Flash's 1965 Ford Thames

[Flash]

Yesterday I headed off to town as planned and ended up purchasing a few bits and pieces for my interior, but more about that in tomorrow's update. While hooning around town I noticed an annoying intermittent squeek coming from the new steering setup. So this morning I went mouse hunting.

It took me a while to diagnose but I eventually traced the squeek to this bastard:

This little gubbins is what makes the indicator stalk self cancelling. It press fits onto the inner steering column and the little "ears" circled in red engage with an arm on the indicator stalk base to cancel the indicators. 

Indicator base plate looks like so:

Red circled bits are what the "ears" touch to do the cancelling.

Anyway, the inner steering shaft is tapered and now that the shaft is further up the outer housing the problem is that when you fit the little cancelling collar it is hitting a bigger diameter portion of the taper than it did before and the outer edge of the collar now makes contact with the inner edge of the housing. The squeek is a high spot on that edge making metal to metal contact. Hope this makes as much sense written as it does in my head. Apologies if not

So, to prove the theory I assembled everything without the little collar and went out for a run around my test track. Squeek be gone !

But I can't live without self cancelling indicators, so back at base camp - and after a bit of puzzling - I decided to fit the collar upside down. My rationale being that this way the ears would still engage but the actual holding portion of the collar would site higher up the taper and wouldn't clash with the housing.

So I did that and then headed off for a test drive. Now part of the test drive also involves centralising the steering wheel so I only had the big steering wheel holding nut finger tight for starters.

Good result - no squeek. Perfect I thought. Stopped at the side of the road to centralise the wheel. Popped it back on the correct spline and then proceeded to tighten up the big nut with my spanner. Bugger - squeek be back and indicator cancelling stopped working.

Limped back to base camp with my tail between my legs for another round of head scratching.

Okay so what I think is happening is that when I tightened the wheel it pushed the collar too far down the tapered column again so I was back to metal on metal contact and at the same time the little ears are too low to engage the latch on the base plate.

Time for a bit of hackery.

Pulled everything apart again and slipped the little collar onto an offcut pipe the right diameter like so:

All clamped up in my vice and ready for a little bit of circumcision.

Took the whole bit off and then popped the collar back on the steering shaft - again upside down. Pushed it down just far enough for the little ears to engage and then popped the steering wheel back tightning the nut all the way.

Back out on the test track.

Squeek be gone and indicator cancelling works like a charm.

And that little exercise took the whole morning.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Flash]

Okay, so in my last few updates I've been hinting at some interior work, and I am now at the point where the plan can be revealed.

So I'll start off with a bit of background.

After having the van repainted the previous owner shipped it off to an upholsterer who was tasked with recovering the seats as well as doing a roof lining and side panels. He got about three quarters of the way and then the business went belly up. The sherrif padlocked the premises with the van inside and it took old mate 3 months to get the van released. He had to prove ownership and luckily had a receipt showing that he had made a progress payment on the work. 

Now I'm the lucky bugger that gets to finish the job.

Right, so this is the current state:

Lower side panels built and covered, but a really average job has been done. Panels bow between supports which bugs me no end:

Also the window surrounds have been left unpadded so the thing looks really shabby.

Now I'm not a lover of the exposed fixings, but at the same time I can't justify scrapping the whole job, so I'll keep the bottom and ceiling panels as is. I have a cunning plan to sort out the flappy panel curves and another idea about how to improve the fixings, but more about that later.

I initially toyed with making up another set of panels to surround the windows, but scrapped that idea due to fixing challenges. The new plan is to glue foam rubber to the sheet metal and then glue leatherette on top of that for the final finish.

Late last week I grabbed this lot:

I decided to go red just to continue the red, white and blue theme that the interior currently has going on.

