Tamber

I won't tell if you don't!

Really haven't got much done of late. So, what's easy and doesn't require me to go out and buy more stuff to make progress with? You can see my previous attempt at brightening up the inside of this locker with a can of mystery white spraypaint. It didn't get very far. However, while I was grabbing some other bits n pieces the other week, I noticed they had a sale on the Leyland Trade white gloss, and I know that stuff's pretty decent because we use it at work. And it doesn't matter if it won't play nice with the Tekaloid paint, because they're never going to meet... And so, in the space of half an hour, with a 3" brush, I got a first coat over most of the top half. It's an instant difference! Black hole of Calcutta down in there, with the delightful combo of rust and Deep Bronze Green... Lovely! Two hours in total. Still need to do another coat, but that's for another day; and it's already a massive improvement! Also, as for the air-filter housing that was 'on' the truck when I got it: Still got it. 😄

Well, that's handy to know! Definitely simplifies the air system if the compressor can unload itself at a reasonable set-point. As far as the slew gear goes, if you can get a small inspection camera in through the fill plug and confirm whether the worm wheel is turning with the jib or not, that should at least answer the mystery. I think sheared bolts is the least-bad option, unfortunately... I'm finding the info in Supplement No. 6 to EMER Wheeled Vehicles F172, issued April 1963. It's appended to one of the copies of the EMER/workshop manual that I got on a DVD off one of the various ebay sellers of dubiously-sourced scans (who seems to have disappeared since!) I'll see what I can unearth for you!

Well, I'm still stuck in the slump. I think I need a holiday. Despite that, over the course of ... far too long, I have managed to: - Make a blanking plug for the unused port on the air-horn valve. - Plumb said valve in such a way that it didn't need the plug anyway. - Hunt down some M3 bolts & nuts, so I can bolt the valve to the bracket I have welded to the inside of the cab (for some reason, those welds look extra nasty, so I may have to revisit that.) Also: Thanks to everyone who got in touch offering to send me bolts! - Get a tin of white paint for the inside of the lockers. - Weld the cracked engine-hump rear panel back to the floor - Bolt the air-horn loosely to the roof - Start patching the roof - Run out of welding wire 😒 (more on the way) Grommet definitely needed. Current plan for the horn lever is to rustle up a nice cord or light chain to go from the lever to the upper dash panel. 😄 Also, reinforcing plates are gonna be added around the holes for the horn mounting points. ... https://furryhelix.co.uk/~tamber/pics/bedford/post/2024/VID_20240929_170705.mp4 ...what, you thought I'd get that far and not let you hear how it sounds? 😄 (Video, obviously, taken before I welded the bracket in.) Oh, yeah, and I managed to adjust the 4-way valve to where tank 2 is starting to build closer to where I'd like. Still some more adjusting to do, yet, and I've got to time it; but it's better.

The truck, as I got it, didn't have its oil-bath air cleaner. There was a very perished rubber elbow on top of the carb, with a short length of pipe (both of which may have been original!), and a fairly small cake-tin style air cleaner just hanging out not doing anything. You're right, though, I'll basically never have to change this filter. 😄 Even going with a removeable lid on the housing is a bit overkill! (A lot of what I'm doing is basically for its own sake, at this point, I must admit. Good for keeping the brainmeat occupied, though!) I'll have a rummage around at work in the morning, see what I can find in the drawers of miscellaneous bits, first; thanks for the offer, though!

