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It's here! (Bedford RL)


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After sloshing some more of that nice blue paint around, I loosely hung the thermostat housing & water pump on the engine, just to free up some shelf space. And since I was doing that, why not the fan and pulley, too?
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Moving on, time for more rust... yay. 😔

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It's like a bloody onion! I keep having to peel back layers, and everyone I cut out makes me cry even more.

Anyway, a bit of forward progress: 1280-IMG_20210527_205656.jpg

Completely managed to avoid taking a photograph of the bit I wanted to show, in the next picture. What I've done was cut out the rusted lower part of that upright, and weld in a piece of box-section; so now that's all tied to the new front cross-member too.

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Just got to keep tackling it a bit at a time.

Edited by Tamber
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  • 1 month later...

Right! So! Anyone else dimly remember -- way back in the beginning of this thread -- I was scratching my head over the brake servo, and whether I had all the little bits for that strange little valve, and whatnot?

Well, I now have answers.

Contained within Bedford Truck & Coach brake service training manual (TS1087):
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Doesn't that look familiar?

And, furthermore:
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I very well may have actually had all the bits all along! ...Well, whether or not I still have all the bits, after moving the truck twice, changing jobs & moving toolboxes, etc... Well, that's a different matter entirely.

Other than this discovery, the welding continued up until I discovered I'd welded something in the wrong place and had to unpick it. To be honest, I was so annoyed that I just left it, and then the weather decided that I really needed to be on the surface of the sun, and that kinda took the wind out of me anyway. It's been unpicked, and is now waiting for me to stick it back on in the right place, but the car is higher on the priority list for welding work due to sills and a wheel-arch.

The engine dress-up continued...
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Then, I went hunting for the engine side cover (y'know, the one that covers the lifters & pushrods), and didn't find it. So I went and cleaned up the starter motor instead, because that was right there.
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As part of cleaning up, I pulled off the cover band and... ew
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That dirt looks... glittery. (Brush material)

Anyway, went to slowly unpick it a bit more to clean all that grot out and made a bit of an unwelcome discovery.
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That has had a bad day!
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Seeing as the Lucas M45G is so prevalent amongst old Brit vehicles -- the joys of everything being built out of the same parts bins! -- this isn't the end of the world. At some point I'll run the starter motor on up to Jeff's, where work has their starters & alternators serviced, and get that seen to.
While running through old scanned cross-reference manuals, it turns out that this exact same starter configuration was used in Aston Martins of a comparable vintage to the RL, which is neat.
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Current big roadblocks on the engine are getting the correct sump and oil pump pickup. I should probably make a post in classifieds and see if anyone has one, once I get a sufficiently circular tuit. 😁 If not, then if worst comes to worst, I can have a flange profiled out that matches the original sump, and fabricate the rest; but that slows things down a bit. Well, a bit more...

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Noticed you have a busted starter. I have this one on ebay currently off a Jaguar XJ6. You can have it for the cost of postage if it's any use to you for the internals. This thread has given a lot of happy reading over the years so it's a little payback if you can use it!

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Thanks for the offer, but as it's just a brush wire I think it should be fixable by the local starter shop; wouldn't like to kill a perfectly good starter for the sake of that! Hopefully it'll come in useful for someone else, though!

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  • 1 month later...

Would anyone happen to have some rough dimensions -- or at least clear photographs -- of the correct 4WD sump and (ideally, but optionally!) the oil pump pickup that would go with it?

I've been squinting at the 1955 (Amended 1958) manual and from the pictures given there, the oil pump appears the same as the one I have, except for the pickup tube. Now, I know I have a later engine, but the oil pump is in the same location on the engine; and the pickup I have is basically mounted directly on the bottom of the pump, whereas the diagrams given in the EMER show a much longer pickup and an oil-pan that appears to be much more square with the sump moved further forward and seemingly a good bit deeper. In summary, same volume, but with a smaller footprint.

A crude digital crayon sketch -- not to scale, of course -- illustrating this, is attached below:

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I think, as best as I can tell, that the difference in pickup is just vertical height -- which is a relatively simple change to make -- as opposed to any fore/aft displacement. In which case, I should only need a sump!

(Well, I could modify the one I have, but I'm already going to struggle to meet my self-imposed target of having the engine running by the end of the year as is! Not been in the greatest of shapes, mentally or physically, this year; and that's slowed things down.)

The engine is mostly assembled by this point, though, so I'm not a million miles off; and I've got a MUST/SHOULD/COULD set of lists going. :D

Anyway, I've also had to move all the wheels into the unit as they're no longer allowed to live outside (so sayeth the landlord) and now it's nearly impossible to move in there! So, seeing as I don't particularly want to use them, they have to go. ...the wheels, that is, not the landlord.

I did try breaking one down, mostly for the experience (we don't do split-ring wheels at work) but also in the hope that I'd be able to make them compact/light enough that I could stack them onto the truck more easily; but holy crap that's a colossal pain in the behind. I do have video of me struggling...
(I'd put them on par with doing a 17.5" tubeless tyre, with levers and sledgehammer. And the tyre seems to be stuck to the wheel rim with rust. I can probably free it off, but at this point, eh...)

So that's 7 9.00-20s, two of which are still mounted on the truck, and one is on the bed of the truck (so that'll be exciting getting it down.), and the one I started breaking down already had a crushed valve-stem so that tube is scrap anyway, but it was still holding air; and one 11.00-20 (which is also on the truck bed.)
Most of them are Duramold branded, one is a Pirelli (I think?), and the 11.00 is a Phoenix brand. They're all of unknown age, all have age-cracking, and there are a couple of cuts in the tread-blocks here and there. And they're all -- except possibly one? -- on 10-stud 335mm PCD wheels. If anyone's interested in 'em, for whatever reason, let me know!

And with that, I must sign off again... Spent near enough a full day doing an EGR valve on a Transit, thanks to a rounded bolt, and now I must go sleep in order to face up to the damn thing again because it didn't fix the warning light...

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Tyres are hard work even with the correct gear. When you get a one off use it as an anvil for the rest put them face to face after knocking back the spacer ring to free the locking ring then taking off the locking ring and spacer, drop a couple of bolts in some chocks under so that the tyre cannot fall all of the way onto the lower wheel then some soapy water on the top joint. Then it is just plain noisy walking around with a bead knocker or lump hammer and foot bar. A Kango hammer with a wide fairly blunt chisel is useful as they take some stick. I hate transit EGR valves. Good luck.  