First step was to get the glass out so that I can tuck the leatherette around the window beads. After struggling for a bit and worrying about breaking the laminated glass I eventually gave up and headed through to my local glass guys to seek professional help. I'm glad I did. Turns out whoever had done the job before had used urethane sealant on the rubbers which had gone hard as hell. Also no sealant around the bottoms of the glass so no wonder there were leaks. On top of this the rubber used is the wrong profile so was bunching in places. Neale the glass guy has suggested that while we are at it we replace the current rubbers with the correct profile one that nine times out of ten don't require the use of a sealant. I'm so up for that.

So tomorrow's fun job is to clean off all the hardened urethane. 

 

Thanks, and stay tuned for more exciting episodes as Flash tries his hand at upholstery work.

[Flash]

Yikes, taking off that hardened sealant is a bugger of a job and I spent the morning cursing whoever had done it.

After trying a few methods I think I've now come up with the winning formula.

Starting point looks like so:

Starting with a delicate bit of razor blade work followed by a rub with a thinners soaked rag and you end up like so:

Then you scuff the leftover bits with this nifty plastic tool that Neale the glass guy gave me :

Then more rubbing with the thinners soaked rag followed by a rub with a rag soaked in dishwash liquid.

Then  a final rub with Meguiars Scratch X to get rid of the stubborn little spots.

And the final result looks like so:

It took me six hours to do one full side and then the biggest opening on the opposite side.

My fingers are raw and my shoulders are screaming in protest, but hey at least I am more than half way.

More tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

Managed to clean up the last two window surrounds before morning smoko so that was good.

There were three spots of rust where the window seals have been leaking, so I got off pretty lightly. Worst one looked like this:

Hit the crust off with my dremel then splashed a bit of Ranex on for good measure. Let that go off and then Mrs Flash brushed on a bit of 2 pack primer.

Once that was dry she followed up with a few brush coats of body colour. It's all going to be covered over with leatherette anyway, but at least we have given the metal a fighting chance.

I plan to close up the void behind the B pillar with upholstery so decided that now was an opportune time to run a wiring harness up into the ceiling as I plan to fit a roof console further down the track.

So made up this little chap:

 

The B pillar was closed up where the inner roof structure joins, but luckily I was able to just fit my drill into the B pillar void and successfully poked a 10mm hole into the ceiling cavity.

The ceiling end of the loom is now tucked up in the windscreen surround.

And I've coiled the opposite end in the storage box behind the passenger side front seat.

While I had the side panel off I decided to replace the existing cheap and nasty insulation with something a bit better:

Luckily the old stuff comes off really easily and I had just enough Underdog to do behind all of the side panels on both sides:

Last job of the day was to fix up the loose edges on the lower side panels where the old glue has let go:

Used a few old plastic rulers and some document clips to hold the edges in place until the glue goes off.

I've previously learnt that if you don't protect the vinyl with the rulers the clips leave indentations that take forever to smooth out.

So that's all the prelim work out of the way and tomorrow I can start on the good stuff.

 

 

 

[Flash]

According to the Captain's Log this is day 706 on the Thames and I managed to knock off two more upholstery prep items.

First up was addressing the wonky donkey ceiling panel edges that look like so:

It's hard to believe that this was done by a professional upholsterer but pretty obvious why his business went belly up.

My plan to solve this involved a thin crescent shaped aluminium strip that I spotted at Bunnings. 

Poked a few holes in the panel lip and slapped in a few pop rivets and ended up with this:

It kicks the edge of the roof panel down just enough to cover the previous void. The plan is to run the red upholstery up and over the strip for a better looking joint.

The second prelim job involved building a false wooden panel to make the upright behind the small side window match the upright between the middle and back side windows:

The nasty looking upright looks like this:

Compared to the better looking upright which looks like this:

I shaped a little bit of timber which I was able to fix over the nasty bit on each side of the van.

After smoko I finished off cutting out some cardboard panels to cover the window openings. These panels serve two purposes. I'm using spray adhesive for the backing foam and vinyl so first up they protect the outer paintwork from glue overspray and secondly they form the templates for the openings that need to be cut in the backing foam further down the line.

With the prep all done it was time to put on my big boy pants and begin with the actual upholstery work.

First step was to cover the uprights. I decided not to use backing foam on these.

