I made a post about a month ago about i got my Thames ( http://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/24150005.cfm ). Since then ive made a start stripping it out and assessing all the******i have to do to get it back to life.
I figured out how the 'dining table' was set up
and how the seats fold out into 'beds'
This is the first weekend we went to the garage and the magic started.
My girlfriend has taken an unusual interest in helping me to restore the van. I think its great as if i was in the garage myself it could get a bit boring but its a good laugh having her around and helping me out. Its ok right now at the stripping down stage but i think she may get bored when I'm welding and cutting **** up. I was thinking i could buy her a sewing machine and she could re-upholster the seats and curtains etc..
Yeah, check out those comfy ugly slacks I'm rocking.
I got Jana started on removing the light lenses and units etc.. she even managed to get the rear bumpers off herself. I don't mean to sound patronizing but when someone calls a ratchet the "clicky-thing" its quite a big step for her.
I even bought her a special tool kit for the job, shes since bought herself a proper tool bag and pliers set.
First door removed. It was a ***** as the hinge bolts were rusted solid, lucky for me there is a huge tool store opposite the garage (machine mart) so i managed to get an impact screwdriver.
All the seats and interior came out easy, the gas cooker was a bit of a joke really, The cage that held the gas bottle underneath the floor was about 8 inches from the ground and about an inch from the propshaft, then the gas pipe went to the cooker where someone had used a T-piece for some reason, with one pipe going to the hob and the other pipe was bent round a few times to stop gas leaking.... i don't know why the never just used a single pipe. There was a lot of cork insulation which i think had been stuck on with tar. Oh what fun i had with a scraper. Jana 'helped', but well, she got bored of it a lot quicker than i did.
Handsome eh,
Then i got stuck into the wiring loom, there was a lot of house-hold wire in one colour for switches and lights all over the place. I know I'm going to be re-doing the interior lighting differently so those got binned and i kept the standard loom. Note the intensity of my concentration.
The next weekend we started on taking the pop-up roof off. The fabric of the roof its self isn't too bad. There is a rip in it but its along the seam so once stitched up it will be ok. It was held down with aluminium strips and brackets.
WEST SIDE Y'ALL
peek-a-boo
Starting to get quite bare now, in total we found 3 dead birds in the van, 2 of which were skeletons and the other was quite fresh looking underneath the radiator intake, perhaps from the drive home on the trailer, oops.
We got the other door off and then i set about the lower panels, there pretty easy to come off as there all bolt on panels, something Ford promoted as a key selling point apparently.
The right lower panel its self was not bad, just a bit of surface rust and a few dings. Even behind the panel it was not bad. You can see the battery tray is pretty much gone but thats not really a problem at all, its just a welded up box. Although a lot of rust came flaking off as you can see.
The back of the wheel well is the worst, good thing is a lot of the panels to replace are just flat sheet with bends in it.
The other side was a bit harder to take off as it had spot welds along the side door opening but it came off none the less.
During all this a few bolts were completely seized and i had to grind them off, sending sparks flying. I finally thought id be a lot safer doing all this **** with the petrol tank out. Only problem was the bolts underneath had seized and the only access was to rip the floor out and take them off from the top.
So out the floor it went. The guy that rents the other side of the garage popped down and gave me a hand. The floor was inch thick plywood and all the coachscrews holding it down were, as you could guess, seized. We came up with a plan of him using a big lever and me drilling lots of holes around the coachscrews. You can see the petrol tank is quite small for something to go travelling with, may need to find something bigger. Once i disconnected the tank i poured the petrol away and it was pure orange, like irn-bru. Must have been laying in the tank for years.
The weekend after my brother came along instead of Jana as i wanted to get the engine/gearbox and the rest of the glass out. We even managed to get the rest of the doors off.
Glass out
Checking out how to remove the engine. We disconnected the gearbox first and tied rope around the engine to lift it straight up.
My garage buddys engine crane came in handy.
CHEEESE!!
