Flash

Managed to get the Thames back on its front wheels for the first time in a few months. Pushed it out of the shed so I could give the floor a good sweep. Looking at the Thames front on the L300 steering angle box hangs lower than the front valance, but it's a small price to pay for the vastly improved steering setup. Even with two leaves removed from the back springs, the van has still got a bit of a nose down stance. Perfect for that 70s look that I am aiming for. Thanks for looking.

Spent the morning fabricating a mounting bracket for the power steering reservoir. I've tucked the reservoir out of the way in the back corner of the engine box. Just need to give the bracket a few coats of Hammerite and I'll call it done My mate Lane dropped by and will take the original L300 pressure hose back to work so he can solder some new hose tails onto the existing fittings. Then its just a case of crimping on a new piece of hose and it will be good to go.

The next item on the agenda is to sort out a fluid reservoir for the power steering, so I ambled over to my trusty old Mitsi donor van and managed to relieve it of this likely looking candidate. What a grubby girl that Mitsi is ... typical backpacker van. Nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of de-greaser and wipe over with a rag though. Then I just need to figure out where I can squeeze it in. Boy, the old Thames engine box is getting to be a busy little office.

I've had one of those brake pipe flaring tools lying around the shed for many moons, but have never given it a try. A few weeks back I thought I'd have a go at modifying the clutch line in order to mate the HiAce slave cylinder flexi hose to the Thames master cylinder hard line. My first attempt ended up leaking on the new flare and at the time I suspected user error, mainly due to the fact that I had trimmed the hard line with a hacksaw. So I went online and ordered one of China's finest mini pipe cutters which arrived last week. Cracked into it after morning smoko and I now have what appears to be a working clutch with no dribble. A sneaky peek at my precision tools cause no one likes a picture less update.

First task for today was to mount the radiator and shroud as I figured the radiator and the power steering pressure pipe might be fighting over the same real estate. Looks like I should just manage to squeeze everything in with enough clearance to keep my cert man happy. While I had the radiator in position I thought I'd trial fit my new upper radiator pipe. Its one of those flex jobbies. I'm a lot happier with this than I was with the two part hose setup that I was previously running.

Next step is to figure out a good place to mount the fluid reservoir and I can then work out the pipework needed. I grabbed the pressure pipe from the Mitsi donor van and hooked it up to the pump. It's way too long, but at least I can re-use the fittings on either end. I've puzzled more or less what I need as shown in the marked up photo below, but I need to test mount the radiator to double check clearances, before I start modifying the pipe. My neighbor Lane earns a crust making up hydraulic hoses and should be home this weekend coming, so I'll call on him for a hand. Thanks for reading.

So with the belt on order the next step was to bolt the pump onto the engine in the Thames to check clearances. The good news is that there is adequate clearance between the pump and the chassis leg. Top view:

Managed to grab a few hours in the shed this morning, so using my mock up engine I quickly whipped up a basic 6mm mounting plate that enables me to bolt the L300 power steering bracket to the side of the Toyota 3Y engine. In the past its always taken me a few goes to get the correct length drive belt needed, so this time I thought I'd try a different method. Not sure how sound my reasoning is. Time will tell I guess So, in a nutshell I had a new 4PK825 belt lying around. Its way longer than needed but I was able to swivel the pump far enough over to tension this belt up. With the pump under tension I pulled the crank pulley off which allowed me to remove the belt without moving the pump. I then chucked a string around both pulleys. String length measured 810 mm compared to the factory marked belt measurement of 825 mm. I then swiveled the pump back to its correct position and clamped it up. Using the same string I then got a measurement of 740 mm. To my simple brain if a 810 mm string equates to a 825 mm belt then the ratio of string to belt is somewhere around 1: 1.0185. Using this formula a 740 mm long string should equate to a belt measurement of 753.7 mm. I've taken a punt and have ordered a Gates 4PK750.

