azzurro

had a look on google maps,

Had a school holidays flashback

I think it used to be the truck yard for the old dairy factory opposite.

When the old amn First bought the site, the old shed at a front got the roof popped and the lean too added as a storage.

Built the fence.

Eventually built the massive shed at the back - there is a truck servicing pit in the big roller door and the office area is about 400m2 over 2 levels. It triggered some planning drama.

I remember Mum being super pissed what was then Transit NZ made the company paying them to widen the seal at the approach to the bridge as the price of their written approval for safety. 

One school hols drove a roller up and down that yard for 2 weeks straight.

The next school holidays spent the whole time painting the interior white before putting a forklift (that me and my step bro used as a man lift) though the brand new tin.

Spotted this sicko train while looking at a new car for mrs azzurro

Turned out it was the sellers dad...

And 'we' bought this on the basis of the colour, and the cool noise it makes.

Tbf, it goes like the clappers, but not looking forwards to working on it, lots...

So long time no update on this.

After my last post I fitted up the refreshed door frame

Looks really good especially compared to the other side, which ive still to do, because it would be easier with the van turned around facing the road

 

Which is cool, because the van now has a running engine, selectable gears, brakes and all the electrics work... I could drive it out the driveway, maybe an accidental quick bimble around the crescent and then back it in to its spot.

 

Foreshadowed above tho is needing a new oil pressure switch causing the oil light to not go out.

I had ordered a cheap set of aliexpress gauges (volts, water temp, oil pressure) and wired them in too - i like being able to see whats going on in more detail than the very basic dash lets on - swapped the oil pressure one out for an old mechanical one i had, because i trust them more than the cheap electronic sender/gauge and i had some adaptors that fit the block. 

Anyway, hooked the gauge up, and cracked the line to let the oil fill the line and push the air out, and fired up the engine (which runs great), but oil didnt fill the line 

 

 

So I did the right thing and took the fitting off and gave the jandal for a bit (nothing i hadnt done before) and some sort of dribbled out.

Took the sump off and pulled the oil pump out, cleaned and checked it including running it witht eh drill in the drained oil - seems fine given how much oil it splurted over the driveway. Ill probably order a new pressure relief valve to be sure even tho the other one seems fine - the spring is stiff and it seals.

Tried a couple other things to see if i could trace how far from teh pump the oil was getting to but its pretty hard to tell without being an oil molecule. The oil pressure sensor is near teh end of the line in terms of oil supply, but seems it is getting to the centrifugal filter (which just upstream of the pump) so it will be at least partially in the crankshaft bearings, but it isnt really pushing up to the tappets/head at all (which still have moly grease on them from assembly)

So i assume i either put a bearing shell in wrong way round at some point or the crankshaft is full of crud.

Either way the engine will have to come back out to be torn down again to find out what the fuck.

So yeah, its been sitting untouched for about exactly a year.

 

 

And then the other day it was just sitting there looking kinda cool, so I might start the process of pulling everything out of the engine bay, again, in preparation to drop the engine out, again

 

 

 

 

 

Drove this on some errands the other day and then my 125 and was reminded how different they are in terms of drivability despite being pretty similar set ups

The 125 sedan has a 2 litre twin cam with twin 40 deloorrtos, and its smooth around town and has torque like an electric car,

This wee truck on the other hand has a 1598cc twin cam with twin weber 40 dcoes, but it's never run quite right on any carb set up ive tried especially flakey at low speed, off idle etc, and no amount of carb fiddling would get a smooth idle, and not as much torque i would expect (accepting the 2l vs 1.6 makes a big difference)  and an annoying tappet noise i could never shim out. 

 

So kicked Little Blue out onto the driveway with the van (update coming soon) and drove the ute into the cave for some engine work.

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When i tidied up the engine in the truck a few years back - and put a new 'big valve' head on along with the cams that came in it as per this post ...