A full 53bhp or so of pure antique metal
This is the hole that has been left from taking the motor out, The plan is to replace it with a 3 litre Cologne/Essex V6, i know it fits as ive seen the set up before in a Thames van. I'm going to go for an automatic box too as i just want it as a cruiser and i hope to keep the column change and rig it up to the autobox.
Thats as far as ive gotten with the van. I'm pretty much at the stage where i need to take the suspension, steering and rear axle off but before i do that i need to make up a way of supporting the van off the ground. I was looking at building a rotisserie but i came up with a slightly different idea. I'm going to build 2 huge dodecagons that split into 2 pieces. That way i can roll it on its side and sandblast/repair underneath then roll it back, unbolt the top half of the dodecagons and work on the roof etc..
Only thing is its going to cost about ยฃ180 in material so i need to do a few homers to make up the money for that. I also just put down a deposit to rent a new house with Jana so money is quite tight. Next update will probably be in a few more weeks.
I figured out how the 'dining table' was set up
and how the seats fold out into 'beds'
This is the first weekend we went to the garage and the magic started.
My girlfriend has taken an unusual interest in helping me to restore the van. I think its great as if i was in the garage myself it could get a bit boring but its a good laugh having her around and helping me out. Its ok right now at the stripping down stage but i think she may get bored when I'm welding and cutting **** up. I was thinking i could buy her a sewing machine and she could re-upholster the seats and curtains etc..
Yeah, check out those comfy ugly slacks I'm rocking.
I got Jana started on removing the light lenses and units etc.. she even managed to get the rear bumpers off herself. I don't mean to sound patronizing but when someone calls a ratchet the "clicky-thing" its quite a big step for her.
I even bought her a special tool kit for the job, shes since bought herself a proper tool bag and pliers set.
First door removed. It was a ***** as the hinge bolts were rusted solid, lucky for me there is a huge tool store opposite the garage (machine mart) so i managed to get an impact screwdriver.
All the seats and interior came out easy, the gas cooker was a bit of a joke really, The cage that held the gas bottle underneath the floor was about 8 inches from the ground and about an inch from the propshaft, then the gas pipe went to the cooker where someone had used a T-piece for some reason, with one pipe going to the hob and the other pipe was bent round a few times to stop gas leaking.... i don't know why the never just used a single pipe. There was a lot of cork insulation which i think had been stuck on with tar. Oh what fun i had with a scraper. Jana 'helped', but well, she got bored of it a lot quicker than i did.
Handsome eh,
Then i got stuck into the wiring loom, there was a lot of house-hold wire in one colour for switches and lights all over the place. I know I'm going to be re-doing the interior lighting differently so those got binned and i kept the standard loom. Note the intensity of my concentration.
The next weekend we started on taking the pop-up roof off. The fabric of the roof its self isn't too bad. There is a rip in it but its along the seam so once stitched up it will be ok. It was held down with aluminium strips and brackets.
WEST SIDE Y'ALL
peek-a-boo
Starting to get quite bare now, in total we found 3 dead birds in the van, 2 of which were skeletons and the other was quite fresh looking underneath the radiator intake, perhaps from the drive home on the trailer, oops.
We got the other door off and then i set about the lower panels, there pretty easy to come off as there all bolt on panels, something Ford promoted as a key selling point apparently.
The right lower panel its self was not bad, just a bit of surface rust and a few dings. Even behind the panel it was not bad. You can see the battery tray is pretty much gone but thats not really a problem at all, its just a welded up box. Although a lot of rust came flaking off as you can see.
The back of the wheel well is the worst, good thing is a lot of the panels to replace are just flat sheet with bends in it.
The other side was a bit harder to take off as it had spot welds along the side door opening but it came off none the less.
During all this a few bolts were completely seized and i had to grind them off, sending sparks flying. I finally thought id be a lot safer doing all this **** with the petrol tank out. Only problem was the bolts underneath had seized and the only access was to rip the floor out and take them off from the top.