Right, what have I done since then? Mostly nothing! Just in a bit of a slump, this past week, but I'm sure it'll pass. Extremely active boss is going on holiday Sunday, so hopefully work should chill out a bit. (Not that it's been particularly bad, but I've been on my feet a lot and oh boy am I feeling it.) ((...that reminds me, I need to book some time off, too, before I get to the end of the year with a bunch of unused holiday days.)) I've ordered some bits n pieces to make new tank-straps; that's all supposed to arrive on Monday. And last week, I started on the airbox. I've not touched it since last week, mind, but I started it. So, we start with an air-filter, and a filter housing lid. Roll a sheet of aluminium into a cylinder, weld it up the side, flange one end, flare the other so the lid sits nicely, and we're now left with the bulk of a housing! Then we discover that I screwed up a measurement somewhere. This is fixable, however. I just need to trim the flange off the bottom, slice and fold the sides so that they form a base. However, I screwed up again but hadn't realised it at this point. I should have accounted for the lip on the base of the air-filter, but didn't. Trim the overlaps and weld up the base, roll a hoop out of 3mm flat bar that's welded into the base such that the lip of the air filter seats around it snugly (both for alignment, and sealing purposes) And that leaves us with a filter housing where the lid doesn't sit down properly. Aaaaaand sulk a bit. (It's not the end of the world, I have enough material I can extend the housing upwards that little bit to fit the cap nicely. If I can do that without adding a third screw-up, I'll be grand.) Also, I have my 2.5" intake tubing, and I'm going to bellmouth a section that will protrude into the air-filter itself by a few inches; so that should work out quite nicely! Still not 100% certain about mounting location for the airbox, but I am thinking that I'll use some of the intake tubing as a snorkel to draw air in from as high up in the cheek of the cab as possible. So I followed that up by rolling around putting fittings together to connect up the fuel filter and pressure reg; which, of course, involved getting an armpit full of petrol once I cut the line. Lovely. 😒 Today's effort: - Made up some blanking plugs for the filter housing. (1/2UNF brake fittings welded shut.) - Bolted the fuel pressure reg up to the chassis properly - Drilled out the rivets that hold the tank-straps on, so now I'm ready for the material to turn up to make the replacements. - Took a nap under the truck, because I was shattered and my back hurt and a board laid on concrete was surprisingly comfortable after all the effort I spent wiggling my way under there to get to the aforementioned items. - Piddled about with the valve that I'm going to use for the air-horn. (#priorities) Mostly just extending the little actuator arm with a little bit of bar, and starting to make the bracket to attach it to the inside of the cab. Annoyingly, the valve mounts using 3 M3 bolts; so I've got to find something I can use for that... And an 1/8 BSP blanking plug, too, unless I want to try and find a fitting I can weld shut for that too. 😄 I keep looking at the roof and trying to will myself into cutting the metal for that. 's not that it's that particularly difficult a job, I'm just struggling to get my brain to engage with the task in the first place. (Story of my life...)