Just after morning smoko I got a call from my mate Brenton to say that my power steering pump pulley was ready for pickup. Some of you may recall that I initially modified the power steering pulley from the Express van to bolt up to the crank shaft pulley on the 3Y engine, but then discovered that the pulley bolted hard up against the crank shaft pulley effectively cancelling out any movement in the harmonic balancer. Brenton resolved the issue by turning up a spigot locating spacer for me so that I've now got a nice little gap between the surfaces. Next step is to bolt this onto the engine and I can then fabricate the mounting bracket for the Express power steering pump.

Second task of the day was to replace my faulty floor mounted headlight dipper with a NOS unit that arrived from the UK in my latest parcel. It looks a bit shop soiled but works like a charm, so that's another thing ticked off the list

Life has been getting in the way at the moment, but today I managed to sneak in a quick hour on the Thames. First thing I wanted to check out was the new lower control arm inner bushes. These have been an absolute mission to source. A bit of background to puut you to sleep: The factory original rubber units were pretty flogged and I couldn't find anyone who supplies replacement units in rubber so I ended up ordering some aftermarket ones from Whiteline. The first set delivered were too small despite the supplier being adamant that they were the correct ones for the SD series L300. I ended up having to remove one of the originals to take some accurate measurements. With the dimensions confirmed I spent a bit of time nosing around on the Whiteline website and discovered that the bushes listed for the newer SJ series L300 are the correct dimensions. Ordered them in and test fitted one a week or so back, but I discovered that there is a bit of sideways play between the steel inner tube supplied and the original factory through bolt. I posted a query on the Tech Forum asking if this play was normal, but didn't get any response. So today I thought I'd chuck a vernier on the inner factory tube. Turns out the diameter is the same and a test fit shows an equal amount of sideways play on the through bolt, so I guess this is normal. I'm hoping that fitting the caster rod will firm things up. Time will tell I guess. Thanks for reading.

Thanks very much for the feedback Rick. I've got the front suspension in pieces at the moment as I'm replacing the lower control arm bushes, but once its all back together I'll happily chuck my digital level on the cross member for you. I'll send you a PM when I've got the info for you. Cheers, Gordon

I'm in need of some guidance from those who know a lot more than I do about lower control arm bushes. I've fitted a Mitsi L300 front suspension to my project. The original lower control arm bushes were pretty shagged so I ended up getting some aftermarket replacements from Whiteline. I fitted up one side this morning and I'm getting quite a bit of forward and backward movement on the arm. I haven't yet fitted the strut rod so I'm guessing that will reduce this movement, but I'm still alarmed at how much movement there is. Is this normal or should I be worried ? Thanks in advance

A minor operation and the arrival of a new pup have kept me out of the shed for a few weeks. With my stitches now out I managed to sneak in an hour on the Thames in between puppy sitting duties. Earlier in the week I received a small parcel from the UK containing a few bits and bobs, so I thought I'd fit the new rubber grommet for the fuel tank neck. A relatively small step, but it looks heaps better so I thought it was worthy of a post.

So at this point I thought I'd check out the wiring for the motor before pulling it out of the Starwagon. Chucked in a battery and put the wiper switch through its paces. Even more excitement. Not only does it have a high and low speed but also an intermittent cycle and a washer cycle. Luxury .... pure luxury. I figured it would be a good idea to harvest the wiper wiring along with the intermittent relay and the washer bottle connections. A bit more carving with my grinder and a bit of fidgeting about with the wiring harness and the poor old Starwagon is looking decidedly shop soiled. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to harvest the fuse box at the same time as the Thames needs one. Thanks for reading.