So out the floor it went. The guy that rents the other side of the garage popped down and gave me a hand. The floor was inch thick plywood and all the coachscrews holding it down were, as you could guess, seized. We came up with a plan of him using a big lever and me drilling lots of holes around the coachscrews. You can see the petrol tank is quite small for something to go travelling with, may need to find something bigger. Once i disconnected the tank i poured the petrol away and it was pure orange, like irn-bru. Must have been laying in the tank for years.
The weekend after my brother came along instead of Jana as i wanted to get the engine/gearbox and the rest of the glass out. We even managed to get the rest of the doors off.
Glass out
Checking out how to remove the engine. We disconnected the gearbox first and tied rope around the engine to lift it straight up.
My garage buddys engine crane came in handy.
CHEEESE!!
A full 53bhp or so of pure antique metal
This is the hole that has been left from taking the motor out, The plan is to replace it with a 3 litre Cologne/Essex V6, i know it fits as ive seen the set up before in a Thames van. I'm going to go for an automatic box too as i just want it as a cruiser and i hope to keep the column change and rig it up to the autobox.
Thats as far as ive gotten with the van. I'm pretty much at the stage where i need to take the suspension, steering and rear axle off but before i do that i need to make up a way of supporting the van off the ground. I was looking at building a rotisserie but i came up with a slightly different idea. I'm going to build 2 huge dodecagons that split into 2 pieces. That way i can roll it on its side and sandblast/repair underneath then roll it back, unbolt the top half of the dodecagons and work on the roof etc..
Only thing is its going to cost about ยฃ180 in material so i need to do a few homers to make up the money for that. I also just put down a deposit to rent a new house with Jana so money is quite tight. Next update will probably be in a few more weeks.
Tvov wrote:
Any updates? Did Santa bring you any gifts related to the camper?
No camper gifts unfortunately, been a tight one this year.
January 2015 update
Yep, I'm still alive. Just with a lot more responsibilities and stress than before, hence the lack of updates on the van. Yet again nothing has happened with the van due to life getting in the way over the past few months.
I did get the livingroom finished for xmas though. If you are interested in it continue reading , if not then head to the end of the post for van related news.
When I first moved into the new house the livingroom was very um, 'granny' friendly. The typical 80's brick wall/fireplace inside around the walls was taking up about 2ft of space. Basic electric fire. uncomfy sofa and chairs, textured wallpaper, basically it was needing a complete refresh. The good thing about the house is there is nothing that needs urgent attention.
One Sunday after lunch I was wondering just how easy it would be to take the wall down, I got my hammer and bolster and knocked a few bricks down.
Then thought "well, looks like I've started the decorating now then" so I carried on.
With the walls down I made a start on digging out the fireplace and hearth. The chimney was still there and unblocked so I got a chimney sweep in to give it a good clean and test. It all came through OK, just a little pointing to do around the chimney stack on the roof but nothing major. I broke out the hammer drill and with a chisel bit I lifted all the tiles and broke the hearth down to leave me the sub-hearth. Also, the wall above the fireplace had been covered in some kind of 80's wood laminate with what felt like superglue.
That's the good thing about the salvage yard I work at. You have to be up for trying all aspects of the job, one of which is installing the fireplaces so I know how to remove one and clean the chamber out.
It was going to be a lot of hassle to the walls skimmed with plaster so I opted to use plaster board. My boss told me the easiest way was to "dot and dab" it. Which is using an adhesive to attach the plasterboards. First I had to PVA the wall to seal it.
Then the adhesive.
I took my time to make sure everything was all square and level when I put the boards on.
Then cut out the hole for the fireplace.
I wasn't too keen on the dot and dab method. Sure it was effective at holding the boards up but I seemed to make a complete mess everywhere, seriously, everywhere. For the 2 other walls I just done it the traditional way of using 1/2 x 1 inch timber and screwed the boards to that. Then I had to fill the gaps.
The whole time I was doing this was after work and weekends so it took a few weeks to do, the upstairs spare room became our livingroom for the time being. Anyway, at this point I was ready for the other side of the wall.