I've covered both uprights on the passenger side. The edges look a bit untidy at the moment but they get covered in backing foam and then vinyl so should look more professional at the end of things.

I'll kick off tomorrow's proceedings by completing the small window surround on the passenger side.

I'm a total noob at this, so I figured it would be a good idea to start off small in order to build up my confidence. 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Flash]

Overnight I had a rethink about my original cardboard templates and decided that they weren't up to the task.

So Mrs Flash and I spent the morning turning a batch of old cereal boxes into mark 2 version templates.

We also templated the smallest window, but numpty here forgot to take a photo of that one.

With a bit of luck we should be able to flip the templates so that they can be used on the opposite side too.

In other news I can now reveal the cunning plan that I have for transitioning  from the board backed lower panels to the upper coverings that will just be vinyl with a foam backing glued directly onto the metalwork.

Yep, you guessed it. Humble old pipe insulation that I picked up at my local rubber shop. It comes in meter lengths like so:

And when pushed into place it ends up looking like this:

Not only does it fill the gap but it also straightens out the bow in each of the lower panels. The plan is to run the red vinyl over the pipe insulation and then tuck the ends of the material down behind the lower panels

The tricky bit is going to be covering up the ends of the side ribs that were chopped down when the van was converted from a panel van to windows, but I'll disguise them as best I can.

Looks like we are finally ready to start on the good stuff, so that's the plan for tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

Yesterday was a bit of a mixed bag.

We started the day off by cutting up the foam sheeting to replicate the cereal box templates. Used our ping pong table to complete this step. 

Then we moved under the back carport where I'd set up a glueing station on an old house door.

Masked off the areas we didn't want glue on then hit it with some of that rattle can glue.

Then sandwiched the foam and vinyl together. Then a coat of glue on the back of the foam and slapped it into position.

First one came out pretty good. Just one small wrinkle in one of the bottom corners which I managed to "massage out" with the help of a hair drier.

We then moved onto the middle window and this time we decided to glue the foam onto the van first and then glue the vinyl onto the foam. Worked much better with no wrinkles this time around.

Decided to take a smoko break and brought our cuppa outside where we could admire our handiwork viewed through the opposite side window openings.

Overall impression ..... looked pretty average to be honest.

Whilst we were happy with our handiwork, the finish looks exactly like a back yard job. We decided to put the back seats in so that we could assess the overall look.

Big mistake.

The beautifully upholstered seats made our panel job look even more average.

After a bit of discussion Mrs Flash and I agreed that we were never going to be happy with the result, so at that point we pulled the plug. 

This morning I took the van through to town and wheeled past the upholsterer that did our seats about two years back. Bill the old fella has hung up his tools, but I spoke to Shane the new man who is a dyed in the wool hot rodder and he came up with some pretty good suggestions.

The overall plan is to build a new set of upper panels that will smooth out the look around the windows. The existing lower panel backings will get tidied up and retrimmed. The roof panels will receive the same fine tuning and the centre roof panel changed from white to blue. In terms of colours the lower panels and the new upper panels will continue the existing red, white and blue theme but will include some pleats to match the style of the front door cards.

Shane has asked me to fit some additional aluminium supports for the roof panels as well as an aluminium strip behind the top of the lower panels to provide a fixing point for the new upper panels. In other news he doesn't need the glass out, so I can happily have the windows put back in.

Back home I was able to remove our botched attempt pretty easily. Even the spray glue came off with just some finger rubbing.

Mrs Flash and I are pretty philosophical about things. Sure we wasted a few days as well as a bit of cash on the materials we purchased, but hey, you don't know unless you try and there is nothing worse than looking back at a job and wishing you had done it differently. So onward and upward we go.

Shane is pretty busy at the moment so that gives me a bit of time to get the extra supports sorted out for him in the mean time.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

The van was booked in with Neale the glass guy to have the side glass reinstalled, so I only had time for a quick job before morning smoko.

I've currently got an aftermarket temp gauge mounted under the dash lip to the left of the steering column. Unfortunately this gauge is no longer visible since I changed the angle of the steering column so I needed to come up with an alternative location.

