Got the tilt frame built over Easter and pulled the trans and front beam as well to make room.
Bit of a juggling act to get the frame under with the body jacked up on stands and a jack but got there in the end. Managed to squash the new heater tube a little along the way though
Started cleaning up the beam and gearbox and have pulled the spindles off the beam for Bevoracing to do a spindle re-build for me.
A bit of welding work to the fuel tank shelf to sort out some rusty bits and then decided to POR15 most of it to fill in some pitting and tidy things up.
This weekend I was battling a hangover for most of Saturday so Sunday only and had a mate give a hand to tip her over. A bit scary but went over with no dramas and certainly makes the underside a whole lot more accessible. Starting to go through and tidy up some welds and get more stuff in primer.
Hours and hours of fun to get the underneath of the bus tidy........welds to tidy where I couldn't get to before. Bolts to drill out that had been snapped off, stuck heater cable's to extract, getting the red oxide off and grinding rusty bits before painting with POR15.....Hours of entertainment
Nearly all of the heater tube pieces had rusted out so I had to plunder some bits off the donor which is starting to look a little worse for wear! I love being on my back with an angle grinder having rust and dirt rain down on me!
I couldn't find any Y pieces so had a rat around the shed and found an old V8 exhaust section that I could make do with. Its a little smaller but will do the job. If I did this job again I would not weld any of the pieces in until the end as it gets very hard so slot all the pieces together if any of the ends are fixed in place.
I plan on painting any original parts like chassis rails etc with Por15, then primer over the whole lot and then Upol Gravitex under body Schutz, with body colour over that.
Underneath is now pretty much done. Stripped it back and gave the worst of it a dose of POR15 and then over the top with some Epotec Primer by Protec Paints.
Sika seam sealer in all the nooks and crannys
Then a healthy dose (about 6 bottles) of Upol Gravitex on the bottom.
Then some cleaning up threads and rust removal on pedals etc ready for some black paint
Thanks Morts, rather looking forward to driving it one day.....
Forgot to post a pic of the oil cooler install, and the wheels have all had new hubcap clips even though I wont be running hubcaps and are now off getting sandblasted and powder coated.
For anyone contemplating a buying a project car, buy the best one you can afford, 'cos they can hoover up a remarkable amount of time and money
is that oil cooler going to get enough air going through it .
i did a similar thing on my v8 mitsu ute for the tranny cooler .
it still got red hot . we worked out after alot of head scratching that the air was
getting very turbulant before it went over the top of the cooler (gap between body and cooler was about 2 inches).
we ended up putting scoops to direct air over the top only(so air had to go through the cooler one way and not both sides at the same time) and a small motorcycle fan pulling from underneath .
that worked great