A famous man once said "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm" : So I cracked straight in to Plan C which was to see what else I could find amongst by donor fleet, the focus being on the two Mitsi vans. Since they are a similar vintage to the HiAces I figured they would also be using 360 degree wiper motors so I focused on the rear windscreen setups. Again two fails as both units are single speed. Double bugger. Plan D - I briefly toyed with the idea of sourcing a new universal cable driven setup that are popular amongst the hot rod building fraternity, so looked it up on the Google but they are pretty spendy and besides where is the fun in taking the cowards way out. Plan E - I checked out the cable driven factory unit fitted to Mrs Flash's Moke, but she wasn't having a bar of that, so I swiftly moved on to Plan F. Plan F - so whilst checking out the Mitsi donor fleet I noticed that the spacing between the two wiper knurls (yes .... as part of the Google exercise I added a new word to my vocabulary) on the older Starwagon looked suspiciously similar to the same spacing on the Thames. Grabbed my trusty measuring tape and took a few readings and ... yes ... who would have guessed that the spacing is identical. Now its at this point that I started to get excited and raced ahead with a cunning plan. First step was to get a closer look at the Starwagon mechanism. Grovelling under the dash is for pussies so I grabbed my trusty grinder of angles and did the front of the van a quick mischief in true Rough & Ready Resto's fashion. Pulled the arms out and quickly chucked them under the Thames dash - no grinder this time though - and the next surprise was that I didn't even have to open up the Thames holes to get the spindles to fit. With reference to the second pic below the wiper motor attaches to the shorter arm so will fit snugly under the passenger side of the steel Thames dash. So far so good with Plan F.

The saga of the windscreen wiper upgrade continues and its been a bit of a learning curve for me to be honest. Turns out the original vacuum power pack only turns 180 degrees before reversing the cycle whereas the drive on the 12 volt HiAce wiper motor turns a full 360 degrees, so my plan to use the HiAce motor with the original Thames mechanism is not going to fly. Bugger. So I rummaged around my parts bin and set my sights on using the HiAce rear screen wiper motor. Hooked it up to a car battery and sure enough the little gearbox built in to this unit reduces the drive turn to the magic 180 degrees. I managed to temporarily attach the motor to the Thames mechanism and sure enough it works like a charm.Only issue is that this unit is a single speed job, so from a cert perspective here in Straya it's not going to fly. Potato pick of the single speed rear unit so that it has its moment of fame before being consigned back to the parts bin.

I'm planning to retain the spindles and arms and will replace the vacuum system with a dual speed electric motor. As a Starter for Ten I thought I'd give the HiAce unit out of donor van number one a try as I'd already pulled it out a few weeks back before that van met its untimely demise. Looking closely at the HiAce wiper motor I noticed that it has 4 wires feeding it. First step is to figure out what each wire does, so I grabbed the spaghetti that is number ones old wiring harness and proceeded to separate out the wiper and windscreen washer wires. Attached to some of the wiper wires is an interesting looking little electrical box that is labelled "wiper control", I'm guessing it either controls the intermittent wiper speed - if the HiAce has such a feature, or if not maybe it controls the short wipe cycle when the windscreen washer bottle is activated. I've harvested it anyway and time will tell what it actually does. I'll use the original HiAce wiper stalk to test everything, but ultimately I'll connect the wiper up to a dash mounted push pull switch for that period correct look. More tomorrow.

Another item on the list is the upgrading of the original Thames windscreen wiper motor. The wipers are currently powered by a vacuum system that was connected to an additional port on the Thames fuel pump. Local certification rules call for a dual speed wiper. I cheekily mentioned to my Certifier that the existing vacuum system was multi-speed, but he didn't buy it for some reason. Anyhoo, first step was to pull out the original system in its entirety. The pipe with all the white over spray on it is the one that was connected to the extra fuel pump port. The shorter looking pipe is actually a little pull cable that activates the mechanism when the dash mounted switch is turned. Talk about a fine example of leading edge technology:

While I've been waiting for my new shift cable to arrive I thought I'd turn my attention to a few other items that need ticking off the list. First up was some additional work on one of my gearbox mount brackets. I've now incorporated the chassis rail strengthening plate requested by the Certifier and a holding bracket for the outer sheath of the gate shift cable. It looks pretty bulky but with the gearbox in place it slips nicely down the gap between the gearbox casing and chassis leg and then bolts into position. Just needs a final tidy up and a lick of paint and I'll call it done.