# The Following Day... Brought some more fuel, gave it another go. Got all the way to reaching the main system pressure (about 9 bar) and it blew-off as expected! Still haven't adjusted the protection valves yet, though. A little under 3 minutes to reach ~3 bar on the 'front' tank, but then waiting for it to reach ~7 bar before it starts filling the 'rear' tank leads to it being a good bit over 4 minutes before it reaches the same 3-ish bar threshold there too. I also managed to get around to modifying the bracket for the footbrake valve so now it's inline with the relay arm, and added some bracing; still needs an additional mounting tab to reach up to a bolt on the master cylinder for some support, because now it's flexing at where it's bolted to the back of the servo. In the process, I did manage to drill holes for -- and rivet on -- the brake light switch, only to find out that where I'd fitted it, it runs straight into the underside of the master cylinder when I reinstall the bracket. Hm. Some additional thinking needed there, then. Also appears I need to lengthen the pushrod from the relay arm to the footbrake valve, because it's just a bit too short to actuate it beyond just barely cracking the valve open. Not a big deal, though. It's all just adjustments and tweaks. # Cue another month... Despite getting walloped with what turned out to be a dose of COVID over the late summer bank holiday weekend, I did eventually manage to finish welding up the back of the inlet manifold. This was an exceedingly time-consuming process, made all the more frustrating by the pedal for my tig welder having apparently developed a dead-spot right at about the point I need for this thickness of aluminium. The three bump-ins are to provide clearance for fitting and piping the fuel injectors. The additional block is drilled for 3 1/4BSP vacuum ports. Should be enough! (The material I've made the manifold out of is 4 or 5 mm thick, but I wanted a little bit more for threaded bosses and the like, just to prevent me damaging things if I'm horribly clumsy and bump a fitting.) I still need to add another pad to take a 1/2BSP fitting for the idle air control valve. Some fettling of the welds, and trimming of bracketry, lets the throttle-body fit on there nicely. Following on from that, a mere 3 days later rather than a whole month, I work up the will to tackle the roof of the truck; starting with the lacey patch over the passenger door. Chip n peel, mostly... ...followed by slicing out the teabag section of the edge. With the bonus of managing to nick the wires running up to the roof beacon and interior light, which I shall now have to fix. Ah well. Not really feeling up to putting on my hoodie to start welding, in that surprisingly toasty day, I figured the next step would be instead to start stripping. (1 hour in...) (3 hours in) Peeling the paint with a razor-blade highlights that the roof skin is about as level and flat as something that's not very level or flat. A quick clean-up pass with a hammer and dolly makes a vast improvement, however! It's no bowling green, and still needs another pass with a bit more finess, but I'm still quite happy with the result. Thankfully, the bulk of the roof skin is in great condition, with only a few relatively small patches needed at the edge, and some minor pitted spots that need dealing with before they turn into holes. (Plus cleaning all the peeling paint from the inside, too. Which reminds me, I'd best get some drop-cloths before I get to that point...) # This weekend I have some more pieces of stock for things like the injector hold-downs, and material to make an air-filter housing; while I'm waiting for filter and housing lid to turn up, along with a few other bits n pieces like more fittings (...seriously, it's death by fittings!), I got to crack on with the hold-downs, with the expectation that I'd then move on to finishing up the manifold and maybe even doing a bit more on the roof! "Three of them!" You can definitely tell they're hand-made and definitely not perfect (getting that M18x1.5 tap started in there perfectly square was a pig of a thing, what with my drill selection not going high enough to include the appropriate tapping drill so I had to make do with careful use of a step bit from both sides...) but they're now a thing that exists. 😄 And they fit, like so: A little additional fettling was needed to provide clearance for the connectors, but it does appear that they'll work despite not everything being lined up perfectly. (Which is why I decided to go this route, with effectively individual injectors, rather than a single solid fuel rail; much more tolerant of my wobbly work!) Cue another hour and a half cutting all the injector bungs to length and fettling them in to the runner walls (Clearly obvious that I didn't get 100% penetration on the segments of the runners, particularly early on in the process. It'll either be fine, or it won't. (And if I have to make a 2nd version of the manifold, with the lessons learned from making this one, so be it.)) One of the injectors is going to be interesting to get the hardline to, due to not having as much clearance to the plenum, but I'm still confident I can make it. At close of play, that leaves us at this point! Didn't end up breaking the welder out, though. That whole process took quite some time -- far longer than expected -- and I decided I'd rather head home and put the kettle on, by the time I was done. I did, however, manage to wriggle my way in and free off the adjusters on the 4-way valve, so I know I can tweak them now, and balance the air system appropriately. (I strongly suspect that the Ford Cargo the valve was originally supplied for, has much smaller air-tanks, and thus reaches the appropriate opening points much sooner. If the Cargo uses the same size tanks as the Eurocargo that follows it, they're about half the size of the tanks I've fitted!)

Wow, that was quite a ways out. No wonder it was a bit funny on №3! Good to see/hear it's sorted and running more like it should!

