Tamber

I've managed to get the brake cylinder and the bisector off that corner; once I managed to get the mounting nuts -- and the little stop pin -- loose, it came apart with surprising ease. I'll probably order some new nuts for the mounting studs, since the originals are a little corroded and rounded; it was bad enough that I had to hammer the 1/2" spanner down on them very firmly in order to get it to bite. I'd like to do the same with the stop pin, because that was more of the same but worse; I hammered an 8mm socket down onto that which got me enough bite to break it free, then it screwed out without a fuss. After the stop pin was free, and stored in a safe place (to never be seen again ), I did the needful pushing and twisting to unscrew the internal spherical nut that holds the pull-rod into the cylinder. It unscrewed so easily that I honestly thought I'd broken something, until it all sprung apart in a stereotypically comical fashion. Bisector. To be carefully dismantled, inspected, detected, defected... *ahem* cleaned, freed up, lubricated, and reassembled. Brake cylinder and handbrake pull-rod. To be carefully dismantled, cleaned up, cried over, etc. This is where I am expecting problems; mostly corrosion of the cylinder bore, etc. I do find it a little neat that you can still see the red rubber grease. At least I can put the hub back on, now, though; and make the truck mobile again, so I can drive it over to the workshop and get a little welding done. (Space indoors permitting.) I'd like to get the cab structurally sound again, since the fairies didn't fix it over Christmas like I was hoping...

All ready to make some progress, today! Dug up my axle seals, hoiked the wheels off, stared at the mucky hub... *shudder* *scrape, scrape* *scrape, wire-brush* Looking much better! Hoik the hub off, haul it inside, and prep to fit the new axle seal. Then, because it was clearly going too well, it turns out the seals are the wrong size for the axle. They fit lovely in the hub, though. It's a bit hard to see, but there's a fair sized gap between the seal and the surface the seal should run on. The internal diameter of that seal is 100mm, and the diameter of the surface on the axle is 94 mm or so. Guess I'm going to be heading out to a bearings & seals place tomorrow to track down something more appropriate. (Off the top of my head, the seals I have are 100-113.8-14. I remember the ".8" bit, because it stood out as a little unusual; but the rest of that middle dimension is a bit of a blur. Annoyingly, I don't have a picture with the full dimensions in view, so I'll have to go snag it from my workbench.) EDIT: Correction, they were 100-130.18-14. I've since got some others to the measurements I'd taken of the axle that should be significantly closer than that. With the wind taken out of my sails, I just settled on cleaning & painting the hub. Did my best degreasing it, but there's still some oil absorbed into the metal, I think. Needle gun did a lovely job of chipping the paint off, and was a lot quicker than trying to sand it off where the wire wheel couldn't reach. You may also notice that I cleaned out the drain-holes, which were mostly blocked with grunge; since I knew to be looking out for them this time First coat of red primer; which is when I start seeing the spots where the white spirit didn't get rid of all the soaked in oil. It did mostly take, though. Now, belatedly, back to a week or two ago, ish... I did a rough check of the static timing by barring the engine over to the embedded timing mark, and looking to see what the points were doing. The timing is definitely a good way from the stock late-1950s timing, for sure; more advanced than the 5° in the manual. A little poking and prodding around online leads me to believe that it's advanced further than stock spec in order to counter the slower burning of modern unleaded fuel, relative to the fuel available when the manual was written, so as not to damage exhaust valves or cause overheating. More updates on that subject to come. Oh, and I now have a deadline, it seems. Apparently, work only have two years left on the lease for the workshop, and then the bulldozers start moving in. :shocked: Better get myself in gear, then!

