Flash's 1965 Ford Thames

[Flash]

With the front up on stands I started swinging a few tools. Needed to blow the dust off my imperial spanners which haven't been used for a good while. Chassis seems nice and dry with just some surface rust. First bit removed was the front stabiliser bar. I was expecting the nuts and bolts to be really seized up, but they came out with very little effort. The engine is usually lifted up into the cab and out of the passenger side door, but with a mint interior I'm having none of that. Since all of the front suspension needs to come out anyway I'm planning to drop everything onto the floor.  Lunch stopped play, but plan is to carry on tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

[Flash]

Had a productive day in the shed again today.

First this happened:

[Flash]

Then this happened:

Check out the super narrow inlet manifold and hockey stick exhaust manifold that Ford cobbled together to get everything in the narrow engine bay.

[Flash]

Which left me with this vast open space .... not.

[Flash]

The plan for tomorrow is to pull out the steering column / box which is a single fixed unit and incorporates the gearbox column shift mechanism. This steering box is almost completely seized. Most owners make the mistake of topping up the steering box oil using the filler on the side of the actual steering box, but that unfortunately leaves the top bearing race dry. The proper procedure is to top up from inside the drivers cab using a hole located about a third of the way up the steering column that is normally covered by a flat metal 3 quarter round collar. I suspect that incorrect topping up over the years is what has caused mine to seize. I filled it up a few months back hoping that it might free up, but no such luck. 

My plan is to convert to a steering rack and angle box from the '96 Mitsi Express van that I have as this is a forward facing rack. But this depends on whether the rack is the correct length for the older style Mitsi L300 front end that is going in. I can't see Mitsubishi having changed the front track width between the older and newer generation vans, but you never know. I will also need to check that the pivot points on the rack ends line up with the pivot points for the upper and lower suspension arms on the older Mitsi front.  If not I'm going to encounter bump steer issues. Last thing to check will be that the tapered rod ends are interchangeable between the older and newer generation Mitsis. With a bit of luck they are. . All will be revealed when I start stripping the Mitsi later this week. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading. 

[Flash]

Original plan was to pull the steering out of the Thames today, but I woke up to a sunny day after three days of intermittent rain so figured I'd take the opportunity to remove the replacement front end from the mighty Mitsubishi Starwagon as its currently sitting out in the elements.

Cranked up some Lynyrd Skynyrd at full pitch to get the blood flowing and in next to no time this happened :

[Flash]

The sun was out again today and with the weatherman predicting a 90% chance of rain tomorrow I decided to continue stripping parts from my donor vans. Today's patient was the '96 Mitsubishi Express van. Before morning smoko I had managed to pull out the power steering rack and the angle box that links the steering column to the steering rack. I offered the rack end up to the Starwagon steering arm only to find that the newer Express has a larger diameter tie rod end. Luckily the smaller tie rod ends from the Starwagon have the same thread as the Express rack end so I quickly pulled the Starwagon tie rods and affixed them to the Express rack ends. Instant win.

I'll need to cut the rack mounting lugs off the Express beam and glue them onto the Starwagon beam before I can bolt the rack on permanently, but I was able to mock up the rack and the pivot points on the Express rack align perfectly with the pivot points for the upper and lower arms on the Starwagon beam so that is another win. No bump steer for me.

Next step is to see if the spline on the Express angle box will match the universal on the end of the Toyota HiAce steering column that I will be using, but I won't know that until I have pulled the steering column out of the HiAce. I don't want to use the Express steering column as it is fairly chunky and way more modern looking than the old 80's HiAce and since the column is pretty prominent in the Thames, I want to retain the older look if possible.

Anyway a few pics to brighten up this dull post.

Thanks for reading. 

[Flash]

After morning smoko I thought I would crack into the next step of the "proof of concept" so I headed into the back garden to retrieve my mock-up 4Y motor out of the back of my second Toyota donor van. Loaded the motor onto my trusty wheel barrow and moved it under the back carport so that it is out of the weather. Grabbed the loose Toyota gearbox at the same time.

First order of business was to take some measurements to see if the mighty 4Y will fit in the puny Thames engine box. Results of prelim measurements are as follows:

Mighty 4Y - 510 mm wide at widest point. 670mm long from back of block to front of viscous fan.

Thames - 505 mm wide at widest point. 654 mm long from back of block to front of fixed fan blades. 

So from the look of the width I should just be able to squeeze in the 4Y. From a length perspective I suspect that I may need to ditch the viscous fan on the 4Y if I'm going to retain the original Thames radiator. Nothing that an electric fan can't fix if this comes to pass.