Since the shifter installation is a temporary arrangement for now I didn't want to drill any mounting holes in the pristine front tunnel, so I figured out a way to fix a temporary mounting bracket using some existing bolts holes on either side of the tunnel. I then fashioned a bracket out of some old plywood off cuts. Not the prettiest looking thing, but strong enough to hold everything in place for the moment. With the shifter mounted to the temporary bracket I set about proving the following: When fully raising the forward hinged engine cover will clear the new gearshift mechanism. The gear stick will clear the column mounted handbrake lever when the handbrake is fully engaged. The final height of the gear stick combined with the stick movements will not clash with the dashboard. The proposed location of the gear stick is easy to reach from the driving position and the stick movements are easily executed. So with a tick next to each item above, all that is left to do is to chuck in the new cable when it arrives. I plan to leave this temporary arrangement in place until I have successfully completed a road test. If we do decide to retain the floor shifter I'll then happily drill some through holes for the cables as well as mounting holes for the shifter. It should be easy enough to fabricate a neat little console to cover the ugliness underneath. Thanks for reading.

Okay, so the jury is still out on whether to use the Express floor mounted shifter, but I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise investing a bit of time to mock the thing up inside the van. First off I needed to find a way to temporarily route the two shift cables inside the cab without drilling ruddy great holes in the floor. So I removed the insect mesh and hinged lid off the state of the art fresh air intake and routed the new cable through the gap. Sadly the other cable isn't long enough, but that's okay as I've got a longer one on order anyway.

All good @Mof Thanks for reading all the way through my "War and Peace" like novel.

Hey @Mof, thanks for checking in. I really appreciate the interest that you have shown with regards to my latest challenge. You are right it does all sound a bit confusing. I'll try to do the subject a bit more justice here. (Apologies in advance for the information overload) So first off is the Thames column shifter and gearbox. In its original format the column shifter has two internal springs within the lever mechanism. The first spring is positioned vertically and essentially pushes the shift column to the bottom position (or gear gate) at rest. The second spring is positioned horizontally and is used when engaging reverse. To engage reverse gear you pull the handle out (towards the passenger side). This causes a pin inside the column to disengage and the first spring I mentioned then causes the column to drop even further which then allows you to engage reverse gear. Now we get to the 5 speed HiAce gearbox. It has two side mounted levers. The first lever I call the gate lever. Lying under the van and operating both levers by hand you get the following results: The first lever which I call the gate lever has three positions. Pulling the gate lever towards the back of the van gets you to the gate for 1st and 2nd gear. If you let the gate lever go an internal spring within the gearbox selector mechanism returns the gate to the "at rest position" which is the gate for 3rd and 4th gears. If you then push the gate lever towards the front of the van it moves to the gate position for 5th and reverse gear. Then when you let the lever go gravity causes the lever to return to the "at rest position" being the gate position for 3rd and 4th gears. A standard HiAce van uses solid rods to link the column shift to the gearbox levers with no return springs in either the column or the rods, so the gravity return works perfectly. So now we get to mating the Thames column to the HiAce gearbox using push pull cables rather than solid connecting rods. The first issue is that the up down movement in the Thames column which previously allowed for two gate positions now has to suffice for three gate positions for the HiAce box. This makes the 3 gate positions very close together and its almost impossible to "find" the middle gate position without having some sort of reference. To make matters worse "at rest" the setup sits in the 5th and reverse gear gate position (due to the vertical spring in the column). Invariably when you lift the handle to engage 3rd or 4th gear you end up engaging 1st and 2nd by mistake due to the small amount of movement. So my first thought was to try to lengthen the stroke to give more separation between the gates. I managed that fairly easily by removing the horizontal spring which left me with a floppy handle. I then jammed the handle in the outwards position which then essentially doubled the up down travel of the column by giving me the full vertical range movement from 1st all the way to reverse (hope this makes sense). Okay so now I have separated the gates more and its a bit easier (but not much) to tell the difference between the position for each of the three gates, but the vertical spring still causes the column to drop to the 5th and reverse gate at rest. So then I removed the vertical spring in the column which left me with a "floppy" gate selector within the column. Now my theory at this point was that the shift return mechanism within the HiAce gearbox would take over and this is where things went awry. The HiAce spring that returns the gearbox lever to the "at rest" position is just not strong enough to feed all the way back to the column handle. I suspect that this is due to some residual force within the cable (which is 3.7 meters long) as well as the ball joints that I am using on either end of the cable. To make matters worse the gravity return used when in 5th and reverse doesn't work at all. Both issues result in chronic cases of mis-shifting where either you aren't positioned at a gate correctly so you can't engage gear, or you end up at the wrong gate and then select the wrong gear. As mentioned in my post I've tried a number of combinations of springs. I've played with the strength of the internal HiAce spring which resulted in sometimes "overdriving" the mechanism so that it then skips over the "at rest" gate. I've also tried external springs on the gate lever to assist the gravity based return. I've also tried various springs on the levers at the bottom of the column shift and whilst I have been able to improve things, the results are still inconsistent. I could carry on fiddling about, but at the end of the day am I going to get a consistent result that will last for the foreseeable future, or am I going to constantly have to muck about with this to keep the mechanism sweet as the cables age and spring tension varies. The goal has always been to make this van our daily driver and as much as I'd like to retain the factory look of the column shift at the end of the day drive ability is key. Whilst I personally may be able to muddle along with the inconsistent gear changes it would dilute the enjoyment of driving the old girl around. It would also be unfair on my missus who will be driving the van. I'm also concerned about how the Certifier will react if he had to deal with mis-shifts while driving the van during the cert process. So that's kinda where I am at Mof. Again apologies for the information overload. As always I'm open to any fresh ideas. Thanks again.