Hmm, okay; I must do better next time, then. I suspect I'll struggle to fit a dial gauge in through the spark-plug hole, though. (Lever type protruding in to touch top of piston?) Yeah, I probably am over-thinking it. I do have a tendency to assume the worst a lot. :embarrassed: I'll have to measure that condenser at some point, but I believe it's only a millimetre or two too big. I'll make a note to check the clearances; maybe I could take a little out of the P-clip and get it to clear. (If not, then I guess it'll live outside the distributor for now; as long as it's not dangling around freely, it should be okay now that it has a good, firm connection to ground.) "Most carburettor problems are actually ignition problems." is the advice I heard. I suspect it doesn't matter how perfect your ignition is, if the float bowl is empty, though... On that note, I undid the fuel hose to the carb and made sure it wasn't kinked or pinched, and checked that I am getting fuel flow (Fuel is flowing, but not as much as it should be. Will look into this next chance I get; may be that the pick-up tube is only just reaching the fuel in the bottom of the tank. It'll probably be Thursday before I get to stop still long enough to tinker with it, as usual. :nut: I'll start by putting fuel in the tank, and work my way up from there; if it's still playing ball, then I'll have another go at checking the timing.

I'm not sure I believe it either, to be honest! A thought had crossed my mind, actually... the timing pointer on the underside of the engine, was it offset to one side slightly -- i.e. not exactly 180° to the timing window at the top? Could it be an older engine, refurbished, and with the flywheel turned 180° to make the timing mark line up with the window in the clutch housing; or am I dreaming up nonsense? I determined TDC by the "see when the piston stops moving"; normally I'd do this with a piece of wire through the spark-plug hole, but since I was laying underneath the truck, turning the engine over by the flywheel, I used my little inspection camera through the spark-plug hole and watched for the piston stopping... splitting the difference between rising and descending. That'd be another good way to double-check it, definitely. In my case, I'd have to bump it round with the starter, since my arms aren't long enough to reach the plug-hole while I'm laying under the engine. (Or, alternatively, get some help. These "mate" things sound remarkably handy to have around! ) To narrow it down, I tried just fitting the clamp alone; and that was getting smacked about by the points cam. I don't think I have the condenser that was on the truck when I got it, any more, but off the top of my head it had a smaller diameter. At this point, you could probably tell me it's running backwards and it wouldn't surprise me all that much. :rotfl: I'm going to check that I don't have a fuel related malady somewhere; it'll probably turn out that all my trouble since I sorted the leaking gasket, is down to me kinking or pinching the fuel hose to the carb, or something. :n00b: I swear, it did run last night...

Rasm-frasm. Clearly, I jinxed myself. Doesn't want to start, now, and when it does start; it only runs with throttle at least halfway open, or it just ... slows... and... sputters... .... to a halt. Oh, and if I keep the throttle held open so it runs, eventually it scares the bejeezus out of me with an almighty bang from the tailpipe, and then usually stops anyway. :mad: I will get to the bottom of this. Eventually. (Deep breaths. Caaaaalm.) EDIT: It'll probably turn out I've kinked a fuel hose, or something; so it'll get enough fuel through to start occasionally, but not enough to run. We'll see.

Well, she runs again! Took it to TDC on No. 1, and marked the flywheel against the notch in the viewing window. It looks like #1TDC is about 10~15 degrees* after the U.C. marking on the flywheel. * (Total wild-ass guess. not measured it to find out. It's definitely after, though.) Distributor cap was off while I was doing this, to check that I was definitely coming up on the compression stroke for #1. (Didn't want to take the rocker-cover off and have to re-seal it.) Well, TDC found and marked, next step was cleaning and re-lubricating the dizzy; after-all, I had the cover off already. Lots of scraping and picking flakes of trash out of it, and plenty of WD40 later, it was clean; I fitted and gapped the new points... and gave it a try with only the coil lead hooked up. Nice enough spark from the coil, but ...SPARKS AT THE POINTS?! Apparently my condenser wasn't making good enough contact, so I checked the old points and sure enough, great big blast marks on them. :shocked: Wonder if that might be partly responsible for it not running very well? :-D Old Points Now, both the modern replacement condensers I got for this -- one that I got a while back, and one that I got along with the new points -- were physically larger than the one that originally came out; so they won't go back in without fouling the points cam. The way I got around this is... well, it's a bit rough. :embarrassed: I filed a slot in the bottom edge of the dizzy cap to provide clearance for a wire, connected the condenser up and then wedged it between the body of the dizzy and the block to get a ground. Obviously this made good contact at the time, but slowly oxidised until it couldn't make a circuit any more, taking the condenser out of the equation... which results in destroyed points fairly quickly. :-X Well, I've gone one step better, this time; I connected a wire between the body of the condenser and the screw that the condenser would originally have been retained by. This way, it'll make much better contact for longer. The old points, er... kinda cleaned up, but the blast marks were deep, so I had to take a lot off to get them to clean up. Don't think I'll keep hold of them for anything. Hopefully the improved condenser connection should keep the new points alive for longer. Anyway, back to my progress today… Once I found I had a nice spark from the coil, and no sparking at the points, I refitted the cap, plugs, and leads; put the fuse for the fuel-pump back in, went and got my little hand transfer pump for putting some more fuel from the jerry-can into the truck's tank... Only to find out the pump was no more. Apparently the internals had become discombobulated; and it was no good at transferring anything. :mad: Shame, because it was so useful up until that point. Tried siphoning fuel out of the can into the tank, and achieved nothing more than splashing petrol over myself. Had to resort to pulling the hose from the tank to drop it into the can, which worked for just long enough to get sufficient fuel into the carb that I could start the truck and run it for a bit. I still haven't checked the timing, since I need to finish marking up the flywheel, and it was pitch black by the time I finished at about 6pm. I started work on the truck today at quarter to four. (Would've started earlier, but I got suddenly lumped with waiting for an ISP tech to turn up...) An hour later, I'd lost enough light that I was having to work by torchlight. Finally finished up with a running truck, with near enough my whole body numb from cold and being piled up in the driver's footwell to work on the dizzy. :shake:

Definitely an option to consider! (I must admit, I am half-considering the heretical option of fitting a diesel, once it's on the road. :blush: We shall see. If I do, it will be a sympathetic swap, so I could put the 300 petrol back in if desired.) For now, though, I'm building up the little transistor ignition thing; for the sake of a few pounds' worth of parts, and some time, it's at least worth trying. Hm. That could make things a little bit awkward! Definitely learning as I go, here. Also, the vacuum advance is disconnected for now (and the vacuum port blocked with a gauge. I didn't have a 1/4BSP plug to hand. ); but I don't think it worked when it was previously, since the old hard-line for the advance was fairly manky and kinked... which is why I've got some new braided rubber hose to replace it with.

Well, at the moment, there isn't really a filler cap. I have a leftover damaged one from a Scania trimmed down and crammed in as a bung to stop rain blowing in. Putting a locking cap on it at least ups the difficulty from "yank the bung out of the filler neck and stick a hose in" to "actually has to remember to bring a spanner". On a related note, it makes me boggle is when work builds an appendage onto the side of a tipper body that covers the filler-cap, to prevent it from being accessed while the body is fully lowered; but, again, there's a drain plug on the bottom of the tank... Ah well, as long as it makes it look more secure than the next truck along, I guess. D'oh, I should've realised the 1 and 6 thing; makes a lot more sense, now. :-D Will try harder next time! Going off the cap clips, I've got a Delco dizzy; so that's helpful, at least I know why none of the Lucas replacement points looked quite right! New points ordered, now I know which ones I need. Unfortunately, I don't have a dwell-meter; so I think I'll be sticking to gapping the points for the time being. (I'm putting together a little transistor ignition box for when it's up to running nicely, which should help reduce the point erosion.) Still, onwards and upwards from here, hopefully! Thank-you for the info!

h'okay, that tallies up with what I expected from the service manuals, etc. (When I first saw the U.C. mark, I was very confused; then I went looking in the manual for the timing, saw "before U.C." and was enlightened.) Timed to 6 would be a little strange, to me, though I guess it would make sense in that you'd need a shorter timing light cable... That's reassuring to hear; though I think I'll still pull the dizzy and check... while I have it out, I might be able to clean it up and find out which one I've actually got. And, yeah, for now, lots of idling and low gear. It just surprised me, because I put 10+ litres in not so long ago, and hadn't thought I'd run it long enough to burn through that...

