Flash

@gazguy thanks heaps for bringing back some memories for me. I owned a AC50 back in the day. Bought it brand new in 1978 and sadly it got written off less than a year later. Uncannily enought exactly 47 years ago today.

The little Moke only leaves a few light drops of oil on the garage floor which is quite surprising for a British vehicle. I've previously spent a bit of time trying to track down the source of the leak and I'm almost certain that its coming from the rod change on the gearbox. So I included a rod change anti leak seal kit in the latest order from Minisport. The kit consists of a small factory seal as well as a dust boot for the rod. Included in the kit is a machined aluminium donut that is fitted with an outer O ring. This part is non standard but reports are that it reduces the sideways force exerted on the seal in the hopes that the seal will last longer. Another option is to double up on the factory seals, but the little kit was only a few dollars more than the cost of two seals, so I figured what the hell, let's give the kit a go. In order to fit the new seal the whole change mechanism needs to come out so that was the first order of business. Since fitting the larger diameter exhaust I've noticed the occasional knock coming from underneath so I suspected that either the exhaust was making contact with the gear selector mechanism or that the gear selector mechanism was making contact with the body. Turns out it was both, but the worst one was the gear selector making contact with the side of the floor as witnessed when I pulled off the gearstick gaitor. My fault entirely as when I fabricated the new rear selector mount as part of the exhaust install I had to shift the selector sideways to clear the fatter exhaust. So I need to deal with this while I have the selector mechanism removed. While I was waiting for the oil to drain I quickly pulled out the selector and cleaned up around the old seal. In the box of parts that came with the Moke was a short shift kit that the previous owner had already fitted to a spare housing, so I figured while I had the mechanism out I'd give the short shifter a go. I made quick work of changing over the custom rear mount, rod connector and reverse light switch from the original mechanism to the short shifter and by that time the oil had drained, so I was able to dig out the old seal. Came out easier than I was expecting. Then tapped in the little aluminium donut followed by the new rubber seal. Luckily I had a deep socket that was perfect for the job. With that done I turned my attention to opening up the gearshift hole. It was a bit tricky as I needed to retain the 4 holes for the mounting screws as well as leaving enough meat so that the gaiter would cover my butchery, but I took out as much as I could with my dremel and then tidied the area up with a spritz from a colour matched rattle can that I also found in the box of Moke bits. It's not a perfect match but I'm not too fussed as it is all covered up by the gaiter anyway. Popped in the short shift mechanism and refilled the oil and it was time for a test drive. In summary there is something desperately wrong with the short shifter. First gear selects easily. Reverse is a bit hit and miss and 2nd, 3rd and 4th are a complete no go. I suspect that old mate has assembled something incorrectly inside the mechanism but by that stage I was running out of time, so just reinstated the original mechanism for now. I'll do some homework on the short shifter when I'm less time poor and hopefully I can get it sorted.

Earlier this week out Postie pitched up with a box of goodness from Minisport in Adelaide. Thought I'd start by fitting the new rear shockies as the existing ones are toast. Of course just another example of old mates work with the original shocks painted over. The passenger side one came out pretty easily but instead of the nut coming off the lower shock mount the whole stud unwound itself from the suspension arm. To add insult to injury the shock's mounting sleeve had almost welded itself to the stud. Luckily I managed to clamp the stud in my vice and after some liberal shots of WD40 I was able to use a punch to get the sleeve moving. On the driver's side I was not that lucky. The nut on the top mounting wasn't giving up the fight that easily. I was afeared that I might end up breaking my 1/4 inch spanner that I was using to hold the flat portion of the rod just above the thread so gave up on that and decided to break out the angle grinder. Not wanting to cover the rear seat in hot filings I decided to remove it. The mounting bolts came out pronto but when I tried to lift the seat out it wouldn't clear the rollbar so I ended up pushing it as far left as I could. I then built a little shield around the work area using cardboard and a couple of old towels. Then grabbed the baby grinder and I did a thing. I thought that the sliver of leftover nut might fight me, but a quick tap with a punch and out she came. Turned my attention to the old shocks and they are well and truly shagged. Popped the new jobbies in and things are looking much better. Last job before calling it a morning was to sort out the rear wheels while I had them off. In one of my previous Minisport orders I included a fresh batch of chrome wheel nuts and at the time the part listing mentioned that the sunrasia wheels would need to have their bolt holes camfered at 60 degrees in order to accept the new nuts. Since the camfer tool listed cost moonbeams and our old nuts looked very similar I thought I'd take a chance that our wheels had already received the treatment. Sadly not, so I ended up fitting the old nuts back. So this time around I dusted off the old wallet and sprang for the camfer tool. It came in a fancy little box which was pleasing considerng the cost of the bloody thing. Chucked it on the old battery drill and gave each bolt hole a little tickle. Did all 4 wheels and I have to admit that the new nuts bottom out really nicely now. At $4.31 per hole I should bloody well think so.