Edited by john1950
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On 9/16/2021 at 7:44 AM, john1950 said:

Tyres are hard work even with the correct gear. When you get a one off use it as an anvil for the rest put them face to face after knocking back the spacer ring to free the locking ring then taking off the locking ring and spacer, drop a couple of bolts in some chocks under so that the tyre cannot fall all of the way onto the lower wheel then some soapy water on the top joint. Then it is just plain noisy walking around with a bead knocker or lump hammer and foot bar. A Kango hammer with a wide fairly blunt chisel is useful as they take some stick. I hate transit EGR valves. Good luck.  

The most insulting thing about those EGR valves is how you can see them -- from both sides, even! -- and still can't get to them. (And those metal gaskets, augh!)

I learnt to do truck tyres by the sledgehammer, angle iron, and levers method on tubeless tyres; it's still hard work, but at least there's fewer pieces to juggle afterwards! :D Work got a tyre machine a good few months back, now, and it's an absolute life-saver. I can have a tyre stripped down, turned, and back on; in the time it used to take me to break a stubborn bead. I've just got to not forget how to do them the old way...

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I have had to deal with several types of wheel 2 piece, 3 piece and 4 piece wheels before tubeless came along. Right up up Cat 627b size with ring locks.  I still have two light weight heel bars and an ally flat point. No large sledge hammers any more they all got stolen. Designers come up with engines to assemble in the factory but no thought seems to be given for the poor person who has to repair them. It seems strange to look back with fond memories on those times from retirement. One tyre fitter on the M62 Motorway near Manchester one super single trailer tyre 4min to change including bringing and taking the tyre to his van, (did not take the wheel off) took longer to inflate than change the tyre. Anyone near you with a green goddess so you could get a look at the sump.  

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11 hours ago, Tamber said:

I learnt to do truck tyres by the sledgehammer, angle iron, and levers method on tubeless tyres;

I had never seen that method until a mobile fitter came out to change a super single. He failed to break the inside bead without removing the wheel, set up his angle iron and was just about to hit it with the sledge as I legged it when I remembered how our depot tyre fitter lost a chunk out of his forehead. It worked but would have been much safer with a short chain and a dog clip to one of the stud holes.

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  • 6 months later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 7 months later...

Hello there! Yes, I'm still alive; "OK" would be pushing it, but I'm still alive. Early 2022, I got trampled by the covid and I've ne'er been the same since. Progress has been, consequently, slow but it's still been progress. I now have significant joint problems, which tend to leave me in considerable pain and struggling to walk, depending on how the work-week goes.
I have to make the most of mobility when I can, so updates tend to be in short bursts.

I do remember having some disagreement with the forum software in it making it very difficult for me to lay posts out properly, so I've mostly been updating on my own website and RetroRides. But, we'll see how far I can get through getting the thread here caught up! 😄

So! Let's try and get caught up from *riffles notes* the dark days of September 2021. Are you sitting comfortably? No? Good.

Despite having the wrong sump, I decided to clean it up and paint it anyway. The wrong sump is better than no sump, after all.1280-IMG_20211005_184037.jpg

While that was drying, I turned my attention to the exhaust manifolds; since I don't have a handy set of flanges to start from, I had to make my own. And, because it's me, that meant 1/2" stainless steel:1280-IMG_20211005_194518.jpg

Which, with some angry-grinder action, turned out thusly:1280-IMG_20211006_185710.jpg

That is, it turned out wonky. 😄 The second one came out a little better. Following on from that, I got some stainless steel pipe elbows (weldable) and it turned out I cannot remember measurements (always write things down!)
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Now, that's a touch racier than intended! (No matter, they came in handy elsewhere, later on.)

Anyway, moving on from that, remember the sump? Well, the paint had dried, so I fitted it.
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You can still see the dents from where it met the top of the front diff the previous time! But, again, it'll do in the short term because it'll let me run the engine and whatnot. I also hung the alternator back on, and reminded myself of the fact that I have the wrong pulley.

(It still has the wrong pulley even now! I keep meaning to go on a hunt for the correct type, but it'll run as it is though it will cause slightly more belt wear. It seems like, generally speaking, pulleys that take a B profile (17mm) belt will have a 17mm centre bore to fit to a generator; whereas the alternator, which comes fitted with a pulley for an A profile (13mm) belt, has a 15mm shaft. It is apparently possible to get a piece of 1mm wall tube to shim it out, and then maybe I can fit the pulley from the original generator that I still have tossed in a side-locker.)

Anyway, the next item for fitting was the rear engine mount plate, which was excavated from its encasement of grease, and cleaned for paint. During which process, I did unearth the sky-blue underneath the obligatory DBG gloss.
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That was a nice relaxing evening of scrub, sand, etch-prime, grey primer paint, realise that there's parts of it that need to be bare metal because they're the mounting faces, scrub those portions back to bare metal again.

Once I'd gotten it to the point of being fully in primer, it'd be rude not to fit it to the engine, wouldn't it? Now, that's easier said than done considering that the engine was still attached to the engine stand via bolts in the flywheel-housing holes; so the abridged version was: a reconstruction of the workshop engine cradle (since a previous workshop-inmate had cut it up for raw material.), a trolley jack, blocks of wood, some muscle, and a considerable amount of swearing.
But that did (somewhat surprisingly) result in the engine being on the cradle, rather than on the floor, and that let me fit the mount-plate and flywheel housing:
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And now, for a brief time-travel interlude!
If you wouldn't mind stepping in this police-box for a moment... A reminder of the state of the flywheel, back in 2019, when I dismantled the engine.
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Pretty grim, I'm sure you'll agree. Now, if you'd step back out of the police box...

Freshly resurfaced (pay no attention to the DA sander lurking just out of shot), it looks a lot better than expected.
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The dark ring is barely noticeable beneath the fingers, and I expect the clutch will bed in just fine on that. ...I've certainly bedded in clutches on much worse at work. I managed to line up a new old-stock clutch friction disc and release bearing, but that was in the future at this point. Er, at that point. You know what I mean!