Very very minor update; since the carb rebuild, I've been fighting a few vacuum leaks, which I think I've mostly nailed down now. Though, with typical good timing, I appear to have run out of fuel; thankfully whilst parked up, but it's annoying when it happens part-way through trying to make sure you've strangled all the vacuum leaks, check timing, etc. The suspicious part of me suspects someone's siphoning fuel out of the tank. This remains to be seen, however. Probably going to bump a better filler-cap further up the priority list, just to make myself feel better. (And then it'll turn out that nobody's siphoning it, I'm just burning through it that quickly... I don't think I am, though; at the rate it seems to be 'evaporating', I'd have to be pumping liquid fuel out of the tailpipe...) Anyway! Onto the current minor headache, timing. Following a bit of advice that "most carburettor problems are actually ignition problems", I thought I'd check where the timing actually was. I located the markers on the flywheel, cleaned them up and added a few dabs' worth of white paint marker just to make them even more visible. (And I know the clutch is worn out! Something else that needs changing...) Except, because it's never that easy, it's not showing up in the timing aperture on the clutch housing; nor is it showing up on the underside, which was only slightly frustrating considering the amount of faffing I had to do to get my timing light under the truck and pointed in roughly the right direction. (I extended the battery leads for it, but apparently the manufacturer clearly neglected the heavier Bedford segment of the market by not putting on enough lead on the pickup to be able to reach the underside of the flywheel from the No. 1 plug lead. For shame! ) So I may, or may not, have timing that is very far from what it should be; clearly, I need to do a little debugging. Plan of attack, so far is as follows: Check TDC No.1 cylinder by hand. Make sure it lines up with the mark it is supposed to. (The U.C. one, I believe.) If not, then I'll worry just a little bit, then re-mark the flywheel to give me a TDC mark I can rely on. Clean, inspect, and lubricate the distributor, points, etc. I'll probably remove the distributor to check it; that way I can check it a bit more thoroughly. I've seen mention about the distributor housing becoming worn and causing strangeness. I believe the phrase used was "Magical mystery points gap". It'd be just my luck... :rotfl: Check that the points are opening at the correct point in time. This should be the steel ball, if the U.C. mark is correct, which would give about 5°BTDC. Reconnect the vacuum advance. I have some nice 3/16 vacuum line, but as is typical, it's probably too short. We'll see. I can always buy more... In other, very very belated news; my axle seals turned up before Christmas. They look very nice; and are modern lip seals, as opposed to the leather seals that are currently in the axles. Hopefully the surface the seal rides on is smooth enough not to chew the new seals to bits, when I fit them; but I didn't detect any nastiness when I pulled it apart, so I should be okay. (Paging the dread Murphy, Murphy to the RL...) And as the days start to get longer, I'm looking forward to carrying on grinding my way through the long list of stuff I have to do. ("And there was much rejoicing...") I know I've not being doing much updating recently; when the days are so short and cold, and the wind seems to be so determined to take strips out of ye, it's hard to gather the enthusiasm. :cry: But, I suppose that's what makes it a hobby, not a job...

There's near enough nothing left of the original wiring in there, by this point; I think the majority of it is just stubs left connected to things so I can see where I need to connect new wires to. I showed no mercy to what was left of the original loom; which had suffered from "commercial-vehicle"-itis, as well as having the majority of the insulation crumble to nothing over the years. So, instead, it's all gone; and I'm wiring it up using modern wire, relays, banks of fuses, and -- where I'm going to need them -- modern weather-proof connectors. Once all the wires are run the way I want them to go, I'm going to loom them up so they won't be as visible as they are at present; and they'll be better protected. As an aside, I would like to note that -- if one is so inclined -- it is easy to get braided cable (braid & lacquer over modern PVC insulation) in all the colours one should need in order to build a new loom that is a faithful reproduction of the original. Which is great, but it's not the route I wanted to go on this truck.

Nothing major today. One sidelight! The wires for the other side, and the tail lights, are all connected up at the fusebox end. Tail light wires are coiled up behind the cab, waiting on me to clean & paint the chassis as well as actually fit some rear lights. O/S sidelight wire is coiled up and is waiting for me to pull it around and connect it to the other sidelight. Doesn't look so bad with the headlights on, eh? Once I've run all the wires, I think I'm going to add an extra plug/socket to disconnect the loom where it exits the cab; so the cab could be pulled off without having to cut the loom. (No, there's not much of a plan as such; it just evolves as it goes... )

Must've been a heavy can of primer! :wow: The metalwork certainly looks good!

Ah-ha! Now I know what I'm looking for, I'll make a note to ensure they're clear next time I have that off.

