Sunbeam

Me and strip disc vs front panel. Yuck.

Proof that aluminium alloys do rust.

The great thing about a project like this is that you can just work on it when you feel like it, or like today when I had outdoor plans, but it’s drizzling. I have saved the left hand bulkhead outrigger by just patching the front face. It’s weird how the front face rotted out, but the bottom is sound. Inside the box section was packed full of dry mud. Not the tidiest patch, but it’s not exactly in the public eye. I also made a new brace for it. Again, very strange how a piece of angle, with no real rust trapping properties just rusted in half in the middle.

Blades are solid, there is a slight hollow in the round bit at the root. Some numbers, mostly indexing marks for setting up in the hub and some other numbers that are meaningless without the right book probably. I’m 99% sure they’re off one of these: Which makes them old school.

My buddy on the coast spotted these when the owner dropped in for a WOF on his way to the scrappies. It turns out the hoarder owner of this treasure had finally decided that a couple of decades of storing these was enough and it was time for a purge. Best mate #1 rightly judged that these would be right up my alley. I am in the process of finding out what aircraft they came off. For reference, each blade is 2.05 metres tall, so not off a Piper Cub then.... Plans are a good bling up and park at least one in the front entrance of my house where other types of folk might put a hat rack.

Hurhur. Missed the turbo bit...have to read from the beginning again!

Why is 9.5:1 too high compression? Seems quite mild.

I approve of your tow vehicle

Hard to get the fuelling spot on without a boost compensated fuel pump, so will always be a compromise.

Detroit powered TM? But seriously, I saw a Nissan Condor the other day, 7 metre flat deck, nice and low to the ground, might have been one of those small wheel jobbies I think. I’ve seen some Mitsi/Fuso trucks that are long and low too, often not big $.

RL Beddy

I think it’s great you’re letting it wear it’s past with pride. I do enjoy a slightly wrinkly Land Rover

Cleaning up some tools today, I couldn’t resist playing compare the gearbox. 4 speed on the left, 5 on the right. Speedo drives are on opposite sides, and clutch mechanisms are also reversed, but that’s just a bell housing swap away from happiness. I did notice something a bit off about the crossmember still attached to the 4 speeder... look at the left of the pic... it’s bent! Further investigation revealed a corresponding ding in the chassis, so that will need fixing too.

Progress. The driveshaft was the first thing to come out. I managed to achieve this without compressing the donut. The UJ’s are good, the hanger bearing itself is good, but the rubber support is chooched. Once the driveshaft is out, it becomes very obvious how to get the gear stick out. 4x 10mm nuts, and it drops out underneath the car. The exhaust downpipe bolts came out willingly (phew) and then by a series of contortions I got the starter motor bolts out. I don’t know if the starter is supposed to be able to come out of the engine bay at this point but I certainly couldn’t. Next was the lower flywheel cover and the two bottom bellhousing bolts (easy as), and then I wrangled the clutch cable out before psyching myself up for the top bellhousing bolts. I’m glad there are only 2 up there. I couldn’t find the right spanner angle to get them from the top, so I took @azzurro‘s advice and used all my half inch extensions and universal joint with tape on it and you can just get to them from underneath. One of the trickier operations was releasing the speedo cable. I couldn’t unscrew the cable because I physically couldn’t get my fingers on it, so I undid the nut and wangled the whole speedo drive out. Lucky the gearbox is light, since I’m working alone lying on the floor, so it was fairly simple to pop it off and onto the floor. The engine came out next, I cannot believe how little clearance there is. With the fan clutch touching the slam panel, there is maybe an inch between the clutch and the firewall. I think I’m going to lose the fan clutch as it’s quite noisy. Other observations are...it’s filthy. No oil drips but lots of seeps, from both engine and box. Also, I will need a new gearbox mount, and I’ll get a new hanger bearing for the driveshaft.

What manual is that? It looks much better than my Autobooks one