Anyway, I then fitted the flywheel into place, and got all the flywheel bolts tightened up. The follow-up to that was then making a start on welding the new exhaust manifolds. Well, okay, I welded the first bit on and called it a start.
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And that brings us up to about the 27th of September, 2021. At this point, things slowed down again; mostly, there was some picking away at the wiring, and some additional trial and error with sensor stuff. (Because I have a bad habit of not writing things down, then forgetting them, and having to rediscover them again.).

January of 2022, I got my new old-stock clutch:
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(And a throw-out bearing that turned out to be the wrong one. Not the end of the world, though.)

Exhaust fabrication continued, albeit slowly. Nobody point out the really obvious flaw in my design, at this point. We'll get there. 😄
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And then I got covid. Hooray(!)

 

-- Additional Messages to Follow --

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The next installment picks up in about February 2022, wherein the sensory delights multiply, and I convert the distributor to a camshaft position sensor. This is one of the few modifications I made that isn't easily reversible with a quick parts swap (Well, other than by picking up a replacement distributor, I suppose.), in that I have lost the vacuum advance canister somewhere in the disaster area that is my unit, and I pinned the centrifugal advance in place to fix the timing. (The pin -- actually a screw -- can be removed to restore centrifugal advance, but I haven't the foggiest where the vac canister went.)

Some time with tin-snips and files resulted in a trigger wheel that is fitted in the distributor such:
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Which, along with a distributor cap that was butchered just so, meant I could fit a sensor down into the top of it, that triggers once every two engine revolutions; this lets the electronic unit know when it's approaching firing on №1 rather than №6. This was an optional step, but does permit me a little greater flexibility further down the line.
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I then stuck the inlet manifold on, and plopped the carb in place, so it could look pretty for a bit.
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The next move really upset the already-poorly starter...
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...and, wherein the theory is tested:

---

Moving into April, still struggling to get my body creaking into motion, I decide to heft the gearbox up onto the work-table and -- once I picked myself back up off the floor -- I did a little brazing work to fix the location of the hole I drilled in the wrong place (Oh, did I mention I drilled a hole in the side of the gearbox? Hm. Well, I did. I drilled two of them, in fact; because the first one was in the wrong place.) and also to repair a cracked portion of the top lid flange.

After doing the brazing, and feeling quite accomplished, I thought the gearbox deserved a coat of primer.
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Pictured: The bloody PTO flange that will later give me repeated trouble trying to get it to seal. Not pictured, for whatever reason: ...The repairs I did. Hm.

Anywho! More manifold welding followed, because it's quite fun and I like shiny things.
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These images should be viewed like "events leading up to the disaster" footage: Quietly going "oh no... he's not, has he?" 😄

August 2022 rolls around, I creak around with it.
Needing a location to put a coolant temperature sensor, I drill a hole in the thermostat housing, then discover it's tougher than the tap that I bought. Thankfully, a better tap from a better supplier has that sorted, and in goes a sensor
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More "hot-rod" exhaust fabrication continues, and I do some pondering over "hm, I'm not going to be blocking the oil-filter, am I?"; but at no point has the major oopsie occurred to me.
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Don't worry. It will occur to me.

Also, yes, they are very over the top. 😄 Honestly, this is very much a "because I want to see if I can" sort of deal. I'm very well aware that a simple log manifold, much like the factory one, would be entirely sufficient for an engine of this performance level.
(If someone did want me to make a more standard manifold for a 300, I certainly could. Though I think I'd probably have the flanges profiled out, because making those by hand was an experience I do not particularly wish to repeat.)

While that was stalled, waiting on more material, I decided I wanted a nice way to run cabling along the engine without it getting thoroughly destroyed by those hot exhaust pipes running nearby. What more excuse did I need in order to try out more brazing?
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A couple of weeks later, I'd managed to paint it and fit it, thusly:
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I think it looks quite good there. Almost factory.

And, to show off what it's for:
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I'm quite happy with that.

 

Next Episode: The Great Realisation

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Oh, actually, one brief thing I forgot to mention from the last episode: I filled some of the gaping hole in the passenger side footwell.
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Moving on!

Flush with success that the exhaust manifolds were coming out really nicely, and properly hot-rod, I did the merge and the flange on the bottom of the front manifold.
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Several Days Later...
"There has been a tremendous cock-up with the exhaust headers. I'm very disappointed in all of you! ...how come nobody reminded me that there's a bloody great front diff I need to make those pipes fit past?!" 🤣

Clearance was ... negative "quite a lot". Well, no, there was plenty of clearance space, just not in the places I'd originally put the pipes. Cue all the comments about "just move the axle, mate!"

Anyway! The Great Exhaust Manifold Escapade was put on hold at that point, 'til I had the engine in and could better work out where I needed to put the pipes.

Once I'd finished sulking about that whole mess, I got in touch with Powerlite about a replacement for the starter. The original Lucas starter is exactly the same starter as was used on Aston Martins from (apparently) 1948 to 1972, amongst other things; and this means they have gear-reduction replacements on the shelf! It's an RAC402A, for anyone interested; and no, it's not cheap (£306, at time of making this post) but should have a marked improvement in twisting capacity.

That starter turned up in October, once I'd saved up enough beer-tokens, and all that.
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Marked improvement. At least, for one turn, then my battery decided it'd had enough and it would like to retire now. I took it to work and tried the battery tester on it, whereupon pressing the button it went from a healthy-seeming 12.8volts to "just take it out back and shoot it, it's only fair"

Ah well, it's just more money!

# And it's December, from the top rope, with the steel chair!

Let's start it off with some excitement, shall we?

With a new battery in hand, and a significantly lighter wallet, I gave a go to trying to start it. No great successes there, other than I reminded myself that I'd only dropped the carburettor onto the manifold, and nothing was actually tightened up. I reminded myself of this by the carburettor doing its best to eject itself!

It also turned out I'd crossed some wires somewhere, and it was firing the wrong ignition coil; so with the ignition set at a fixed 10 degrees BTDC, it was actually firing somewhere in the region of 70 degrees BTDC. Yeah, that'd do it! Wiring reconnected properly, and documentation updated; and the next test-run was a great success! Well, once I figured out that I needed a handful of choke, anyway.