Taking both sides in is already in the plan; I don't expect the linings on the other side to be up to much either, even if they aren't just as contaminated (which is a long shot). Actually, my current plan is to pull all four corners and take them all in, in one go. That way, they should all be about the same afterwards. Whether or not this avoids the aforementioned issues, we shall see. And I should have plenty of time to bed them in, I hope...

Hmm. I'll have to see if I can find and unblock those drain holes, then. There was certainly plenty of oil trapped in there. The double-ended castellated socket? I've got a short length of thick-wall tube that I've marked out for turning into one of those for the next time; I had planned to make that up today, but I'd gotten so into the swing of things that I marked it out and left it while I ploughed on through everything else. It doesn't half! Squishy bits vs. metal is a battle that fingers tend to lose... :cry:

h'okay! I managed to work up the will to do something today, seeing as it was a glorious, sunny day. It starts with undoing the half-shaft retaining nuts; some of which took the studs out with them. Some of which let out axle oil. Then pop the half-shaft flange off the hub by means of setting the handle of a breaker bar in the notches; and tapping the head with a hammer to break it loose. And out she comes! 1/2" drive ratchet for scale. Such a delicate little shaft this is... Locking nut next. Signs that someone else has been in here before me who also didn't have the right socket... Came out nice and easily. Flat-faced punch used, this time around; rather than the chisel of the previous attempt. ...which exposes the bearing retaining nut. Punch and some careful -- but firm -- taps motivates that out. Mmmm, shiny. At this point, the hub was ready to come off. I braced myself to pull really hard, took a firm grip... And about fell over, nearly dropping the hub on my foot, as it slid off with a nice easy schlorp... ...and a great big splatter of oil. The bearings look, and feel, in great condition; but the seal has clearly had it, and that's what's contaminated the brakes. New seals are on order (from LMS Lichfield, who have them at £12/pair.) There's lots of this on this truck. Anyway, onwards! A few bolts, and some finagling, and the brake shoes were off... I'll be taking the drums along when I go to have the shoes relined; then they can be measured and it can be figured out if any work needs to be done on the drums. (The surface of that drum feels great (the minor flash-rust aside); but I don't have the tools needed to check diameter, runout, and so forth. I'm not expecting to have much trouble there, though.) I made an attempt to undo the nuts that hold the expander and brake cylinder together on the rear; but they refused to move, and I was worried about losing light before I had everything back together. (It was about half two at this point...) So I left those soaking in oil, and started reassembling everything else. The half-shaft was easily fifteen minutes of wiggling and cursing, trying to get the splines to line up and slide back in. Started putting the wheels back on at a little after three; which took a little over half an hour's faffing and farting about, including the use of a fork-lift. Those wheels are heavy; and getting them lined up onto the wheel studs is a pain. But, by *mumble* past four, it was back on the ground. Which is good, because it was very quickly starting to darken. Drum and shoes stashed in a storage locker, tools away, washed up; then home-time. The other side is next; whenever I manage to drum (badum-tish) up the enthusiasm to tackle that. (It'll probably be a while; I'll need to turn the truck around first, to make sure I can get the forklift in to put the wheels back on afterwards, or I'll be stuffed. :rotfl: ) Today has been a productive day!

Yup, I'll have to hunt down the source of that sludge, if it's not coming from the hub seal, before putting new friction material in there. And since the hub has to come off anyway, I might as well change that seal. The torque-multiplier makes fairly light work of taking the wheel-nuts off, but it's still a whole load of effort I don't really want to have to repeat more than I have to. Expanders and brake cylinders definitely coming out for inspection/cleaning when I get the hub off; I'm hoping to be lucky and find out that the cylinders just need new seals, but I don't expect to be that lucky. Also, for some reason, the drum on the side I attacked this time came off really easy; it almost felt like it'd been off relatively recently. Two out of the three drum-retaining screws just unscrewed like they were still fresh, and the other wasn't even there. Then the drum tapped off easily enough, too; just had to alternate sides... Maybe the other drum comes off just as easily once I remove the cone washers... Well, I can hope, can't I?

