've referred to the GPW as 'Hope', although the Jeep was never named officially. This was partly due to not wanting a name on the screen like 'Jessie' has. It would have spoiled the wartime comparison photos that I wanted to do for a long time, and recently managed during our Thorpe Abbotts visit.

Even though I now have those pictures, I still didn't want to paint on the screen frame, but spent some of the last week, pondering other suitable areas. I wanted to avoid the right side of the Jeep so it still matched the wartime pictures, and as the driver is on the left, the area over the instrument panel behind the hood seemed to be a good location.

It didn't need to be big, so after a bit of tinkering and adjusting a font on the computer, I printed out a six inch long name to produce a paper stencil. This was drawn through with a pencil, and the name brush painted between the pencil lines, so at last, 'Hope' is now officially 'Hope'. 

After the trip to Suffolk, we gave the Jeep a wash down to get rid of the mud and grass gathered in the off road section of the convoy. The wash was just a hose down and scrub with a brush. After the Jeep dried off, there was still a coating of dust that hadn't moved, but at least the worst of the mud was gone.

So today, the Jeep came out again for a shampoo and rinse! I'm not sure what the dust was, whether it was just powdered soil of something of chemical origin from the fields, but even after a second wash with shampoo, it still stubbornly remained in some places. A third trip around the Jeep with the hose, brush and sponge seemed to get rid of most of it, sponging the bodywork down as it dried seemed to get rid of it all but the hard to reach corners.

Once the Jeep was dry, I went around with a paint brush and did some touch ups on chips.

Third time lucky. The original cork float on the fuel tank sender soaked up petrol and sank. I tried to make a replacement cork float, coated in epoxy to seal it, and while it floated in water, it was too heavy for petrol. I made a temporary replacement from an old 35mm film container which worked for a while, but a tiny split developed where the sender arm went through the container, and fuel seeped in and it sank too.

Ok, I'll look on the internet for a float! No, I could find senders with floats, I could find floats in the USA that would cost more than they were worth to ship to the UK, so I settled for making one.

I got some very thin model making brass sheet and made a brass float, rather resembling Barnes Wallace's Bouncing Bomb! It was fitted this morning and seems to be working ok.

Since Hope seems to be running fairly well, with not a great deal doing at present, Jessie and Hope were swapped side to side in the garage. Jessie still hasn't done a great deal of miles since the engine top end rebuild, as I plan to take Jessie to York in April, I wanted to get a bit more running time on the engine before a long trip. On February 28th, they were both run for a while and then swapped to allow me to get Jessie out more easily without having to move the every day car and trailer out of the way.

February 8th - Valves

On February 8th, and after 100 miles driving, it was time to reset the valves in the engine. I figured 100 miles was enough time for them to bed in to some degree, so all the tappets were set to the factory 0.014 thou clearance. I'll probably do it again before the year is out, just to monitor the bedding in of the low time engine.