It was such a success that it startled me once it fired, and I kept dropping everything. Even those short bursts of running, though, were enough to put an alarming amount of heat into the block; so I thought it best to avoid too much running before I'd gotten a cooling system. Plus, if I revved it up too much it'd probably lob itself off the engine cradle. I'd already had to wedge a screwdriver through a hastily drilled hole to stop it sliding backwards...

Also, for a giggle, a close-up on my ... very temporary fuel supply:
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It was cold enough that I could visibly see the fuel settling out its layers, this being E10 (10% ethanol blended fuel).

Also, an update on the far side of the engine:
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Late December, I'd managed to complete more of the floor & step ... sill ... thing
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Though the rear-most sections were still yet untouched, and the battery-box/seat-base still has some frilly bits.
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And that was how 2022 trundled to a close. I set myself the deadline of having the engine running by the end of the year, and I just slid in under the deadline. But what a boost to morale! It didn't feel like I was stalled in the mud, going nowhere, like I'd felt for 2021 and most of 22.

2023 would prove to be a very productive year, even with a few missed bits and pieces that I'm going to have to go back in and finish up.

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January 2023 (On a Lighter Note)

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(Two, ah-ah-ahh!)

I wanted the next lamp between the lockers, but there wasn't quite enough room to fit it in there. Definitely not enough room to put it in there and still be able to change a light-bulb.

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Now, the reasonable thing to do would be to put it on the bottom edge of the locker to the left, but I am not a reasonable critter. I want all the marker lights on the same level, at the bottom edge of the body, because it's just more aesthetically pleasing. Which leaves me with 3 options:

  •  Move the locker to fit the light in
  •  Not fit one there, and put up with the wider spacing to the next light; it's still sub 3mtr between them, so it's fine, but ... y'know...
  • Get over it and put the lamp on the bottom of the locker

I'm sure you can figure out where things went with that... 😄

# Late January

I managed to rustle up some ability to function -- somehow -- and for some reason decided the next thing I wanted to tackle, while I noodled over the lighting situation, was the tracta swivel seals.

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Release the schmoo
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There is some corrosion pitting and wear to the surface of the swivel, but without going to extremes there's not much I can do about that.
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I gave it a buffing with some scotchbrite pad to polish off the worst of the rust and the peaks from any scratches, and wiped it down with some heavy-weight oil. Now, I'd like to say I have pictures from the rest of the refitting process, but it was going ... poorly.

I'd cleaned all the old oil, and grot, and hints of rust & any dust from the scotchbrite pad out of the tracta joint; wiped it all down as well as I could, and went to putting the new seal in.

The new seal went in beautifully, with a smearing of permatex grey behind it and at the slit cut for installation, to help it seal up; at this point, the seal could be easily rotated in the housing to line it up. Then I went to put the seal springs in, and started to have trouble.

The seal springs are a flat, stamped piece of metal with fingers for putting spring pressure on the seal lip, and 3 holes punched in that go over the pegs on the retaining ring just like the rubber seal. Except the holes weren't punched quite perfectly; so I'm struggling to get the damn things on, the whole time in the back of my mind I'm worrying about not having it lined up and not being able to rotate it if the sealant sets.

After several attempts, I discovered the misalignment problem, and grabbed a little round needle-file. Some quick work slotted the outer holes slightly, and I got the springs to go on. Then I put the retaining ring into the rubber seal, and all the pegs went in first try! Perfect, I thought! Then rotated the whole mess -- at this point, fairly slowly, as the sealant was setting up -- to line the bolt-holes up.

Except the bolt-holes didn't line up.

And rotate, and take it out to line it up with different holes, and rotate, and remove realign refit, rotate, etc, etc, etc. until I finally managed to get it lined up in the one alignment that actually fits, with the installation slit in the seal to the top of the housing, and all the bolts went in. By the by, the correct orientation is with the flat of the retaining ring to the top of the housing. Or just mark it before removal.

All of this while having to maintain the most awful endurance sit-up/crunch. (I am in shape! That shape is quite round, but it is a shape!)

But, the end result was a replaced seal:
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The rubber that wasn't exposed to the elements was actually in pretty good condition, still nice and flexible; but there's definite wear at the sealing edge, which was beginning to feel a bit stiff. I think it'd probably taken a bit of a set, as the wagon stood for so long, and once I started moving everything around with driving the truck again, it just couldn't seal.

Much like the rest of the truck, really. It seems to be leaking from just about everywhere!

Anywho, while I was there and having decided I hadn't suffered enough, I went and fitted my 4-way valve on a nice convenient bracket that I made to attach it to the underside of the spare wheel carrier.
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The bracket is blue for the highly technical reason of: I couldn't find my bucket of black paint. It did later turn up: right where I'd left it. 😄

Mid-February 2023

A fit of productivity brought on by painkillers, led to me tentatively calling the passenger side step 'finished', ish.
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I still need to trim some bits underneath, and there's still plenty of other bits to go at. But that part, at least, is done enough.

Flush with success on that, I decided the next thing I needed to tackle was, er, the headlights? I hop about quite a lot, because I find that I'm more likely to get things done if I tackle whatever task I feel up to at the time; rather than moping about trying to force myself to do something I'm not in the mood for. And once I've completed the task I want to do, I usually have a better chance of persuading myself to crack on with the thing I don't want to do. (It's the bad brain juices, y'see...)

I bought myself some new headlight mounting rings a couple of years back because one of my original ones has dissolved away to nothing; and it does appear that they should fit to my original headlight buckets, which I want to do for reasons, even though the plastic mounting rings give much more convenient access for changing the bulbs.

However, the new mounting rings are fiddly enough to fit onto the original 3 spring-loaded screw adjusters setup of the original headlight buckets that it would no longer be fun trying to change bulbs by removing the headlight. (The original is just a twist & pop out sort of affair.)

Which means... a hole needs to happen! And, half an hour or so later, sure enough:
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I know, I know, I've ruined a perfectly good headlight bucket. But at least now I can change the headlight bulb without taking the whole lamp out.
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Better access than some modern stuff! (Looking at you here, Mercedes.)

Anyway, repeat the process, and now I have two of them:
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There will be something added to cover that hole, to reduce the amount of water getting in behind the headlight.

