ThePog

Well the ultrasonic cleaner seems to do something. I only used hot water and washing up liquid, 1/4hr at a time cos I didnt want the corrosion thing plus I am more interested in the holes being clear than showcar.

Still it looks better.

Id just replace all the bad nuts and bolts and call it a day, nothing else looks like a problem.

I did the bottom mount, that was piss easy.

It then got a clean sheet Wof (apart from a side repeater not working), so that was extremely pleasing.

Unfortunately the new stiffer mounts has meant that vibration coming from the motor that was pretty effectively masked by the soft mounts, has become noticable to the point where I kindof dont want to drive it.

Its bad enough that I want to pull the engine down and have a look.

This is kindof ok, because I should have two gearboxes arriving shortly from Auckland, this means I will have 4x boxes to build one good one out of. Apparently they are straightforward to repair and plenty of the wear items are readily available which is good.

This means i can drop the drivetrain, sort the gearbox and have a squiz at the engine all at the same time.

I did notice that one of the idle circuits wasnt doing anything when the screw was adjusted, I dont think thats the problem but I bought a cheap ultrasonic cleaner so I can give the carbs some loving, if the gods are smiling it might just be that, but I am not counting on it.

Meanwhile I drew up a center console in CAD to tidy things up. Back in the day I removed the factory one so I could actually use the clutch, but it left things looking a bit raggedy. Clearly time to sort it with some cool shit that still gives me legroom.

It took 3 iterations and I will probably print it again in a nicer/stronger/more uv resistent material, but it came out so nice anyway.

V1

V3

Clearly my aesthetic heart lies somewhere in the last century, cos that looks the tits.

I urge everyone to learn some cad and buy a machine, there is so much goodness awaiting...

Oh yea dredge time.

I have been pretty broken for a while with ongoing gall bladder issues, +10x ER visits and 3x ops but I am kindof cured now. All of which is my excuse for why this shit is dragging.

But the last couple of months have been pretty productive, although i was chipping away when I could muster the energy over the last year.

The belt lift mech was a bit shit, jumping teeth under load etc, I tried linear actuators but no joy, then finally went to a cable setup which appears to work pretty well. Altho the ATV winch motor is pretty noisy, I will find a reduction box and a better motor at some point.

After considerable detailing and tidying up i got the frame zinc arc sprayed

And started assembly with the water tanks

All the steel bits I got zinc plated

Installed the seats after a couple of coats of polyurethane.

Made a frame underneath that holds the batteries and started wiring things up, this has gotten a lot messier so may be taken out and redone once everything is in there

Then I had to remind myself how the router worked so i could make the kitchen

The bed is set up on some long linear servos so it lifts out of the way during the day, once this was working ok I made a ply base, altho it was kindof heavy so I reamed a bit of weight out of the parts on the router with a pretty blunt 25mm Mitre 10 bit.

So this is where it sits right now, nearly time to sort the panels and bolt them on. The fridge/water pump/bed lift/roof lift are all wired up and live, I just need to remember to wire in the solar panel and charge the system up every week or so.

It is so nice to work on it from the outside TBH, makes things a shitload easier.

Still so much to do IRL.

I have been collecting some maintenance parts cos the side and bottom mounts are a little floppy and the cambelt tensioner bearing looked dodgy and seemed to me making little sqeaky noises.

The last of it arrived this week so I thought I had better do some of it at least.

The side mount and cambelt stuff seemed the most important, but doing this was a bad decision cos the mount was a right cunt to get off. Two of the three bolts were a right bitch, and the third was significantly worse than those. I ended up making a tool to get to that, but the undoing and redoing up of these three bolts was about 2 hours of effort not including making the tool.

Im still not sure that top one is tight enough, but the gearbox will be coming out at some point soon so I will sort it properly then.

The bearing fell apart when I gently tapped it off the hangar;

The new one is appropriately shiny tho.

The cambelt was a breeze in comparison, although I did have to pull the rocker cover to check the valve positions as I stupidly decided to seat the belt using the the starter without properly tightening the bearing first and it all jumped some teeth, fucking twat. I was kinda tired at that point tho.

So the bottom mount will be another day.

Taking out the trash, but at least I got paid for it.

$7.55 grand total