Thought I'd share this for anyone who is interested :

Quick and easy job today. I haven't had a working oil pressure light since doing the engine transplant. I know they are basically useless but it has been on the "to do" list for a while so why not tick it off. Main reason I couldn't connect it up earlier was due to a snapped off electrical connection point on the pressure switch itself. I was hoping to pinch the switch off my spare engine but it was in even worse condition with a whole chunk of bakelite missing. Not really a drama as new switches are cheap as chips so I ordered a decent quality one off eBay which pitched up earlier this week. Quickly swapped in the new switch which sits on the oil pump housing. The wire in the factory loom was a tad too short to reach the new switch position so I soldered on an extra bit of wire together with a new end connector. And we now have both an oil pressure light as well as my recently connected charge light. Sometime in the future I'd like to connect up the factory water temp gauge even although I also have an aftermarket temp gauge fitted. I've also played around with some LED globes for instrument lighting but I was experiencing globe flicker which I've heard is common when using cheap and cheerful LEDs. I'm now back on the original globes which give the instruments that sickly yellow glow. The globes are the small BA9S type and I've heard good things about the Narva Arctic Blue incandescent globes so I might give a pair of those a try. In other news I swapped a few yarns with Mark from Multiflex Cables in NSW this morning. He is such a good bloke. With a bit of luck my shorter push/pull cable should arrive towards the end of next week. Thanks for looking.

Managed to get Frankenstein bolted up to my chassis using an existing hole in the cross brace that just so happened to be in the right location. I then measured up the length for the intermediate shaft and cut up a piece of M6 threaded rod to suit. With everything finally in place I hopped into the cab to put the gearstick through its paces and ..... Bloody awful ! Gear movement was hard as hell. Why oh why is it so ? Started to do a bit of diagnosis. First up I disconnected the cable from Frankenstein, climbed in the cab and put the gearstick through its paces with the furthest end of the cable now attached to fresh air. Smooth and effortless as one would expect. Back under the van with Frankenstein and the intermediate shaft connected to the selector arm of the gearbox I proceeded to put the gearbox through its gears by manipulating the pivot arm manually. Pretty easy going too. Scratched my head for a bit and then decided to bypass Frankenstein and just use the long looped cable attached straight to the gearbox arm. This is the exact setup that I ran when I first got the van on the road. Luckily I still had the original outer sheath mounting bracket for this setup so quickly bolted that in place. Back in the cab for a quick test and ..... Bloody awful ! How can that be ? Gave it a few more test tries and then realised that the amount of effort needed for gear selection is exactly what is currently required for gate selection. The issue stems from the use of the longer looped cables. It's just not as noticable for the gate selection as that is a sideways movement on the stick rather than a forward and backward movement I've now realised that the incremental improvements in shift effort that have resulted from the linkage modifications that I have made over time have spoiled me. Needless to say I spent the rest of the morning banishing Frankenstein and the longer cable to the naughty corner and reinstating my latest front pivot setup. Took the van for a test drive and all is good in the world again. So what's next. Well I still think a new cable in a slightly shorter length will go some way to reducing the ugly loop of cable sticking out underneath the front of the van. In fact I tested this theory by disconnecting the cable from the gearbox end and pulling the slack through to the back. Sadly I can't deal with the excess cable length down that end as the cable runs inside the boxed section of the RHS chassis leg. So the ugly loop will have to stay up front until I can get a custom length cable made up. Once I've got the new cable in place I'll then be able to work on a solid plan to modify my air deflector plate so I can get that back on. Sadly I was so caught up with this morning's failings that I neglected to take some photos. But fear not as I've got some other photos on a little side project to share. So spurred into action by @yoeddynz's latest ICE installation and the fact that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery here is my take on his latest invention: Take one Boze mini bluetooth speaker: And just jamb the bloody thing into the glove box opening like so: No fancy brackets for me. Just brute force and ignorance. Works like a bloody charm.

First thing this morning I pulled out the front pivot point and short cable currently being used for gear selection. I'll put this to one side for now just in case. I then dusted off the longer cable that has been languishing on a shelf in the shed for almost a year. It didn't take long to couple the longer cable back up to the L300 gearshift mechanism that I'm currently using. I had to slap on a pair of large flat washers to hold the outer cable due to me hacking off the cable mount last week. Oh well such is life. If this works out I'll either source another shifter or weld the cable mount in from another hacked base plate that I have in stock. Anyway cable is now in and as you can see in the photo below the gear selector cable now follows the same route as the gate selector cable which means I can reinstate my air deflector plate. With the front end of the cable installed I turned my attention to the new pivot selector that will be needed on the gearbox side. As previously mentioned I don't want to waste time making something pretty until I've proved that it will work. So for now I'm just cobbling together something from whatever I've got lying around. She aint going to win any beauty contests but here is my first itteration: Next step is to drill a hole in the pivot arm in order to attach an intermediate shaft that will run between this monstrosity and the arm on the gearbox. It may take a few goes before I get the position of the hole to match the throw that I want on the gearstick. But that's tomorrow's job after I've mounted my latest creation to the chassis cross brace. Oh the joys of working on a vehicle with a wooden floor.