Compressor outlet line running to the hard feed, and there's a matching one for the other end of the hard-line to the air drier. Stainless braided hose rated up to 20bar; that'll be more than sufficient! Next little jigsaw piece was the purge tank for the air dryer; used for what's termed "regeneration", it holds air that's then dumped back through the filter to the dryer unit's exhaust once the relief valve satisfies and the unloader is tripped, blowing accumulated moisture out of the exhaust. Gives a longer useful life for the dessicant cartridge. It's a little on the big side, a 10 litre tank from a Mercedes bus that was headed for scrap after a fire. But, waste not, want not! 😁 The really nice thing is, it fits into the bracket for the truck's original air-tank, which saves me a great deal of hassle mounting it! So that's a good-sized chunk of the air system stuff complete. (Will need to put a little protective sleeving on the plastic pipes where they pass right by the braided hose, just to remove any risk of rubbing/melting.) So, we all know what needs to happen now, don't we? https://furryhelix.co.uk/~tamber/pics/bedford/post/2024/960-VID_20240706_155150.mp4 ...Of course, my little temporary fuel can ran out of fuel just before I got to the point that the regulator hit the cut-out, so I didn't get to completely check how that works, but it all seems pretty promising so far! There's still a couple of little leaks here and there that I need to sort out, but this is a major moment for me. Both gauges reading pressure, warning light extinguished (and if the buzzer was hooked up, it would've stopped sounding too!) I still need to time how long it takes to build air up to an effective minimum level as per the inspection manual's assumed 3 bar/45 psi, which should "normally be within 3 minutes". Interestingly, I did notice that the "Rear" tank (for the trailer) didn't seem to start building pressure until the "Front" (truck) tank reached 7kg/cm² (6.8 bar), which really drags things out as far as reaching that minimum level on both tanks and turning the warning off, especially with the larger air tanks. Might have to adjust the 4-way valve elements to even it out a little. Still have a few things that need finishing up, like mounting the trailer park control, quick-release valve, and properly mounting both of the trailer gladhands. I did fit the yellow line glad-hand in place of the old one, just so the trailer brake line isn't just a giant air-leak, but the newer ones are shaped differently (since they have self-sealing valves) and I'll need to change the brackets to give a little more room to actually hook them up. And it'd be nice to get the fuel tank put back on its brackets, because it's extremely in the way at the moment, and I want to get back to welding the inlet manifold up. It'd be a real bonus if I did the rest of the fuel system stuff to be able to use the in-tank pump, too. (Regulator, filter, etc.) On a more annoying note, the gearbox has started leaking from the PTO flange cover again. Not sure why, because it's been fine for months, but there it is. 😒 Going to have to drain the gearbox down again, and apply a nice thick gasket with a good coating of sealant.

So, on the bank holiday monday, (immediately following on from previous post...) I did a little more measuring and confirmed that I should be able to get the manifold as-built to fit under the engine cover with a bit over an inch of clearance. Satisfied with this, I committed to more welding! And then I ran out of welding gas again. This is really getting on my tits... Thankfully, this Friday just gone, I had a hospital appointment so I booked a half-day off; and after I'd had my appointment, I went and had my bottle swapped out. Going back in time, though, I figured I might as well pick up where I left off in the nearside of the cab. So, chop the rot out of the seat-base, being careful not to hit the data-plate and whatnot, and start snotting in fresh metal. (It'll clean up with some grinder action, no worries) zap zap zap... Upright panel trimmed (slightly too short in one spot, of course.) and folded over to be welded in. Discovery of the day, that Zinc-182 primer smells like rotten milk when it's burnt by the heat of welding next to it. Yuk! Decided I'd had enough of that, and went to go refit the wiper mechanism. Still needed to re-tap the switch standoff to replace the screw that holds the cover on the wiper motor, but at this point it was still just disintegrating every time I used it. 😋 The good news is, with the spindle arm shortened as much as I have it, I do have the sweep I was after! The wiper shown here at its start position, and you can -- hopefully -- just about see the end of the sweep in the dust on the screen (About in-line with that funny yellow and green crate) Unfortunately, it sweeps out to its end position, and then it all starts going wrong. There's enough drag -- and the lack of leverage afforded by the shorter linkage arm -- that the wiper blade can't fully return to its start position, because the long linkage rod just buckles and effectively becomes shorter. It might not be a problem with water on the screen, because that might reduce the friction enough to work out fine. If not, then I guess I've got to make a slightly more rigid linkage rod. While I was pondering on that, I went and repurposed a hole in the dash for a fan switch. Nothing for it to connect to, yet, but I'm tumbling ideas around for a compact heater box in the dash for windscreen demisting purposes. Y'know, all the mod cons! (Shouldn't need a heater for the occupants of the cab, from what I've been told of how much heat comes up from the engine hump anyway. 😁) -- Fast forward to yesterday (...wait, does that make sense? When will then be now? SOON!) and I drove the truck outside so I could pull the fuel tank off. (Not pictured: the obligatory beverage.) Go round in circles for a bit, and voilà: I didn't quite get to place the fuel pump hole where I'd originally planned, due to conflicting with the fuel tank straps. It's sat further out than I would've liked, but I didn't want to end up running into the level sender and causing myself even more headache. (Please note, in the background, the patent-pending explosive atmosphere detection kit: a burning wad of paper on the end of a welding rod.) On the level sender note, I went and dug out the universal ("One size fits F**k-all") GM tank sender that I bought quite a few years back now, and set that up with the same angle of dangle as the original. May end up tweaking that float arm a little more, in the future, but for now it's good. Inside of the tank is also in lovely condition due to being galvanised; there's some sediment on the bottom -- plus all the swarf from drilling, now -- so I'll wash & hoover that out as best I can. And then comes the weldinating! I should've cut that bung out, I really should; it turned out to be soldered in, and that made a real mess while I was welding so close to it. Still, it's all welded in and solid. Once it's cleaned and painted, it'll be golden. Well, black, but you get what I mean. Weld up the bolt-holes for the original sender, so I can drill the flange for the new pattern. Quick spritz of zinc primer, just to stop the lot of it going crusty before I get around to cleaning and painting. Mostly just a wash off, and a quick buff over with some sandpaper to key it. (Which I was going to do today, but took it as a rest day instead.) And, of course, a little jewelry: polished up the filler cap. I'll need to make up a gasket for the sender, and a new seal for the filler cap, but I'm not expecting either of those to be a particularly difficult task. (Must also get some rubber to put behind the tank-straps, too.)