Well, you may resume laughing at me. The hub does have to come off to sort the brakes out... :-D The drum came off nice and easily with a little careful persuasion, after removing the cone washers. So, without further ado, here's today's progress, along with the thoughts I was experiencing at the time. Just after pulling the cone washers. "Oh, this looks promising." The drum retaining screws came out as if they were still brand new; which was a little strange... Cue the tap tap tapping; and "This is going well!" "Oh, wow, I might just about be able to do this!" "Ahaha, this is going great!" "...Oh. That's why the manual says... right. Hm. In hindsight, this is blindingly obvious." :red: On the bright side, it did mean I got to check the condition of that drum -- this is on the corner that was dragging somewhat -- and the shoes. The drum appears to be in good condition; no grooves (other than one or two that can just about be felt with the thumbnail test), etc. Though I've not measured diameter, runout, and suchforth. The shoes, on the other hand, have seen better days. There's lots of grease, gunge, and gunk built up everywhere in there; and the friction material is contaminated, I'd say. However, they should be able to be re-lined. Will look into that once I've got the shoes off all four corners. In the meantime, I've wound the brake adjuster right in to stop the shoes from dragging on the drum; run a tap through the wheel nuts just to clean the rust and grunge out, slapped the drum back on, and wound the nuts on just a little bit... Next attempt at getting the brakes dismangled will probably be next week. Inching my way forwards, bit by bit... Looking forward to a finish date of 2025 or so!

Master cylinder has arrived. Looks -- and feels -- absolutely marvellous! This is take two of the replacement master cylinder; the first time I went and collected it, two weeks ago, it turned out to have rusted up and seized solid internally while it was on the shelf. HTS returned it to their supplier -- who had apparently gotten it from someone else -- who have made it good; they were just as surprised as to the discovery of the corrosion as HTS were, since it looked immaculate externally. (I, thanks to Sean's warning, was not so terribly surprised; this is why I partially stripped it to check it after I got it. See, I do listen occasionally! ) I've had the end-cap off, and given the piston a good few experimental shoves; it moves as expected, and signs are reassuring. (It's making all the right noises, shoving air in/out of the right places.) I also know that it does bolt up to the truck in the exact same place as the old one; having tried it before running it back to HTS the other week. They actually had it ready to go on Friday, but I had just started my work week; so was unable to pick it up on the Saturday. Now, I feel like I've taken an important step forwards to having working brakes; even though there's still a long journey ahead. I've read, and re-read, the section of the WSM regarding the brake drums a good few times; and I'm still 50/50 on whether or not I can actually take the drum off without pulling the bearings. The diagram makes it look like the drum is bolted on the back; but the text of the manual reads like the drum is pushed on over the wheel-studs, and retained by the three screws. (And the conical washers for the wheels.) I've got some material to make a socket to remove the bearing retaining nut, if I have to; but I'm going to try removing all the cone washers and seeing if I can just slip the drum off. The bearings may well have to come out later on, but right now, I'm hoping to get away with not removing the hub. We shall see... EDIT: Well, I didn't get to find out; decided to beef up my axle stand, in order to prevent possible squishage... and that took long enough that I'd lost all the light. There's always tomorrow...

Well, I figured out what went crunch; my elbow has been utter agony for the past week and a bit. Yesterday, I was swinging my way up and down a stepladder -- 24" adjustable in hand -- to get to some hydraulics with only one good arm; it's good exercise, I hear. (Someone else finally exorcised that HIAB today; because I couldn't find all the gremlins. Apparently it didn't get the memo that Halloween was over... :shake: Funny when it tries to knock its own valve-block off, of its own accord, when you put the truck in PTO, though.) Anyway, the weekend is here, and I had my rebuild kit (ZSK33) for the carb: mostly gaskets and springs, and a few adjusting screws; so I settled in for a couple of hours at work cleaning, scraping, prodding, poking and twisting. Completely forgot to keep taking pictures throughout the process, but there's only so interesting you can make "wire-brush like hell", "scrape at little bits of crud", "undo stuff", and "have springy thing launch itself across the workshop" in photographs; it really needs HD video for the full tedium quotient. But I didn't have my video headcam, so you're saved all of that. You get the few pictures of the results. The big scary diagram of DOOOOOOOOOM. "Assembly is the reverse of disassembly, but you curse in different places." And then, reinstall it in the truck without dropping anything down the intake manifold. See if you can spot what very important thing I forgot to reinstall, that caused bricks to be shat when I started the truck up for the first time after the rebuild... (Besides a pipe to that vacuum port that is apparently still blocked by gunk. :mad:) Yup. Throttle pedal linkage. Cue hilarity, as the carb sits at wide open without the return spring on the linkage pulling it closed. :shocked: At the end of the day, it still leaks a bit of fuel out when the pump first fills the float bowl (but not any more after that, foiling my attempt at figuring out where it's coming from), and I can't really say it runs any better. Certainly doesn't run any worse, though, so I'm happy enough. Still can't stand the smell of petrol, though.