Today was a non van day, but I did managed to steal a few minutes to scratch through my pile of scrap left over from previous gearshift related adventures and came up with this promising looking pile of possible candidates: Of particular interest is this little pivot type setup which I think I can repurpose for the next version: The plan for tomorrow is to cobble together something rough and ready just to prove the concept.

Okay, so I think I've painted myself into a bit of a corner with my recent gearshift shenanigans. You may recall that about 6 months ago I fabricated this complex looking thing: Now whilst it works perfectly I have been unable to reinstall my air deflector plate due to the pronounced droop in this cable: The issue is the lazy bend in the cable. On longer journeys at higher speeds I have noticed an increase in engine temps without having the air deflector plate in place and this does worry me a bit. If I back off the speed a bit the temp comes down again, so I can only assume that at speed the air starts to flow under the radiator rather than through it. Also I'm not a fan of looking under the front of the van and seeing a loose looking loop of cable. I have tried fitting the air deflector by forcing the cable to bend but the cable doesn't like it and the gearshift becomes very heavy. I was hoping that I could get a new push/pull cable fabricated with a fixed 90 degree bend in the outer sheath that would negate the need for a lazy loop. So earlier today I made contact with a couple of places that make up bespoke cables. Both gents confirmed that a 90 degree bend is not an option for these heavy duty cables, not so much due to the structure of the outer sheath but more to do with the makeup of the inner cable that cannot handle sharp bends. I could achieve a bend with a lighter inner cable but run the risk of the cable not being able to withstand the push forces on it. What a bummer. This leaves me with two options: Option 1 - cut a slot in the air deflector plate that would allow the lazy bend to poke out below the plate. (lowering the whole plate is not really an option) Option 2 - look at raising the holding bracket for the outer sheath to the point where the cable loop is high enough to clear the air deflector plate. Option 1 would solve the air deflector plate clash but I'd still be left with the untidy looking loop of cable visible when viewing the van front on. My OCD couldn't live with this option. So for the rest of the morning I spent a bit of quality time under the van investigating Option 2 and ...... Nyet ! Whilst I can raise the holding bracket sufficiently high enough to clear the air deflector plate I don't have enough headroom in the air tunnel to extend the lever by the same amount. When I say lever I mean this piece: And that's the corner I've painted myself into. So what now : Well another option might be for me to scrap the intermediate pivot mechanism up front and then reinstate the longer looped cable that matches the cable I'm currently using for the gate movement. This will allow me to reinstate the air deflector plate but will result in a return to the longer gearshift throw. Not ideal to my way of thinking. Then I turned my mind to a different approach. What if I reinstate the longer looped cable and then fabricate an intermediate pivot type setup for the gearbox end of the cable. The pivot design would need to change though or I'd end up with a reverse shift pattern. So to my way of thinking something like this: One single pivot arm with two holes. The looped cable would attach to the hole closest to the pivot point and an intermediate solid rod would attach to the gearshift arm on the gearbox at the point on the arm furthest away from the pivot. If I got my mounting points right on the pivot arm it should shorten the gearstick throw to the desired length. Well that's the theory anyway. I already have the longer push/pull cable in stock and I'm sure I can find the makings of a suitable pivot setup somewhere amongst my stash. So all that it is really going to take is a bit of fabrication effort on my part and hey my time is free so what the hell. Tomorrow's a bust but I'm thinking I'll make a start on Wednesday. What can possibly go wrong.

Mate, I'm loving the look of your car without the front bumper. And while I'm at it your engine and gearbox choice are spot on. I'm enjoying watching your progress so please keep the updates coming.

I started the morning off by fitting my new interior lights. I've soldered little male and female spade connectors on each light wire so they are easy to remove if need be and the wiring is all wrapped in spiral bind to keep things neat. I then had a quick smoko and headed through to town for my hot date at the exhaust shop. They ended up moving the flange joint to just after the two into one split on the intermediate pipe and then replaced the section of pipe up to the stainless steel muffler input. They also found a leak on a previous weld just after the muffler which I'll stick my hand up for. Note to self ... Flash mate, your gasless welding is far to dodgy for exhausts, so just dust off your wallet and take the bloody van straight to the professionals next time.... you cheap bastard.