A bit more shiny hot-rod stuff, for the time bean. 😋 (It's a bit too shiny for my liking, but I'm sure I can tone it down once I'm finished welding it all together.) The completed fuel pump mounting ... thing. I didn't get the alignment of my hold-down studs absolutely perfect, so I did end up having to open out the slots slightly in order to get the top ring to fit in any position. Might've tickled them out a touch further than intended, but it's nothing that some washers won't fix. I've ordered the big hole-saw for the top of the tank, too. Soon™ Today's progress was mostly making the injector hold-down bosses for the other two runners, and getting them welded in place. Took a little time to get back in the swing of welding aluminimu, but eventually we get to this point: (I have just noticed I forgot to round the corners off the hold-downs on the centre runner, whoops.) A little die-grinder and file action to round the welds off on the inside of the manifold -- doing my best to make a nice-ish radius -- and we start to look a little more like: Well, that's looking snazzy, but what sort of overall shape is it going to take? That should be easy enough to set up, if I space the back of the plenum up with a block of wood to get it about the right height, and find the flange with the throttle-body on it. And I think that's looking perfectly acceptable. All tacked together. And with the manifold air temp sensor fitted over the cylinder 5 & 6 runner... Now I'm a little bit annoyed that I stuck the original manifold back on the other week, because I really want to test-fit this before I commit to fully welding it! Didn't realise I was going to be struck by sudden movement on this front, or I might've left it off. 😁 Maybe I'll just leave it half-done until I've collected more of the fuel-injection bits; or maybe I'll just measure measure measure until I feel happy about it, and just weld it up~ Also, I dug out the little bits of square stock and laid them on top to see how that looks; I like it, so I'll order up some more of it along with a few other bits I need, like the plate for the injector clamps, and whatnot.