I should have swapped out the cams then for any number of good standard ones i had (still have) , but i didnt, i guess thinking it might be a hot cam or some such, hoping it was not just a crappy regrind

So anyway, finally dug out my box of cams and cam boxes - most factory cams are pretty similar profile - but there is a nice set of late model 132 2l cams in a pair of boxed id cleaned, greased and regasketed when i got them ages ago in anticipation of eventually getting round tuit 

Time to dive in - 

cam covers off, can see the shims and buckets

 

Cam boxes and buckets off, showing the valves 

'

Reground cam boxes on the bench  - can see how the regrind reduced the base circle, and these are early 'narrow lobe' cams too, i measured ~8mm lift

There is no obvious damage or wear (probably only driven a few 1000km since new),

and while i didnt really measure anything (nor do i have the tools or patience to do it properly)

i think just from feel  the ramp is a lot flatter to me seems like they would 'slap' like a rolling triangle rather than

smoothly roll like the eggier shape of the factory ones (which would explain the noisy tappets)

and could be imagining it but i suspect  the lobe points not all exactly 90 deg from the others making one cylinder (or more) not quite perfectly in time with the ignition and cylinder which would also explain the choppy idle and poor running generally - crappy warranty regrinds...

Looking back up through the cam bucket guide at later 'wide lobe' cams (note how the cams just clear the buckets), probably ex a 2 litre 132, with ~9.5mm lift relative to base circle - what looks like rust is my copper rtv finger prints in the storage lanolin grease

the shims for setting valve clearance (inlet 0.45, ex 0.5) are on the top of buckets,

need a special tool to hold the buckets down, a pick and a magnet and sometimes the air gun to pop them out, as well as a bunch of shims 

Tiem to dig out the shim box! including special bucket holding down tool, specially bent and ground down screwdriver/pick for poking the shims out of the bucket, and handy dandy magnet.

as you can tell from my collection, most standard scenarios are in the 4.00 to 4.20  range, the ground cam i took out were in the larger end

 

Set all the clearances - following my 'foolproof' system...

As above its a bit of a faff to adjust the valve clearance, not so much the actual swapping different thickness shims on the cam bucket, but mostly the admin of rotating the cam shafts and fiddling with a bunch of quite different tools - verniers and 19mm spanners at the same time.

A bit easier with teh cam belt off and pistons at half mast, but still a faff.

1. rotate camshaft so lobe is pointing away from shim surface
2. Measure the gap with feeler gauges, largest able to fit without forcing (say 0.65mm), write it down
3. calculate required shim size 
   • target on these cams is 0.45 inlet and 0.5 exhaust,
   • so if our gap is  0.65 the gap is 0.20 too big for the inlet cam,
   • measured gap MINUS target gap = the difference from the current shim you need, positive = thicker to close the gap, or negative value means you need a thinner shim to open up the gap.
   • required shim that is the current shim (4.05) PLUS the difference (+0.20) = 4.25 in shim collection (if we needed a thinner shim, 4.05 plus -0.20 = 3.85)
4. Rotate cam shaft so cam is pushing bucket/valve down, insert special tool, rotate a bit more so tool holds the bucket down, dig out the old shim shim with a pick, and a magnet, a blast of shop air will pop most of them if they are vacuumed in
5. install new shim, write down size in book
6. rotate camshaft to release cam tool
7. see step 1

 

Proof of how simple it is, i think i did each valve at least twice, one up to 5 times

Next day, tuning

Fired up first time and a lot quieter, and even idled from cold.

Thats better than its ever done (it had always needed some throttle feathering before) 

After adjusting the ignition timing

and good 2 hr fiddle with the Manometer, ir thermometer on the exhaust and teh wideband i even as i've ever got them. Dropped the idle jets down to 50s (from 55s) before, should be on 45s for an engine of this capacity

Managed to drop the idle to (a stated) 900 at 13-14AFR, previously wouldn't run smooth under 1200, at about 11.5-12AFR but also have a mean lean spot off idle (plugs were pretty dark before)

 

Seems to run a lot better now, need to give it a run on my 'test track' to see if it actually is, but i decided probably not ideal weather for fiddling with carbs on the side of the road today