Started the morning off with a some arts and crafts and ended up with this little template: Another little offcut of roof flashing proved to be the perfect size. A few spins of my grinder of angles resulted in this lovely pair: Bendy, bendy: Then poked a few holes and splashed a bit of satin black about the place. I'll let them dry overnight and will fit them up in the morning.

Checked light brightness last night and I'm much happier with the larger lights in their proposed position. Tuesday's are normally gardening day but we woke up to high winds this morning so rather than chasing clouds of grass clippings about the place I figure I'll make a start on fabricating the mounting brackets for the lights. Should be able to provide a quick update at close of play today.

Something prompted me to test those new interior lights under cover of darkness last night and I'm sure glad I did before going to all the touble of making up the mounts and drilling holes in my dashboard lip. Turns out the lights are bloody dismal. This morning I woke up with the beginnings of a fresh plan in mind. It just so happens that a while back I bought a pair of roof mounted lights that I was planning to fit before having the roof panels recovered. When I chickened out on that plan I shoved the lights on a shelf in the shed and forgot about them. Dusted them off for a closer look: Not too bad looking, but they are quite a bit chunkier than the previous version so if I had to mount these under the dash they would severley limit my ability to access the wiring harness, wiper motor and wiper assembly for future maintenance purposes. So if I'm going to use these lights an alternate location is required. Quickly ruled out the roof lining as its just too pristine now. Poked my head around the interior and came up with an alternate location being the narrow vertical footwell panels just forward of the A pillars. Like so: Grabbed one of the lights for a test and if I was to mount them with the longer side running vertically they fit quite nicely in the circled space. The plan being to mount one in the same location on either side. Again I'll need to test them in the dark tonight before I fully commit to the plan. So I've extended my new wiring to the proposed locations and have temporarily connected up the lights for tonight's little exercise. Being in a bit of a holding pattern I turned my thoughts to possible mounting options for the lights. This is going to be tricky as the A pillars themselves are fully enclosed with very little space available to get to the hidden face of each pillar for hole drilling purposes. I could surface mount a bracket attached to the prominent face of the pillar and drill a few holes for self tappers, but it would look fuggly. Apart from the A pillar the rest of the side and front panels are single skinned so no obvious options apart from say bonding in a bracket. That would work as the units are pretty light weight, but I don't fancy the idea of doing something semi permanent in case I change my mind further down the track. I then turned my mind to other alternatives and I think I've come up with a cunning plan. So the upper hinges on each of the front doors have three fixing bolts that are located above the boxed section of the A pillar. Looks like so: Feeling around the back of the hinge mount I can confirm that there is a thicker "sandwich" plate that has threaded holes to accomodate the hinge bolts. The bolts themselves are pretty long so I can feel a good bit of thread protruding through the back of the threaded plate. Offhand I don't know what the thread type is, but I dug out my box of imperial sized nuts and bolts for a bit of a nosey. Scratching through the stash I ended up with two handfulls of nuts that looked to be about the right size. Then it was just a case of trying each nut in turn on the back of one of the bolts. Had to work just by feel so it took a bit of time, but out of the potentials I whittled down the group to these 10 successful candidates: To keep my mounting brackets as simple as possible I'm thinking I'll only need two nuts per mount, but I've put the stash to one side for now. So if tonight's light test goes well, the next step will be a bit of cardboard aided design to come up with a suitable bracket. Something L shaped should do the trick. Tomorrow's a bust and Wednesday is the day the van is booked in for the exhaust repair. So Thursday looks like being a bit of a fabrication day. Thanks for looking.

While I'm adding little luxuries of an electrical nature I figured a couple of interior lights would be a good thing to have for night driving. In factory format the old Thames was blessed with a pair of roof mounted interior lights that were fixed to the two main roof ribs. Each light had its own on/off switch but that was basically your lot. No such thing as door activated switches. Now I don't really want to go drilling mounting holes in my newly covered roof panels, so instead I'm going to fit a pair of underdash lights much like I did in the 66 Mustang a few years back. Grabbed an eight pack of these little crackers off eBay: And also picked up one of these three position toggle switches from Jaycar during my last town run: The clever lads at the Dagenham factory have blessed the Thames with a little pre-drilled hole in the steering column supporting bracket that was meant for the heater switch. Since heaters weren't an option offered on the Aussie assembled vans the little hole has been languishing quitely for the past 60 years just waiting for its moment to shine. And today was the day: So that's the little switch in and wired up. I finished off the morning by cutting two bits of 1mm thick aluminium plate out of a leftover bit of window flashing. These will form the backing plates for the new lights. I'll poke a few holes in those tomorrow and then hopefully I can mount the lights in their final position. I've got a cunning plan for the door switches but I need to do some more homework before the big reveal, so stay tuned.