100% ford mondeo

The concrete column made up of Ford Mondeo is now complete and the carpark is begining to look like a carpark

R310 RDF - The video

Ford Mondeo concrete column

The full column on the third floor of the carpark has now been cast. Inside is two-thirds of the Ford Mondeo will hold up the building. The last half column will need to wait until the construction of the carpark reaches level four.

Mondeo rebar back on site

From Celsa the Mondeo, now 32mm rebar, was transported to Romtech, a company which cuts and bends the steel into the right dimensions for the construction project. From there it was back to the new carpark in Bristol. Since begining the journey when I bought the car from Paul, it has traveled a total of 114 miles to its final resting place. The third and fourth floor of the carpark.
The 680 kgs of steel from the car have made enough 32mm rebar to construct one full and one half concrete columns in the carpark. After assembling the steelwork onsite, the final stage will be to fix the steelwork in place, assemble the shuttering and cast the concrete.

R310 RCF – at the steelworks

The 680 kgs of Ford Mondeo arrived at Celsa in Cardiff on the back of a skip truck. The next stage is melting the car down and casting the steel into billets. My first worry was how to track the Ford through the whole process, but in fact it was very easy. As soon as the metal from the car was lifted into the cast pot it is given a cast number which will stay with this batch of steel forever. The whole plant in Cardiff is sophisticatedly computerised with ever bit of steel tracked throughout the whole process. What an amazing place! Dressed in heavy [and very hot] woolen fire retardent clothing, earpulgs, boots and helmet, I went into the plant. Even with the earplugs the noise, smoke and flames are overwhelming. We tracked the car being melted and cast into steel billets. From here the billets will be taken to the rod-mill.

R310 RDF – at the scrap yard

The car drove like a dream to the scrap yard in Newport. Simms Metals is a huge place with the biggest 'frag' plant, or shredder in the world. Simms could not have been more helpful. I filmed them de-polute the car and stip it down ready for fragging. They then stopped all their work on the frag plant and cleared the whole machine so we could process the car and collect all the metal. Once the car began making it's way up the conveyor to the shredder, it took a matter of minutes before it was comming out the other end in little pieces. In total the Mondeo was converted into 680kgs of ferrous metal.

R310 RCF – collecting the car from Paul

Frod Mondeo Estate, bought on Ebay from Paul who lives in Bristol, only a few miles from the site. This car has a Bristol story already. The day after Paul bought the car himself, it was involved in an accident with a Bristol bus and was a write-off. But the engine is sound, I have managed to insure it, and the next thing is to drive to to the scrap yard in Newport.