I still need to take some comparison measurements of the two gearboxes but I'll do that tomorrow.

 

[Flash]

Today's task was to remove the old steering column, steering box and column gear shift as it's a single unit. So I lifted the floor mat in the drivers footwell as the first thing that needs to come out is the steering column surround plate that is bolted down to the floor. Now it's at this point that things start to get interesting.

Firstly a little bit of background information. The previous owner bought the van to use as a delivery van for a flower shop that his wife was starting. They thought that a quirky delivery van would make a good marketing tool for the shop. Since there were going to be water filled buckets of flowers slopping around in the back they wisely decided to get the entire rear floor Rhino lined. At the same time the Rhino team lined the two front footwells. What would have been nice is if the boys at Rhino had pulled out the fixing bolts and lifted the inspection plates before sealing the floor, but that would have been to much work I'm guessing and why would you give a toss about the poor bastard that has to maintain the vehicle into the future.

So the result is that the four little star headed bolts had been neatly covered with a 3mm thick coating of Rhino line and you couldn't even pick up where the lip of the panel is. FFS !

 

[Flash]

My first thought was to try to uncover the heads of the bolts with a die grinder. Instant fail. Gotta tell you that Rhino liner is pretty tough stuff. Sticks like the proverbial.

Looked underneath and discovered that the bolts fix into riv nuts, so thought okay if I can cut the riv nuts off with an angle grinder I should be able t punch whats left of the bolts out from below. Only problem is that the steering box is in the way so you can only get to one of the riv nuts.

At this point I was getting pretty desperate and figured the easiest way forward would be to hack the cover plate to get the steering column and box out and then take to the riv nuts once the box was out of the way. With the steering and gear shift columns in place surrounded by the floor mounted clutch and brake pedals there isn't much space so I carefully drilled a whole lot of little pilot holes around the edge of the cover plate then followed up with a larger drill bit to overlap the holes. With the holes drilled all the way around and a straight line cut across with my tin snips it was easy enough to pull the remains of the cover plate out.

Not one of my proudest moments, but needs must and I reminded myself that I'll need to fabricate a modified cover plate anyway as the HiAce steering and gearshift columns are much further apart than the Thames ones.

The remains of the cover plate captured for posterity.

 

[Flash]

With the cover plate now mostly out of the way, dropping the steering column was pretty straight forward.

You can see from the pic below that the pivot points for the three levers that control the gear linkages are actually built into the steering box housing. 

[Flash]

With the steering column out I quickly pulled the side cover off the steering box and a nice mixture of brown sludge, water and a little bit of oil came out. Nice !

No wonder the steering was almost seized. I'll strip the box at some stage to see if it can be saved as I'm planning to keep all of the original mechanicals intact in case someone ever wants to put it back to original.

So with the column and steering box out of the way I was able to cut all of the riv nuts holding the outer edge of the hacked cover plate. I then carefully lifted the cover plate a little bit at a time whilst cutting through the Rhino line with a Stanley knife until I had gone all the way around. The final result doesn't look too bad.

[Flash]

Yesterday I offered up the Starwagon front suspension to the Thames as the next step in the proof of concept. Both strut towers clear the Thames chassis rails with ease. The original Mitsi mounting lugs are roughly 13 mm off the centre of the Thames chassis rail, but easy enough to remedy as the current plan is to cut these lugs off and fabricate new mounts that I will glue to the beam and will in turn bolt up to the original Thames mounting points.

Everything is still dirty and crusty. Plan is to completely refurbish the front end before final installation, but that is still quite a way off.

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by Flash
Wrong pic

[Flash]

As mentioned I'm planning to use the original Thames suspension mounting bolts which total 8 on either side, 4 on the vertical side of the chassis rail and 4 on the underside of the chassis rail.  With that in mind I moved on to the original Thames suspension now sitting on the shed floor and did a bit of CAD work.

[Flash]

Now that I have the templates for the suspension mounts done I can banish the original Thames front end from the shed. I will store the Thames front end in the back of the Starwagon for now so that I can free up some floor space to bolt together my mock up HiAce gearbox and 4Y engine. Plan is to lift them into the engine box to confirm clearance and also to work out what I'm going to do in terms of engine and gearbox mounts. 

From the look of things there may be a remote chance that I can use the original 4Y rear bowl sump now that I am using the Starwagon front end, but this needs to be confirmed. One of the other unknowns at the moment is whether the HiAce column shift gear linkage rods will clear the Thames chassis rails, so I need to test fit the column and linkages.

Lastly I'm a bit worried that I may not have enough space in the engine box to mount the power steer pump and a/c compressor that I plan to transplant from the Mitsi Express, so that will be something else to investigate.