Well it's been a bit of a frustrating week here at Rough & Ready Restos. In my last update I mentioned that I was going to have a go at getting the column shift to rest on the 3rd and 4th gear plane when in neutral. Sounded easy enough at the time, but boy was I wrong. Each day I've tried a different approach to achieve a consistent result and each day it has ended in tears. I've tried endless cable adjustments and multiple combinations of springs in various lengths and strengths both inside the shift column and outside on the gearbox arms but to no avail. The crux of the matter is that the HiAce gearbox uses gravity to return the gate arm from the upper position to the middle setting when at rest. This works fine with the standard HiAce rod shifters, but with the conversion to cables there seems to be a bit of residual force left in the cable that works against gravity. I've spent hours and hours fine tuning the slack in the cable in an attempt to overcome this residual force. Climb under the van, adjust cable, climb back into the cab and try again ... over and over again. Not fun. With the week feeling like something resembling the plot from the movie Groundhog Day, by Friday morning I'd had a guts full and decided it was time to change tack. So I rummaged around the pile of discarded parts stored in the back of the Starwagon and came across the floor shifter that I had pulled out of the newer Express van. The Express has a factory fitted 5 speed cable shift gearbox, so I thought it would be interesting to see how this shifter would work with the HiAce gearbox. I positioned my little portable work bench next to the Thames and clamped the gearshift housing in the vice, chucked the cables in gave it a whirl. In a nutshell it is absolutely brilliant. The mechanism itself has a return spring attached to the gate cable which returns the shifter to the gate for 3rd and 4th gear perfectly every time. A bit of fine tning of the cables and I was able to get a smooth and consistent change over and over again. I even got Mr's Flash to give it a go and she was most impressed. So the dilemma now is do I change tack and go with the floor shifter permanently, or keep trying with the column shifter. Decisions ... decisions. Pic of the Express floor shifter below. Thanks for reading.