I went to go do some tinkering with the truck; and I did! I fell off it, and landed with one elbow on the cab roof, and the other on the body; both elbows thus brought sharply level with my earholes. Something went crunch. I think it was me. That's prepared me quite nicely for my return to work tomorrow, I think. Other than that, I cut a hole in the roof, and put some more metal in; thus reducing some of the holey-ness. Just got to keep working my way around... (Even fairly small patches are pretty time-consuming. Particularly with a welder that randomly decided not to flow any gas... ) I did apply some body-filler just to soften those ridges where the welds were; it was overheating alarmingly quickly trying to take them down with a sanding disc, even being careful, and I didn't want to thin it out too much. It'll look significantly less-ugly when I can sand it smooth. It still hadn't set by the time I needed to vacate the workshop; which makes a change from how using Isopon usually goes for me... normally, it's gone and set before I've even managed to get it off the little flexy scraper thing. With my luck, it still won't be set by tomorrow... The picture makes it look like there's quite a bit more filler on there than there is; I think it's the light making those ridges look deeper than they are... Also discovered the O/S cab mount has delaminated... this was discovered by the whole cab tipping over alarmingly as I heaved myself up by the grab-handle above the N/S door. (This same thing also claimed another victim; my co-workers' iPhone, which fell out of his pocket and landed screen-down on the carpark when he did the same thing I did, to point out the body-mount separating. It popped the whole front off it, cracked the screen, and launched the home-button off to realms unknown. Those things are the very definition of fragile, by my book...) ...and that the brakes are dragging on one side of the rear axle; so I'll need to unstick that again. (Also, how'sabout that parking? I managed to put it back into in its own tyre ruts, in reverse, with no mirrors!)

So it goes sometimes, it seems. But, one never knows what the future may hold! (With any luck, this truck back on the road... :cool2:) Only a small update, for now. I've taken a week off work to de-stress, so I'm having a busman's holiday... Couldn't get the truck into the workshop over the weekend to do any welding, because a paying job was in the way (How inconvenient!), so I changed all the spark-plugs, and made up some new spark-plug leads. (Ordered from cylinder #6 to #1.) Honestly, those plugs could be a damn sight worse considering they're the ones that were in there when I bought the truck. (You can even see the rust-pitting on the end of #3, because that was the cylinder with its intake valve open, if you look closely!) 6 of NGK's B6S plugs; I like NGK's spark plugs because the box is a nice cheerful yellow. And new leads, which are a bit of a rat's nest at the moment, because I was replacing one at a time to make sure I got them all connected in the right places. (Fireballs out of the carb are distinctly unpleasant when your face is so close to it.) I'm going to go back and do a bit of tidying/cleaning up tomorrow, including making sure that all the contacts on the inside of the dizzy are clean of corrosion/gunk, and all the moving bits move freely. Have to say, though, changing those plugs was not my favourite job; laying across the board that's currently acting as driver's seat, legs stuck out of the driver's door, and smacking myself in the back with the steering wheel every time I tried to get up. Was almost worth the siezed-up knees and aching chest when it fired up and ran so smoothly afterwards, though! (Right up until I walloped the dizzy-cap while refitting the engine side cover -- Yup, I'm just that clumsy -- and dislodged it. :n00b: )

Yikes! That's quite the failure. :wow: Lucky to have a 'new' box within relatively easy reach; that'll definitely save some time over having a new main-shaft machined.

On the, uh... brighter side, at least they used different coloured wires. It'd be even worse if it were all in one colour, like some I've seen. :-X