I really wanted a slate hearth for my fireplace but I couldn't afford it, even through my work it would cost atleast
ยฃ250 as it needs backfilled for a solid fuel fire. Instead I made a small shutter around the fireplace then poured it with the ducamix (heat proof concrete) and let it set. Oh, I also had to extend the electrical sockets to the new plasterboard.
Then I got some nice porcelain tiles, 6 of them for ยฃ40 to use as the hearth.
Filled in the gaps with tile grout and it was done, saved me about ยฃ180 over a s;ate hearth and in hindsight I'm really happy with the outcome as the porcelain tiles are so much more durable than soft slate.
I temporarily put the combination in place to see what it would be like and try pout sample of wallpaper. This is the same combination I restored that I used as a dummy fireplace in my old rented flat.
With those walls done I had decided to take a long weekend off work so I could repair the lexus starter motor solenoid and do a lot more to the house. Worst weekend I've had in a long time. The started motor is right between the V of the cylinders, underneath the injectors, air manifold, 2 water pipes, LPG injectors etc.. and basically, long story short I was at the garage form 10am to 2am, 16 hours. Had to leave the car at the garage and find my own way home and took a while to diagnose the rubber o rings in the injectors were leaking so I had to blow ยฃ30 on 8 little rubber washers to get it to run right. I only had 1 day to do the house, hence the exhausted and pissed off face on me.
I was adding another power socket to the other wall as I wanted the TV to be between the doors and didn't want to run cables around the door frames.
I smoothed and filled all the other walls once they were stripped and started to line them with lining paper. If anyone else out there is new to this house renovating thing I really recommend spending ยฃ20 in a good thick book about it, I got the readers digest diy manual which was good at explaining all of the things I was needing to do. Here I am checking out how you do wallpapering.
Then trying it out, fairly easy once you get the hang of it.
With all that done I got the gratebuilder from work to do the chamber work for the fireplace. I would have given it a go myself but when its something that has the potential to destroy the house its probably best to leave it to the professionals.
First fire ever ๐
Next thing was the floor. The wife and I wanted to have a nice sanded floor so I hired a floor sander for the weekend. Oh, I had also painted the other wall at this point too, a kind of stone white for the walls on the fire place side and a light green on the others.
I worked through all the grades, then used the edging sander and finally filled the gaps with pva mix and a top coat of pine wood filler. Took all weekend, very dusty and very noisy.
All that was left was to fit new skirting boards and give everything a little tidy and I was done, next step, the furnishings.
Im really happy with how it turned out and quite proud of myself to do pretty much 99% of it myself. I still go by the motto " you don't know if you can do it unless you try it". You might just surprise your self.
I managed to finish about 2 weeks before the xmas holidays so I let myself have a good rest.
Then I got some news from my boss that kinda annoyed me. Last time he was over from Florida we discussed when I would have a garage built assuming I moved into this house and I said June or July. To which he replied, "well, if we say July will be your last month at the garage would that be OK" so I agreed thinking id have plenty of time to build a garage. Then a few days before we broke up for the holidays he told me he needed me out by April.......
Uuuuugggh, so that just added to my stress, if I knew that's what he was planning I would have started the garage before the livingroom.
So my new project that I'm going to have to rush though is a double garage. Scotland's rules regarding a garage without having to get planning permission are actually quite relaxed. Here are those rules.
(1) The provision within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse of a building for any purpose incidental to the enjoyment of that dwellinghouse or the alteration, maintenance or improvement of such a building.
(2) Development is not permitted by this class if-
(a) it consists of a dwelling;
(b) any part of the development would be forward of a wall forming part of the principal elevation or side elevation where that elevation fronts a road;
(c) the height of the eaves would exceed 3 metres;
(d) any part of the development would exceed 4 metres in height;
(e) any part of the development within 1 metre of the boundary of the curtilage of the dwellinghouse would exceed 2.5 metres in height;
(f) as a result of the development the area of ground covered by development within the front or rear curtilage of the dwellinghouse (excluding the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck) would exceed 50% of the area of the front or rear curtilage respectively (excluding the ground area of the original dwellinghouse and any hard surface or deck); or
(g) in the case of land in a conservation area or within the curtilage of a listed building, the resulting building would have a footprint exceeding 4 square metres.