I also polished up the headlight trim rings. Mmmmm, shiny!
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It really highlights every imperfection, and I love it.

time marches on. (March 2023)

Maybe I should clear the path for getting this engine back in? Well, that means I have a list of stuff to do before I can do that, which starts with taking the radiator out. Whereupon I notice there's a little bit of a crusty bit on the bracketry...
1280-IMG_20230226_145712.jpg
...that's fine. It won't leak, it's only structural.

Good news, I found my tin of black paint! And I only had to fight with a slight skin on it...
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Once I'd won that fight, some brush-waggling could get underway
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Next step, while the paint dried... let's have that radiator frame and front crossmember out. (Special shout-out to the weird, conical-seat nyloc nuts that hold the crossmember in!)

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With easy access to the front of the truck being provided by the lack of the crossmember and radiator support, I started threading in my engine wiring...
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If you're scared of wiring, you may wish to look away now... 😄 There's enough there for various sensors, idle control valve, 3 fuel injectors, 3 ignition coils (with capacity to change it out to individual per-cylinder ignition later, if the need arises (it shouldn't)), plus relays for power to run things.

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Main power distribution from the battery. This is the distribution board out of a BMW X5, and the idea is that I don't have to stack a mountain of ring terminals on the battery post. Seen here, from left to right: 100A for the main fusebox, 80A (should be a 40, but I didn't have any at the time) for the supply to the relays for the engine specific stuff, and 100A to the trailer relay box at the rear of the truck. The cable running to the stud just underneath where the bus-bar connects to the isolator switch is the one that runs to the starter, and I just needed somewhere to hold it that wouldn't become live if I turned the isolator on, while there was nothing on the other end.

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There's some additional funkiness going on here, where the relays power things like the ECU and the injectors & ignition coils. The ECU gets power once the ignition is turned on, but the injector and ignition coil supply only start to receive power once the starter button is pressed, to prevent any funniness with outputs in funny states for the instant after the ignition is turned on.

(These 2 are slightly out of sequence, in time, but I'm making an editorial decision to put them here in logical sequence.)
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Having run out of spaghetti to wrangle for the time being, I turned my attention to the offside cab crossmember. Now, I'd previously replaced the nearside crossmember back in ... 2020? because it was in atrocious shape; and when I did that, I'd made a matching replacement for the other side. So up comes the cab...
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And let's expose the worst of it...
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Thankfully, the driver's side floor is significantly less of a teabag than the passenger's side was, but it's still going to be a good bit of work
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But, as they say, the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. And in this case, the first step is the angry grinder.
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That's better. And now, for the soothing sound of Several Hours of Angle Grinder Action!

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Managed to uncover what looks like previous repairs, underneath the green paint.

Stuff the new crossmember underneath...
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Lower the cab down until the weight settles onto the new member, and trim it to length
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Next step is to weld all that in. Which is why instead I decided I was going to take the clutch pedal off its shaft to grease the pivot point. It's supposed to be oiled through that little oil hole in the top, but I'm going to say that's not been done in a very long time, judging by the build-up of grot that had plugged the hole solid. So instead I'm going to put a grease nipple in them both.

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May 2023

I decided on a colour for the cab interior. Nothing too special, but quite easy on the eyes. BS381C 626 Camoflage Grey. Painted some bits as a test, and they turned out quite nice.
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To jump back to the pedals, though... since I had the pedals removed from their levers in order to lift the cab up for the new crossmember, I was struck by the thought of making them a little grippier, as a matter of safety. But I didn't want to permanently modify the originals (I know it's a bit silly, but I've a bit of a funny rule of making it so that my modifications are reversible if someone wants to take it back to stock later on. It's a rule that, I'll admit, I follow fairly loosely, but still...)

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The originals, and their wear pattern, have a story to tell (imo!) and I didn't want to erase that. So with a bit of heat, and a hammer, and some stainless, we have a new replacement pedal:
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Then repeat that process, and affix some pedal rubbers...
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(Can you tell what they're off? 😄)

Other than that, there was some P-clipping of brake lines & wires, and I screwed down the floor panel that goes behind the engine hump; which left the "Engine In By September" TODO list at:

  • Clean & paint crossmember behind engine
  • Clearance the bracket at the back of the cab so that the transfer-case levers clear
  • Finish cleaning, priming, and painting around the engine bay
  • Clean, prime, and paint the inside of the dash. Which probably means welding up a bunch of the extra holes, first.
  • Finish securing brake pipes & wires fully
  • Passenger footwell welding nearest engine. (And change my mind on that stiffening bead I tried to form in it, which went to pot very quickly.)
  • Maybe clean & paint the front axle? Which is leaking a bit at the bottom of the diff cover, so I should probably sort that, too.

I also did some tinkering with wiper spindles, but that's an ongoing mess so I'm just going to quietly not mention it.
Have a nice grey-painted interior panel as a distraction:
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So! Interior stuff! At this point, sidling into June

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Removing some holes, resizing others. The brake warning light is connected to a pair of low-pressure switches, that are connected to the main two air tanks. That way, if I don't have sufficient air for brake assist, or for trailer brakes, I get a warning light and a really annoying buzzer. It's frankly quite modern! I also have an extra wire provision on that circuit for if I decide to get really fancy and put level switches on the brake fluid reservoir.

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August 2023!

So, I pick up those funny aluminium stubs that have been kicking around, and decide I'm going to do something with them. And the plan is something like so:
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Now, that's not fully completed. There's still some noodling I've got to do with mounting points for hold-down bolts and whatnot, but that gives you a general idea.

Process is pretty simple: drill a hole on the wonk (approximately 35 degrees), open it out with the burr and fettle until the injector bung sits just nice, gas weld it in, clean up all the flux and knobbly bits of excess aluminium, and it's good. (ish.)

I still need to trim the excess of the injector bung where it sticks into the manifold, and make sure that's all nice; but that can be done at a later date. As mentioned, I still have additional mounting points that need to go on and whatnot; but I have to see where all of that lands, before I start making them permanent.

I have a plan: it's a dynamically adjustable adaptive plan using flexible reactive feedback mechanisms. (Namely, I have a rough idea of where I'm going, but I'm otherwise making it up as I go along. 😄)

--

August continues to rumble on, and so do I. Though, not as quickly as I'd like.