You're not far wrong! (Additionally, if it helps, I have a scan of TS1085 uploaded here: https://archive.org/details/ts-1085-transmission-and-rear-axle )

Compressor belts replaced. Thankfully, the B series belts are still easy to get and quite inexpensive! Does remind me that I need to sort out a different pulley for the alternator at some point. And more paint! While I had the brush out, I gave the front wing another coat, too. In more modernising works, I needed to find a place to mount air manifolds for the two brake circuits. Thankfully, there was a convenient pair of bolt-holes in the chassis right about where I needed them to be! Nylon air pipe may not be pretty, or very classic looking, but you have to admit it's effective! (A couple of years back, I had to salvage a load-sensing valve from a scrap truck that had been stacked in the corner for two or three years, having parts cannibalised from it. I was incredibly startled to find -- the hard way -- that the air tanks still held a considerable amount of pressure even after that time.) There's an extra, currently open, port on the top block for taking air to run things like the factory fitted winch dog clutch, and whatnot; much like how the truck was set up to begin with. May! One annihilated cordless drill later, I've put three 48mm holes in my weld fixture. With some fettling, it fits the original manifold just about perfectly. More fiddling around with the new manifold bits ensues. 😁 I also somehow managed to get around to finishing the repair of the ... cheek panel, I guess I'll call it? Then followed that up with a round of paint-stripping. Everything highlighted in magenta in the following pic was one giant patch of filler! ...which was incredibly funny, because the only part I could find anything wrong was right at the bottom of it, right in front of the radiator mount. Shame I didn't find this dent before I went and refitted everything, because I reckon I could've taken it out with a hammer and dolly while I had the rad brackets out of the way. I gave it a very slight skim of filler -- a far cry from the 3/16 of an inch there was before! -- and went in with the zinc primer. A week later, taking advantage of the lovely weather -- and not wanting to do anything too think-y after the previous day's driver cpc with the world's blurriest projector -- I did some more painting! And then a bit more, and then a bit more... And as the sun disappeared behind looming clouds, I went and bolted the front wing on. It's good for morale, y'see... Plus, I can get to find things like missing bolt-holes and other stuff I need to deal with before I completely paint the underside of those panels. Also loosely bolted on some other bits n pieces, like the braces that go from the footwells to the front wings; which revealed another bolt-hole I was missing in the passenger footwell panel. 😁 The intake manifold was also refitted again, so I can run the truck if needs be; which might be helpful for testing things like the compressor, or scooting the truck out to start work on the driver's side floor... which I spent several minutes staring up at. (Laying on the floor for a bit is good for getting everything realigned, gets you in touch with the world again; but getting back up afterwards is a bugger...) I'm glad it's not as bad as the passenger side, but there's still a good few hours work in it yet. Pulled the passenger mirror arm off so I could straighten it, and prep the bottom of it to receive a new threaded section. Thankfully, it wasn't too badly out of shape, and was easily sorted. The driver's side, however... it's a shame I didn't take a picture of it before I started fixing it, because looking at it one could almost swear it was upside down, it was that badly bent out of shape. However, with the careful addition of heat -- only burning myself twice by grabbing bits I'd just heated -- and precision violence, I got it to almost match the nearside mirror arm. Not perfect, but a damn sight better! I did the obligatory sit-in and daydream about reaching the finishing point with this project. Definitely plenty to do before I get there, though. Messing about with the mirror arm reminded me of how much I've got to rework that driver's door; but I'm confident I can do a better job this time, so it's not too much trouble. Other minor things included spiral-wrapping and running the plastic fuel line up to the engine bay, which was an easy enough job. I've also dug up a filter housing and spin-on filter that I'm planning on using; just got to find a good place to mount it, and get some more fittings! Yay! Obviously, going to fuel injection requires a different pump set-up; and I'm going the route of using an in-tank pump unit from a Mk4 Fiesta. Somewhat modified, of course, because the tank is a totally different depth. But it's only metal, so hey! That pump unit requires a mounting ring in the top of the tank, and ... again, it's only metal! So we break out the computer-aided back-of-the-envelope drawings... I haven't got a CNC plasma, or whatnot, so we'll have to do this the hard way... (Also, I'm broke, so I want to try and avoid using more material than I have to. 😁) An hour with the angry-grinder results in a series of segments, which are welded together (and shaped) until the pump unit drops into it. (I'm not going to mention the saga wherein I massively mismeasured the ID of the ring and then needed to build it back up with weld; oh no, I'll not mention it at all, and no-one will ever know.) Then layer two is welded on top of layer 1, and -- shown here before the tidy-up work with the die-grinder to clean up the welds on the inside -- provides the space for the pump unit to sit within Layer three is the same as layer one, but will be bolted down to clamp the pump into the flange snugly to provide the seal. Lovely! Current rough plan is to install this towards the back of the tank, so that it doesn't interfere with the factory level sender. We'll see. I'm not good at sticking to plans!