The only part of that which has been my biggest challenge is the 2.5 metres max within 1 metre of the boundy, due to my garden being about 6 metres wide and the garage being 5 metres wide. Ive spent a lot of time drawing and measuring so I don't need written permission (I,e a huge amount of money and time).
This is the garden when I moved in.
Since then I've had to lift all the stone chips and mark out my dimensions for the monolithic slab I will be pouring in. Underneath the blue tarp I have about 40 concrete sectional panels I got for a steal second-hand.
The outer edges of the slab will be 300 x 300 then the centre will be 150mm thick, ofcourse I will also have rebar and mesh in there too. Gives me a good indication size, really happy to actually start my dream of my very own double garage :).
Which brings me to today. The trenches are dug and I'm now skimming the top layer for the centre of the slab. A few people have already asked me why I'm not just hiring a digger and skip to do it all but to be honest I'm absolutely skint. I managed to get a small loan for the material but if I can save myself money by digging and disposing of the clay/soil in a trailer at the local tip I will. (even if that means roping in my poor brother to lend a hand, cheers bro)
Im hoping next week will be the last weekend of digging. And I can get the rebar in and concrete poured maybe around mid February, we'll see........
The only true van related news I have was I was in the December issue of classic ford which was nice. I'm missing not having done anything to the van for ages now but I guess I need to do all of these other things first so I can have the time and space to do the van, it should all be worthwhile in the end.
October 2014
Well, what a hectic and stressful couple of months I've had. Moving house took up about 2 weeks of my life and about 2 years off it. Getting time to do anything just seems so hard, I'm about a month late with this update, but, Im so happy that I am now in MY house and not someone else's that I am paying their mortgage. Another thing about moving into my own place is I now have this strange obsession to decorate. I guess its because I have never had the freedom to do so in all the places I have rented before. Of course this means its something else that takes my time up. I don't want to bore everyone to death about decorating so I will keep this part short and just show a few progress pics, skip past them if its not your thing.
Enough of that crap, back to the main thing, the van.
I've been lucky to get just a few weekends down to the garage. I would normally go atleast once a week after work but the route to the garage from work has been closed for major bridge works and the detour adds about 40mins during rush hour traffic which I cant be bothered with. I also found it a bit difficult top get back into the swing of things from when I last touched the van before the small bike project. It was also because I had to start back on the van with a tricky area to sort out that left me frustrated at times, the front disc set up.
Just to re-cap, the vented discs and 4 pot callipers are taken from a 3.5 ton long wheel base mk2 Ford transit. The same as this.
I think I briefly mentioned a while ago that to get all this to fit I needed to modify a few bits. Because of the age of my van the stock wheel hub was a bit weedy compared to the later model ones so I managed to part exchange them with the owner of the Thames club for later versions, Here it is before having anything done to it.
If I remember correctly ( it has been a few months), I got an engineer to get it in the lathe and skim the front and rear face a bit to make it true, then the rear of the hub was turned down a little for clearance and to make a ring for the disc to register onto then I also got 5 holes on a pcd of 5 x 100 so I could bolt the Transit discs in from behind. It cost ยฃ180 for the pair and he done a great job of it.
He also skimmed the inner hole of the vented disc so it would sit behind the hub.
Bolted together they make the complete hub/disc assembly. I was going to get him to press the wheel studs in but they hadn't arrived at that point so I will get that done later.
With that sorted I had to get the calliper bracket mounted. Here is the standard stub axle. Those four bolts would normally hold the back of the drum assembly in place but I now need them to hold the calliper bracket instead.
This is the standard transit calliper bracket, unfortunately its not a straight bolt on fit. Those holes are just ever so slightly the wrong pcd.