Thanks for reading.

[Flash]

Bit of a lazier day today. Started off by unpacking all of the old Thames mechanical bits out of the rear of the Starwagon to make room for the Thames front suspension. Hooked the Thames cross member up to the engine crane and maneuvered it into the back of the Starwagon then packed the old Thames drive shaft, anti rollbar, steering box and other smaller bits and pieces back into the Starwagon. I'm really going to miss using it as a storage shed when its time to send it to the scrappy.

I then lifted the Thames engine and gearbox off my engine trolley and shoved it into a corner of the shed, so its now well out of my way. With the engine trolley now vacant I was able to lift the 4Y mock up  engine onto the trolley and I then mated the HiAce gearbox to the 4Y. Headed into the back garden and rummaged through the back of the HiAce for as many of the engine ancillaries as I could find. Then mounted the alternator and starter motor on the mockup. Unfortunately I don't have a mock up carbie, but the inlet manifold should give me enough of an idea as to whether everything will fit in the Thames engine box.

Plan for tomorrow is to rearrange the two HiAce vans that are sitting in the back garden so that I can remove the steering and gear shift column out of the engine-less HiAce. I'm keeping the other HiAce complete for now as it is the one supposedly fitted with a reco'ed engine  that I would like to get running and drive able before pulling everything out.

Thanks for reading.

[Flash]

Managed to push both HiAce donor vans out of the weeds and under our back carport, so I no longer have to lie in the mud to pull things apart. Winner.

I then pulled the steering column and column mounted gear shift mechanism out of the scruffiest HiAce. I started off by comparing the female spline on the fixed universal at the bottom of the column with the fixed male spline on the Mitsubishi Express steering angle box that I will be using and unfortunately the two don't match .... bugger.

The HiAce column is also a two piece setup with a universal joint half way down the column, so it looks rather chunky compared to the original Thames column.

I've therefore concluded that the HiAce column is not really an option.

All is not lost though as the gearshift mechanism consists of a tube that turns in an upper and lower bush. The upper bush forms part of the HiAce ignition switch and the lower bush is fixed on a small angle bracket. So it wouldn't be that difficult to replicate this setup on an alternative steering column. 

Picture of failed option one

[Flash]

Since I know that the Express van has the matching spline required I headed over to that van to suss out that column. The problem with this newer style column is that it has a built in steering wheel angle adjuster as well as a universal half way down the column, both of which will require additional bracketry fixed into the Thames. The Thames doesn't have a conventional dash setup so there isn't anything structural that I could fix these brackets to.

So for this reason Option 2 is also a fail.

What I am trying to replicate looks like this:

 

[Flash]

The joys of having my own private "Pick a Part" here at home is that there was still one option to investigate, so with that said I headed over to the Starwagon to suss out that column.

Its also a column gearshift setup and is a straight single piece affair with a nice slim outer tube, so from an aesthetics point of view it would be ideal, but the issue is that the column and steering box on this van is an "all in one unit", unlike the HiAce which has the universal at the end of the column, so the Starwagon column in standard format is an instant fail.

However, I could cut the outer tube where it enters the steering box, then strip the inner steering column out of the box. I'm guessing it will have a worm gear on the end.

To my way of thinking it might be possible to take the inner shaft to an engineering shop and get them to machine off the worm gear and cut a male spline in its place to match the universal on the end of the Express steering angle box.

I'd be keen to get some opinions on this from those more knowledgeable than myself.

Please post suggestions here:

https://oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/60227-flashs-1965-ford-thames/

[Flash]

It's a real bugger when you are "going where no man has gone before", but today I took another step forward in terms of the "Proof of Concept"

With the help of my rusty old engine crane and el cheapo trolley jack I managed to bully the mocked up 4Y and gearbox into position and chocked it in place. As I feared the Thames engine box is pretty cozy and  at one stage I thought I might need to bring out the KY Jelly, but in the end "brute force and ignorance" prevailed and she is now in position with a smidgen of space on either side.

I was then able to focus on a few wee challenges that I have already spotted.

So starting at the rear the first challenge that became apparent as I was lifting the gearbox into position was that the side mounted gear selector arms were not going to clear the right hand side angled chassis leg that offshoots the main chassis ladder and angles towards the back of the gearbox. In standard format there is a small cross member that bolts up to these legs to support the Thames gearbox. I won't be using this cross member as the Toyota gearbox is top hung, but for structural purposes I'll need to keep these chassis legs. To circumvent the issue for now I quickly removed the side housing and carried on lifting the gearbox into final position.