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Alex's better work stories CF Bedford


Willdat?

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I think he wants seats in the back for his boys. Stressed seats with seatbelts attached so they can be easily unbolted and taken out to convert van into workhorse or to sleep in while camping. The main thing is to first get it on the road and all safe and legal then work out what to do with the inside. I'd love to kit it out in a really nice funky style using heaps of sweet timber and stainless steel. I don't know why exactly but its just what i picture when i think of ideas.

....or wall to wall fluffy carpet, island bed and with a big side window in the style of a 70's day van.

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If I'm perfectly honest, I have no love for beddies.

But I'm loving your work Alex! Your skills are wasted on this vehicle. Please buy another project more worthy of your talents.

That aside, getting paid to do what you love must be a dream come true.

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Yeah it's cool to get paid to work on old cars in this way. First time for me after over ten years as a push bike mechanic. I'd love to be doing more cars and engine conversions in the future.

Borg- the bus in the back ground is a 1940s fixable clipper. It's had a whole tonne of work done here including adding doors, righthand drive conversion and is in the final stages of some rust removal to keep the vtnz boys happy.

The vauxhall- I'm not sure what year it is and other details. He's a regular customer so I'll ask. Lots of vintage/veteran cars combining in and out including many owned by Trevor who works here as a coach builder. Today hannah and I got a drive in his mates 1914 rover that Trevor has just rebuilt the bottom end on. That was cool. Total different outlook on life when putting along in that eh. Very comfy seats too.

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Cheers chris. Hopefully we might see you at Kaikoura?

The running gear was pretty old looking. I'm not sure on condition of engine but it was a much older falcon engine with a tiny carb and a auto box.

Funny enough another CF snapped an axle one sunday night about 2 months ago. The fella was towed down to work and and the others swapped the old axle that was off the project CF, sitting about doing nothing, onto his. worked out nicely.

And a while back a Hillman super minx was being recominshined for the road and it had an auto box that was stuffed. Again the old CF parts came to the rescue and the CF box donated some of its innards. :)

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  • 1 year later...

Check with Clint but as long as the angles aren't too acute for the joints then you should be able to run as many as you need as they all should have zero slop.

In saying that bevel boxes should have zero slop as well... Hmmmmmm

 

Are you sure about why they have failed the bevel boxes? Because there is 2 of them or is it because there is some whack angle in there?

How direct is the path from the end of the steering column spline to the nose of the steering rack spline?

What is in the way? Exhaust/Crossmembers/?

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Its stupid situation because those that have said no have not actually seen or driven the van. We have it up on the hoist now and looking for possible solutions but what ever we do it will be a huge ball ache and an expensive one at that.

Really annoyed at the closed off attitude from the committee.

But please do keep the suggestions coming chris. Every bit will help. Glad its happened before the weekend so combined brainforces can storm!

Edit: its because two bevel boxes! For why or what engineering reasons against using two of them they have not given us.

Has me baffled. I see no reason why two bevel boxes are weaker or more dangerous than one...

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i actually walked out of the house and looked in the big bible.

 

seems odd that the certifier would give the green light on what you have done, as the first section in the hobby car manual to do with steering shafts, says any direction change has to be done with u joints.

 

later in that section it also says you cant use an angle drive, unless it is exactly the same as when it was in a mass produced vehicle application

(the part in italics was updated with the second revision of the manual, at first you were not allowed to use them at all)

 

do you/your work have a copy of the hobby car manual?

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Yeah we have the manual. I never looked that up back in the day because when we were looking at ideas 2 years back the bevel box idea popped up in my head and before I knew it we were showing it to Don. He gave the go ahead and we went from there.  I only spotted the bit about bevel boxes in the manual 2 days ago. Justin in Wellington had also mentioned to my boss today that they had changed the wording as you said.

 

What I would like to see is a genuine reason why we cant use two of them. It certainly seems more legit than using heaps of uni joints. They are desinged for exc=actly this job in mind and are nicely built strong units. I have over built the mounts (as usual..if in doubt, overbuild)  and it just works so perfectly well. Surely if they follow every word and don't allow for projects that fall slightly out of the box (ha ha- pun)  then we would have a very boring hotrod scene.  We certainly are not trying to sneak something by that is unsafe. Hopefully Don will back us up and put something in writing that he had given us the full go ahead. Had we known that this would be an issue we would have not gone down the bevel box route.  Its just weird because its just such a simple, neat, safe, strong setup that works well.

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Given that it's a van and the steering shaft angles are all up the shit from the column to the rack, surely bevel boxes are okay.

 

Could understand on a car where the column is set back some distance from the rack how they'd disapprove.

 

Would be tricky to do UJ's?

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What I would like to see is a genuine reason why we cant use two of them.

 

i dont know what the reason is, but i remember some talk about no angle drive boxes due to someone in australia doing left to right hand drive conversions using 2 angle boxes- leaving the steering box in the original place.

 

i guess they have to set the limit somewhere. if they let things through all the time that dont comply with the rule book then there would be people moaning" xyz got a cert with stuff different from the book, why cant I?"

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