To remedy this I cut 4 bits of 10mm bar and placed them in the holes.
Quick zap with the mig and a clean up and I have a bracket ready for new holes.
When I was working all this out I decided that I would keep the bracket at the same angle as the transit, that is, exactly at 90 degrees to the disc. I mocked it up to see what it was like.
Everything was fine, until, I went to full lock. On full lock and the suspension fully extended the calliper would be hitting against the lower suspension arm, not good. By turning the calliper anti clockwise by about 5 degrees I was able to miss all the vital suspension parts on full lock. To get these holes done correctly I headed back to the engineers again and left them with him.
I did try to drill one of the holes myself in the pillar drill but there was soo much wobble I couldn't get it to with in tolerances, the engineer done them in his milling machine so they turned out exactly correct.
When I got them back I bolted it all together and with a 2mm shim to centralise the calliper everything was great.
No more fouling of the lower arm at full extension.
Plus, I think the look awesome.
So, after a difficult re-start I managed to get it all to work. Well, the anti roll bar still hits the calliper but is much easier to move that back an inch than the rest of what I've done. Im sure these discs combined with the rear 9 inch drums will be adequate to the performance of the van. I also have a 1inch bore landrover mastercylinder installed and will be fitting a remote brake booster. I feel this is a good base to start from and can fine tune it once I get it running and can test drive it.
I also managed to get a full set of 4 15 inch wheels from Sandy at the Thames owner club. I feel I will be taking another trip to the engineers so he can split these and I can get on with banding them.
On another slight tangent, I'm getting kicked out of my garage. My boss knows I have just bought a new house and I told him I'm looking to get a garage built in the garden. He is being very reasonable about it though, I said I hope to have a garage installed before July next year so he has given me until then to get everything sorted. It makes sense, he could be renting the whole building out to someone and actually making profit and the same for me, I pay ยฃ100 a month which is very cheap for what I get but still, that's ยฃ1200 a year I will be saving.
Oh, another little thing before I go, I managed to sell the bike. I wasn't sure what it was worth so my first Ebay adventure at ยฃ2500 was a test to see what kind of offers I would receive. A couple people offered ยฃ1500 so when it ended I put it back on starting at ยฃ1500. I kind of hoped id get a few people interested in it but it only got one bid, well, atleast I got my ยฃ1500.
Bye-bye,
After all my costs I made about ยฃ1000 not including labour which is a nice tidy sum I have put away to go towards the garage build. I am on the look out for a second hand double pre-fab concrete garage if anyone knows of one going cheap?.
Well, that concludes this months work. I wish I could split myself up, one to go to work, one to be with the wife, one to go to the van, one to decorate the house and one to get on with finding and building a garage plus foundations.
Oh, oh, one last thing, be sure to get the next issue of Classic Ford, they sent a photographer down and its going to be featured in the grafters section, yippee!.
Well, what a hectic and stressful couple of months I've had. Moving house took up about 2 weeks of my life and about 2 years off it. Getting time to do anything just seems so hard, I'm about a month late with this update, but, Im so happy that I am now in MY house and not someone else's that I am paying their mortgage. Another thing about moving into my own place is I now have this strange obsession to decorate. I guess its because I have never had the freedom to do so in all the places I have rented before. Of course this means its something else that takes my time up. I don't want to bore everyone to death about decorating so I will keep this part short and just show a few progress pics, skip past them if its not your thing.
Enough of that crap, back to the main thing, the van.
I've been lucky to get just a few weekends down to the garage. I would normally go atleast once a week after work but the route to the garage from work has been closed for major bridge works and the detour adds about 40mins during rush hour traffic which I cant be bothered with. I also found it a bit difficult top get back into the swing of things from when I last touched the van before the small bike project. It was also because I had to start back on the van with a tricky area to sort out that left me frustrated at times, the front disc set up.
Just to re-cap, the vented discs and 4 pot callipers are taken from a 3.5 ton long wheel base mk2 Ford transit. The same as this.