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That's a little more closed-in, though not completely done.
But there's enough that's done enough to get a quick coat of paint, and get a better idea of how it's all going to look.
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And the engine hump, too!

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Now, painting the driver's footwell was never going to happen all the way; but at least I could use up some paint, on the bits I'm fairly sure I'm not going to have to cut or weld...
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And once that'd dried, I decided to spend some time in the Captain's Chair. Rumours of there being "vroom-vroom" noises can neither be confirmed, nor denied.
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With the passenger's step/sill done enough that the door's not going to be in the way, I might as well refit it. Every part that's off the floor, and on the truck, is one less part to trip over!
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The step/sill bit is ... definitely lower than it should be. I think this is partially because I've not got the structure at the front edge to fully locate it, and also because I've stepped on it a few times before I got it welded up and must've squashed it down without noticing.

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No matter, that can be fixed easily enough (I hope!) with some strategic prying before finishing out the structure that holds it all up. I'm not too worried about perfect door gaps, because they seem to be all over the place on RLs anyway, but I'd like it to be better than that.

Something far more pressing that needs to be sorted, however, is this:
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I forgot about the retaining stop/catch/thing. So I'm going to have to burn some of my new paint anyway to get that fitted back in, but it's not the end of the world.

Following on from that, more engine-bay painting ensued!

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Followed by the weilding of rivnuts, to give me somewhere to attach wiring to! Originally, there were little steel tabs that folded over the wiring to hold it in place, but they've broken off after countless times of getting caught on my clothing as I climbed in and out...

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More painting followed, using up the rest of the paint in the pot:
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Also, some pondering about the slots in the dash. When I got the truck, they were filled solid with what appeared to be either sealant or thoroughly perished rubber; but they look in the right sort of place to be used as defrost vents for the windscreen?
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With September fast approaching (that last photo being from the 28th of August), the next big thing was getting the engine in. After all, wouldn't want to miss my self-imposed deadline, now would we?

In the dying days of August,
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Pedals drilled and tapped for grease nipples, at the pivot shaft. The brake pedal appears to have some sort of fibrous bushing in it, but the clutch pedal is just the plain cast-iron bore on the shaft. There are oil-holes drilled into the pedals already -- I just reused those existing oil-holes but drilled them out to take a 1/4UNF grease nipple -- but they were packed solid with grot.

1280-IMG_20230831_201552.jpg

Then there was just some ends to put on ground cables (N/S Chassis ground to main ground lug; Engine ground to main ground lug.) and ran an Anderson socket out to the N/S, too, underneath the spare wheel carrier; makes it a little more convenient to put a charger on, what with there being a door and a battery-box lid in the way now. Also useful for jumpstarting stuff, too, I guess?

September 2023

The big day!
Big tidy-up. Moved a load of wheels out of the way, packed tools up so I could close the locker I was using as a table, generally shuffled stuff about and swept up; all to make a clear path for the main event:
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... dragging a very heavy engine around the workshop
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This was the most nerve-wracking part... taking the turn with the off-camber out into the yard.

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An hour passed between this pic and the previous. That's how frustratingly-slow things were going, at this point.

I got the back end of the engine fed into the engine bay, and slowly scooted back... then the bellhousing hit the front diff. Apparently my second build of the stand was somehow ... shorter? I suppose that means there's room to add casters if I decide I need to keep it around.

Once the bellhousing hit the diff, things started to get really sketchy. ... like, really sketchy. Jack the whole stand up on the trolley jack until I could push a board under one side; jack it up a bit further until I could push a board under the other side. Repeat until it was sitting high up enough that the engine cleared the bellhousing.

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Shove, bar, and drag with ratchet-straps until things start to line up. Occasionally bench-pressing the bellhousing upwards a little bit to line boltholes up enough to get bolts through.

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So close!

And, another hour later...
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At this point, the rear mounts have all their bolts in (though not tightened yet), and the front crossmember is supporting the weight of the engine; though I still needed to dig up the bolts that hold the front mount in. Hence the little block of wood under the front of the engine.

But, this was a major milestone. I set myself the deadline of having the engine in by the start of September; well, it was the start of September, and the engine was in.

Still needed to think about what to prioritise for next steps, but it included getting the engine mounted solidly, putting the clutch in, sorting the exhaust headers that I didn't think about before building, so on and so forth.

I certainly slept well that night!

The Next Day...

With the engine fitted into the truck, and now with all the mounting bolts tightened (Other than the front ones, anyway.), I decided to stick the various manifold bits on just for a laugh.

They fit better than I expected! Now, admittedly, my expectations were "not at all", what with me having forgotten about the existence of the front axle while building them, so there's that...

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Looks pretty good, eh?

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...except it doesn't bolt up to the head, because the bottom of it is hard against the top of the diff casing. But the good news is the front half bolts up lovely!

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But points directly at the diff cover. It's to keep the diff oil warm, in cold climates, y'see!

I also hooked up the various electrical plugs and the power & ground leads, and by that point could crank the engine over from the button on the dash. My warning lights for oil and alternator weren't working yet, and that was next on the list as far as electricals go.

The oil warning light turned out to be a stuck switch. The alternator warning was a little more involved, in that I'd cut the wire to extend it when I relocated a bunch of wiring so that it didn't pass in front of the engine (All of it runs behind, now that I know better, y'see) ... and I'd just never reconnected it.

With those two items fixed, and having chopped the manifolds down so they could be bolted up and at least keep hot exhaust off the wiring and whatnot, I refit the original inlet manifold just for testing purposes. Though, I'd mislaid the throttle linkage (I've since found it, but I'm not using it anyway once I've got my own built.) so I didn't have anything connected to the pedal, nor did I have a fuel supply readily to hand, but I wanted to hear it all work so...

Marvellous, I've not killed it.

The following day, I made a start on putting the clutch in. Man that thing's heavy and awkward, especially when you've got to feed it up into the flywheel housing. But, I succeeded in getting it hoisted up and onto the dowels; new bolts had been procured prior, though I'd totally forgotten to get a set of imperial allen keys, so I didn't get the clutch entirely tightened down for a little while after.

