Angle grinder meltdown

There I was, Saturday morning last weekend, working away with a cup brush in the angle grinder, removing the remainder of the paint and rust from the front valance of the Saloon, when all of all sudden the angle grinder starts to feel very light, the cup brush stops spinning and I hear a noise very similar to a differential stripping! I end up with an angle grinder that still spins its armature up to full speed but has a completely static spindle. The spindle, in fact, had gone completely loose with seemingly no connection to the armature.

It became clear what had happened when I dissembled the angle grinder. The four machine screws that secure the spindle assembly to the gearcase had worked loose. This had allowed the spindle to partly disengage from the pinion stripping the pinion teeth in the process.

It wasn't a particularly cheap angle grinder so I reckoned it was worth saving if at all possible. And after a quick internet search, and £3.50 later (the cost of a replacement pinion), it's working again as of this morning!

I'm wondering if the vibration you often get when working with cup brushes fitted to angle grinders is what caused the screws to loosen? So that I don't get held up again when an angle grinder goes down I've bought a second, cheap (£17) angle grinder as backup. What I'll maybe do is use the cup brushes with the cheap angle grinder and keep the better angle grinder for working with flap discs, grinding or cutting.

Anyway - work resumes on the Saloon as of this afternoon!

Cleaning up well...

It all went rather baltic up here a couple of weeks ago making the garage a very unpleasant place to be! It warmed up considerably over the weekend though and I managed to get a full day on the Saloon today.

The front lamp panel has cleaned up very well and the valance isn't looking too bad so far.

What used to look like this...

...now looks like this:

Some minor pitting but no holes and I'll be able to remove all of the rust. This is much better than I was expecting. So much so that the Hydrate 80 I was planning to use isn't going to be needed here. Instead, once the clean-up's finished it'll be primed with Electrox then roughly finished as described in the previous blog with couple of coats of Triumph White.

As noted before the front valance will need repaired where it joins the inner wheel arch and front wing but that's all that's wrong with it. I'll deal with that when I'm sorting the floor, sills and wings next year.

Keeping my fingers crossed that it stays mild so that I can get a decent run at this and get it done!