I think I briefly mentioned a while ago that to get all this to fit I needed to modify a few bits. Because of the age of my van the stock wheel hub was a bit weedy compared to the later model ones so I managed to part exchange them with the owner of the Thames club for later versions, Here it is before having anything done to it.
If I remember correctly ( it has been a few months), I got an engineer to get it in the lathe and skim the front and rear face a bit to make it true, then the rear of the hub was turned down a little for clearance and to make a ring for the disc to register onto then I also got 5 holes on a pcd of 5 x 100 so I could bolt the Transit discs in from behind. It cost ยฃ180 for the pair and he done a great job of it.
He also skimmed the inner hole of the vented disc so it would sit behind the hub.
Bolted together they make the complete hub/disc assembly. I was going to get him to press the wheel studs in but they hadn't arrived at that point so I will get that done later.
With that sorted I had to get the calliper bracket mounted. Here is the standard stub axle. Those four bolts would normally hold the back of the drum assembly in place but I now need them to hold the calliper bracket instead.
This is the standard transit calliper bracket, unfortunately its not a straight bolt on fit. Those holes are just ever so slightly the wrong pcd.
To remedy this I cut 4 bits of 10mm bar and placed them in the holes.
Quick zap with the mig and a clean up and I have a bracket ready for new holes.
When I was working all this out I decided that I would keep the bracket at the same angle as the transit, that is, exactly at 90 degrees to the disc. I mocked it up to see what it was like.
Everything was fine, until, I went to full lock. On full lock and the suspension fully extended the calliper would be hitting against the lower suspension arm, not good. By turning the calliper anti clockwise by about 5 degrees I was able to miss all the vital suspension parts on full lock. To get these holes done correctly I headed back to the engineers again and left them with him.
I did try to drill one of the holes myself in the pillar drill but there was soo much wobble I couldn't get it to with in tolerances, the engineer done them in his milling machine so they turned out exactly correct.
When I got them back I bolted it all together and with a 2mm shim to centralise the calliper everything was great.
No more fouling of the lower arm at full extension.
Plus, I think the look awesome.
So, after a difficult re-start I managed to get it all to work. Well, the anti roll bar still hits the calliper but is much easier to move that back an inch than the rest of what I've done. Im sure these discs combined with the rear 9 inch drums will be adequate to the performance of the van. I also have a 1inch bore landrover mastercylinder installed and will be fitting a remote brake booster. I feel this is a good base to start from and can fine tune it once I get it running and can test drive it.
I also managed to get a full set of 4 15 inch wheels from Sandy at the Thames owner club. I feel I will be taking another trip to the engineers so he can split these and I can get on with banding them.
On another slight tangent, I'm getting kicked out of my garage. My boss knows I have just bought a new house and I told him I'm looking to get a garage built in the garden. He is being very reasonable about it though, I said I hope to have a garage installed before July next year so he has given me until then to get everything sorted. It makes sense, he could be renting the whole building out to someone and actually making profit and the same for me, I pay ยฃ100 a month which is very cheap for what I get but still, that's ยฃ1200 a year I will be saving.
Oh, another little thing before I go, I managed to sell the bike. I wasn't sure what it was worth so my first Ebay adventure at ยฃ2500 was a test to see what kind of offers I would receive. A couple people offered ยฃ1500 so when it ended I put it back on starting at ยฃ1500. I kind of hoped id get a few people interested in it but it only got one bid, well, atleast I got my ยฃ1500.
Bye-bye,
After all my costs I made about ยฃ1000 not including labour which is a nice tidy sum I have put away to go towards the garage build. I am on the look out for a second hand double pre-fab concrete garage if anyone knows of one going cheap?.
Well, that concludes this months work. I wish I could split myself up, one to go to work, one to be with the wife, one to go to the van, one to decorate the house and one to get on with finding and building a garage plus foundations.
Oh, oh, one last thing, be sure to get the next issue of Classic Ford, they sent a photographer down and its going to be featured in the grafters section, yippee!.