I did, however, get the front engine mount installed and bolted up; though, with new bolts because I couldn't find the old ones. The originals are 7/16UNF, and I just got 7/16UNC ones instead. I think I did later find the originals, but I didn't think it was particularly worth faffing around prying the engine up to put the old bolts back in...

I also managed to notice a bit of an oil-leak at the pushrod cover on the side of the engine, where I'd disturbed my gasket when I relocated my ignition coil-pack. (The last thing I did before Christmas this year was strip all of that back off to re-seal it. Hopefully successfully...)

12 September

Clutch fork was refitted, and the gearbox was finished up (Mostly just drilling and tapping the top cover mounting flange where I'd repaired the broken casting.) before I capped it off with a CV boot to act as a gaiter for where the gear lever goes into the top cover.

At which point, thinking I was ready to go, I discovered I could not locate my gearbox mounting bolts, despite knowing I'd put them in a labelled bag. So I measured up the thread on the stud that sticks out of the bellhousing, and ordered some to match that. (This turned out to be a mistake.)

Well, unable to put the gearbox back in, I thought I'd at least have some fun running the engine. So I stuck a length of radiator hose on the bottom inlet, and filled it with water, as a total-loss cooling system. Which is when I discovered I'd not sealed or tightened the top of the thermostat housing, so it all started leaking out and when I ran the engine it sprayed it everywhere

But that was an easy fix, so I got a few more runs with the lash-up total-loss cooling system, since I didn't want to fit the radiator before I'd sorted out my exhaust manifolds.

I did some playing around with ignition timing, including building up a tune based off the mechanical advance curve listed in the manual, and a gentle approximation of the vacuum advance curve data I could find. It didn't like that very much, so I reverted back to the 'soft' initial table I'd made up.

It will need tuning properly by someone who knows what they're doing, but that's for the future; for now, it's set up with safe values so that I can run it without damage.

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21 September 2023

Fresh off crippling myself with a lot of walking on a trip to London (No, I didn't walk to London, but there was a lot of walking while I was there!), I had a short task list:

  • Get more welding gas. (Ouch. It'd gone up 50% since last time.)
  • Get the 1/2UNC bolts for the gearbox, and get that bolted up solid.
  • Re-resealed the PTO cover on the gearbox, and re-refilled it with oil.
  • Adjust the clutch linkage rod so that the pedal actually works the clutch, now that the gearbox was in and the clutch disc can't fall out.

So, I mentioned in the previous post that I'd ordered bolts based off the measurements of the stud in the bellhousing. It turns out that stud is 1/2UNF. The other three bolts, however, are 1/2UNC. Having at least the nut meant that I could stab the gearbox into place and leave it there while I went on my jaunt to London to meet up with friends, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't just fall out. On my return, and armed with the proper bolts, I could finish installing the gearbox properly.

And seeing as I was already laying on the floor down there, I fiddled about with the little magnetic pickup switch I was going to use for my reverse light switch -- hence the hole I mentioned I drilled in the side of the gearbox, previously -- but unfortunately the angle of sensitivity was a bit too much so it was active the whole time it was screwed into the gearbox.
(I ended up replacing it with a common plunger-type switch.)
web-IMG_20230923_153937.jpg
It's a Vauxhall/Alfa/etc part. Easily replaceable should I need to.

And seeing as I was already scrunched up in an agonised mess near the gearbox, and the gearbox was in, it seemed only reasonable to put the top cover on! It's such a fun fishing game!

Got to plop it on from up top after removing the floor panel that the gear-levers stick through, and hooking it down and around to the top of the box. Then, your assistant has to hold the top cover level and ensure that the tang on the bottom of the gearstick lands in the slot in the selectors while you finish feeding the gearstick down.

...if you don't have an assistant to help you, just feed it down from on top, plop it down onto the gearbox, then climb down to crawl under the wagon and try to lift the lid back up because the sealant has already grabbed it; then with your arms squeezed into a nice tight space, try to hold the gearstick upright and get the tang into the selectors while lowering the lid back into the sealant. Repeat three times until it all lines up just right, and bung the bolts in. Check you can select gears before fully tightening the cover, just in case.

Refit the floor panel you took out, and:
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Tada! Three sticks again!

And at that point, with the gearbox back together, it'd be rude not to check if it worked, right? So might as well connect up the propshaft!
1280-IMG_20230920_184848.jpg
 

With that, a quick test was in order. Just a quick one, mind. Put the truck in 1st gear, bump the starter, truck rolls forwards: Check. Dip the clutch, truck rolls back to its original location: Check.

And, while we're at it, do the reverse lights work?
web-IMG_20230923_155713.jpg
Of course they do! Never had a doubt!

Great success! Now I only have to finish the exhaust (At least the bits that are significantly easier to do with the radiator out for access.), repair that bracket on the radiator, refit the radiator and fill the cooling system with coolant/antifreeze, chase all the leaks out, move all the junk from under the truck, get it out far enough to put back wheels on it, and I can drive it round the industrial estate!

Chopping and welding ensues...
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And more welding...
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Which eventually results in this wiggly mess...
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There'll be enough room to squeeze a pair of 2" diameter pipes in through there, but it's going to be tight. This is all self-inflicted because I wanted the swoopy shiny exhaust pipes. 🤣

But even though they're nowhere near complete, they're at least pointing the exhaust away from my wiring and whatnot, so we could make THIS happen:
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October 2023

Remember how I said I wasn't sure how I was going to tackle that side-marker light that was going to end up out of place?

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Yeah.

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That's a lot of work for a side-marker light, but... for one, I can clean and paint a lot of stuff I couldn't get to before!

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and two, doesn't this look good:
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I've done a lot of measuring, I'm pretty sure that I have room for that locker to fit back in and that I've drilled the holes in the right place to move it over where I need it to be; but proof of the pudding, and all that.

A couple of days later, I finished up the rearmost exhaust manifold. It's certainly not instagram-worthy rainbows n stacked dimes, but I didn't have a lot of room in which to make this merge.

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It fits, but only just...

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This does mean, however, that Phase One™ is complete, and Phase Two™ can begin.

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Unfortunately, I didn't have the room available to use the flexi bits, so there is the risk that the manifolds end up straining something and cracking, but that's just how it's going to be. Sacrifices made for style, I suppose.

