Holding stock!

We have heard a lot over the past few months about the pressures on industry and commerce by a break down for varied reasons of the Just In Time System (JIT) of production and commerce. Basically the idea is that you don't hold stocks of materials or products to minimise the amount of money tied up in holding stock and the facilities to store them. Instead you order when you require it and the materials and products appear through a streamlined delivery system that delivers just as you need the item. That is the theory and to be fair nowadays until recently it has worked well. However I can remember when a Company I worked for introduced the JIT system of working back in the late 80s. It soon became known as the TFL system by the staff - the first word is Too the third is Late and I will let you work out the middle one!

Here at WMD HQ, possibly tainted by those early experiences of JIT, I do keep stocks of materials which will be useful one day. Mrs. Woody just refers to it as junk. However my prudence pays off on occasions such as today. I started to install the engine for the Scania 143H and I need to put the prop-shaft in as part of that process. As with other parts of this kit there is a need to shorten the kit part. I did try doing this by cutting the appropriate amount out of the part but to be honest the parts did not glue back together well and I could see broken parts at some stage. I decided that I would just cut off the universal joints that enter the gear box and rear axle and then join them with a new piece of plastic tube. Now where would I get some tube from? The WMD stock holding - that is where!

This is just some of the junk  stock that I have and yes there was a suitable piece of tube which was soon cut to size and then the part painted.

The tube may be slightly larger in diameter than the original part but once painted it looks OK.

Trial fitting the engine I found that the front engine mounts on the chassis and engine block did not come into contact with each other. Despite filing down part of the exhaust manifold that was part of the issue the parts still had a gap between them. Back to the stock holding and a smaller diameter tube provided a suitable solution by filling the gap. Here the two slices of tube have been glued to the chassis and once the glue has hardened they can be painted and the engine mounted. Hopefully such a small alteration will not have adverse impacts on the cab fit - fingers crossed and swear jar at the ready!