Alrighty! Time for another batch update. 😁 April! More paint! Opacity slowly building up; it definitely takes a good few coats to get there, brushing this stuff. Managed to get one of my mounting tabs welded onto the air feed pipe, and promptly ran out of the last of the argon. (As predicted...) Thankfully, I could get Andi to grab me another bottle (Which turned into a minor mission in and of itself; Nuts didn't have any, so they had to head over to a Hobbyweld distributor in Darwen.) In the meantime, I decided that the time had finally come to suck it up and buy a fancier TIG welder, one that could do aluminium. Whyfor, you may ask? Well, I'm not so good with gas welding the stuff, and since I want to fuel inject the 300 I need a manifold that has holes in it for injectors, and whatnot! (Plus, I just miss being able to weld aluminium...) Surviving on nothing but the finest cheapest instant noodles for a couple of weeks until my bank balance recovered from that was absolutely worth it, though. 😁 I know, I know, not the usual subject for this forum, but I think it's worth a go anyway! Anyhow, in order to lay that out properly and figure out how much room I've not got, that means the engine cover has to go back on. (Not for the final time, though. I do need to make some slight changes to the hinges so they pick up both mounting holes on each side.) In the process of doing that, however, I've discovered a broken spot-weld that's supposed to be holding down the rear panel of the engine-hump, and which has allowed everything to slump backwards to the extend that the cover no longer latches properly; so I'll have to do something about that before too long. No big deal, but it will mean a *little* more damage to the paint I thought I was done with. Still nice to fill up some of the gaping hole in the cab, mind. Makes it feel a bit more finished, just for a moment. At some point in the week after that, I had to find myself a piece of heavy plate I can use to make a jig for manifold welding, try prevent it turning into a pretzel that won't seal. (And if I use my brain, I can make it match all the ports and bolt-holes on the head... Not that I foresee there being a great demand for manifolds for a Bedford 300, mind! 😁 But it would help with perhaps sorting out that slightly wonky front manifold that pulls up a bit funny and tends to blow the gasket out if I don't tighten the bolts in the right order...) A big plate like... so? A 33" long piece of 100x16mm should do nicely. Spend an hour and a half measuring, marking, re-measuring, re-marking, re-re-measuring, head-scratching, drinking coffee and thinking real hard, then measuring again just to make sure. It's recommended you do some swearing when you find out that the 3 pairs of studs that clamp down the inlet manifold all have different spacings. Thankfully, their exact spacing isn't critical, as long as they don't interfere with the flanges on the manifolds. But this does explain why I had a bigger gap than expected between two manifold flanges; I thought I'd just screwed something up with the welding somewhere, but the bolt-holes lined up! Speaking of bolt-holes, that plate needs some! ...it also needs 3 48mm holes drilling in it, which was as about as unpleasant as expected. But until I could get to that point, why not stick one of those little proto manifold runners on the engine just for giggles? This also demonstrates that the engine is settling into its home quite nicely, plenty of grot helping tone down that fresh paint. You can also see that the exhaust for #3 is blowing, and has destroyed its gasket; something warped during welding, and if I don't tighten them down in the correct sequence it won't seal. I'm hoping to fix that, hence adding the exhaust mounting holes to the fixture plate. In case you were interested, there's about 2-3/4 inches between the top of that proto-runner and the bottom of the engine cover at the rear. I'll make it work somehow I know that's a bit hot-rod for this forum, so don't worry, the next update post will start off with something a little closer to factory. 😋 (I could be persuaded, however, to make replacements for stock manifolds if someone needed them, though; since I've gone and made the fixture, and all...)