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And that all fits in here...
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There will be a support bracket, with a rubber doodad, eventually.

However, in the meantime...
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web-IMG_20231010_193852.jpgAnd that's 80% of Phase Two™ done. The exhaust now runs back to where the previous silencer was.
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Following on from that, now that I'm not blocked from the radiator install, I had to fix the radiator!

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It's solid enough. It then received lashings of black paint to protect it from all the grot. And that leads us into...
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With the radiator in and -- after a quick emergency run for more hoseclamps -- all the hoses complete, I filled it with water and chased out the few inevitable leaks. But now there's a full cooling system, I can run it for longer and find out what else doesn't work.

The longer run pointed out a few things:

  • I needed exhaust gaskets
  • Starter needs a heat-shield really badly
  • The engine cover is going to need some insulation, too. (The back of the engine hump was unpleasantly hot to the touch by about 10 minutes in.)
  • It sounds real good!
  • Tach doesn't work. Investigation required.
  • More adjustments needed...

I also made a start on running pipe for the air system, as well as hunting down antifreeze (Just in time, too; because by mid-October it was already getting to -1 on that industrial estate! Mind you, after a few minutes running that engine, the air temp sensor -- currently draped by the gear lever -- was reading 25°C. I suppose it's like the song goes, "She's not too cold in winter, but she cooks me in the heat")

Did some other checking of sensors and things while I was poking around, and I seem to have gained an occasional loss of RPM sync at or below 700rpm; but maybe I clobbered the sensor bracket while I was wrestling the radiator in, and it's getting a marginal signal.

Bodywork also continued, with excavating more rust-flakes out from the inside of the front 'cheek', and sloshing rust-killer in there to try slow down the misery.

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Late October

2 hours of stripping...
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Then I got to the bit behind the locker on the nearside, and noticed a crusty bit. So I tapped it with the hammer, and to absolutely nobody's surprise, it went scrunch. So I thought "Oh, I'll just cut that bit out and fix it" and before you know it, it escalated...
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It overlaps with the back edge of that locker a good way, and wasn't painted before it was assembled, so I figured there's no point in fixing it as it was -- especially since it appears to have been a panel added in the truck's commercial life, based on there being no sign of any DBG underneath the paint -- and instead I could cut it off level with the back of the locker and eliminate a rust-trap.

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Like so! You can see there's DBG on the portion that forms the outside of the locker, so that's not been monkeyed with; but it looks like when the body was chopped about, they overlapped this bare steel plate onto the locker and then painted everything they could see when they were done.

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Still needs some tidying up at the top edge, but it'll do for now.

10 November

Well, for whatever reason, I thought I'd tackle that front towing eye beam.
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It took some heat and violence, but I got the towing eye off it, and that really does let you see how bent it is!

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While I had the torch out, I figured I'd extract the fittings from the compressor...
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Inlet from the unloader (top fitting) is 3/4BSP (the other end of the elbow is that funny fine-thread that the rest of the air piping used), compressor's outlet (lower fitting) is 1/2BSP. Thankfully, both of those are dirt-common, so replacement pipes shouldn't be too difficult to get.

After wrapping the torch back up, I eyed the coupler and thought "I should paint that". Don't know why, but that's what I did.
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And that got me warmed up enough to tackle making the repair panel for the bottom of the vent in the passenger footwell!
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While I was muddling around with seeing how everything lined up, I started getting very annoyed with the passenger door swinging shut and eating me. Well, I've got just the thing for dealing with that!
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Only the inner end of that welded on, for now, because I still have to tweak the step around to close up some of the gaps to the door; but it stops the door from bashing me, so that's good!

While we're in the footwell, I threw the floor panel in to see how it all fits, and mark out the missing bolt-holes.
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A couple of days later, I decided to do a bit more paintbrush-waggling...
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Then, having overexerted myself, that was me done for walking... It was about a week later before I could next get down there to waggle a paintbrush again!

Hmm. This air-tank's in the way...
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Out it comes, and let's hit everything with the wire wheel and sandpaper before spending some theraputic time with the paintbrush...

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Plenty more to do, yet, but at least I've hit the stuff where it's easier to get at with the locker out.
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This truck absolutely needs a good wash, there's so much grot built up everywhere...

A few days later...

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More paint-brush waggling? Don't mind if I do!

I also got the bottom of the vent-duct welded in, which has turned out quite nicely. And I've marked out the locations for the holes for the little toggle lever that controls the vent; so here's hoping I've got it in the right place!

Then, for a giggle, and because I was tripping over it a bunch while painting the boom, I hung the nearside front wing on the truck.

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15 November

More air pipes? Sure!

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This footbrake valve is replacing the built-in valve from the brake servo, seeing as that does appear to be missing parts.

Seeing all that crawling around on the floor hadn't crippled me enough, I thought I'd go on to tackle the offside side marker lights! So that's two marker light brackets welded onto the body (out of the 4 total), and also the offside rear wing, because I leant on that and reminded myself that it wasn't actually attached to the body any more.

The marker lights on the offside are spaced the same as the ones on the nearside, even though they don't have to dodge any lockers. It's just pleasing to know they match.

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Lights wired and illuminated, even though not all of the brackets are welded on yet.

Then Friday got 5 hours of surprise overtime tacked onto it, thanks to someone driving a loaded 8-wheeler down a farm-track and nearly laying it on its side in a field. Clocked off at quarter to 11 that night, and was definitely feeling the effect of the extended work week. There was no tinkering time on Saturday, either, because I could barely move by the time I'd left work...

Sunday, however...

web-IMG_20231112_150559.jpgIt's good, but it's definitely missing something.

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Something like that.

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I'm still a little miffed with the two 'A's being different, but it's certainly not bad.

Anyway, then I decided I needed just a little more
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This was rather more perilous to paint!

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Back to more mechanical matters, time for a little pneumatic action.
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Relay valve and park quick-release valve for the trailer connections. Yes, the QRV will be mounted properly at some point!

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Also, for your viewing pleasure, the timelapse of me signwriting the other side of the boom.

I did lightly screw up by misreading my notes, and using the wrong spacing for some of it. And I also drew my baseline for the "MAX" a bit crooked, but these things happen!

And that's things up to date!

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