I'm trying my hardest to keep the dashboard as original looking as possible, so my thoughts were to try and build a roof console that would tuck the gauge out of sight.

I toyed with making something from scratch, but quickly put that in the too hard basket.

A few nights back I was searching the net for ideas and came across one of those A pillar mounted gauge pods that the boy racers love so much. That got me thinking as the Thames has a similar shaped upper windscreen surround that looks like so:

The pod was only $16 including postage so I thought it was worth a try. Hit the Buy Now button and this pitched up yesterday arvo:

I had to notch the back of the pod to clear my rear view mirror and then poked a hole in it to accept the top self tapping screw that holds the mirror stalk.

And here it is in all its glory:

Just fits between the sun visors and the gauges angle downwards so are at eye level when glancing in the rearview mirror.

I've just chucked an unconnected voltmeter in one of the holes as a trial run before I go to all of the trouble of relocating the temp guage.

After smoko I headed through to town to get the glass done and purposefully glanced at the voltmeter every time I checked the rearview mirror just to see how it would work out. The volt gauge is a bit too close for comfort, so you need to turn your neck slightly to read that one properly but I plan to fit the more critical temp gauge in the other hole which being further away is the better of the two positions.

I'm going to move the voltmeter across to the other opening tomorrow and drive around like that for a few days, just to get the feel before I start rerouting wiring etc.

In other news the side windows are back in. The new seals are designed to be dry fitted so Neale hasn't used any sealant. I'll monitor for leaks next time I hose the van down and if there are any I'll drop by Neale's place so he can slap some goo about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

I like the style of my current wheels, but I do find them a bit too blingy. Over the top for my old girl in my opinion.

I had originally wanted to get the same style wheels with the painted centre portion and just a polished lip but they were out of stock at the time so these were a bit of a compromise.

Recently I noticed that the clear coat on the right rear wheel has yellowed so I figured now was the time to do something about it. Not that easy to photograph as light plays a role, but you can just make out the yellowing on the two left spokes in this photo:

After scuffing the clear I applied some paint stripper and ...... nothing happened. After washing off the goo I hand sanded with some 240 grit followed by 600 grit and then 800 grit. Last step was some autosol on a piece of fine steel wool. Quite time consuming and not great for my poor old finger tips that are still recovering from the mammoth window sealer removal saga.

Yellow be gone and the added bonus is that the shine appears less "false" than the original finish.

Way more subtle in my opinion, so I'm well pleased with the result.

I'll take a break from sanding tomorrow, but have set myself a goal of doing one wheel a day from Saturday onwards.

 

 

[Flash]

Our friendly courier pitched up yesterday arvo with another two rolls of Underdog, so today I removed the roof panels one more time and replaced the existing tin foily stuff.

Before pic:

After pic:

I still had a few minutes left so made a start on finally wiring up the house battery. It's only been about 2 years since I fitted the battery so it was about time.

Dusted off the voltage sensitive relay that I've also had for a few years and chucked on some heavy gauge wires.

It will reside in the battery box together with a few other electrical bits and pieces. It's a busy little office that box.

I'll finish the rest of the wiring tomorrow.

 

[Flash]

Almost a year ago I bought a set of window locks off another 400e nutter who is based in Canada. Ian is an engineer by profession and decided to make a set out of stainless steel for the bus that he is restoring. He made up a number of additional sets that he offered to other club members, so I snapped up a pair. They are absolute works of art:

I thought that it was about time that I fitted them and today turned out to be the day.

First up a few photos of my original factory ones:

While I was about it I thought that I may as well refurbish the little backing plates that were also looking a bit crusty.

A quick hand job with a bit of sandpaper and they ended up looking like so:

Spritzed with a bit of satin black:

Let the paint go off and then a quick bit of assembly.

The money shots:

 

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

The focus over the past week has been on general cosmetics in preparation for tomorrow's van show down in Hervey Bay.

Lots of cleaning and polishing which has been good.

While I had the front door cards off to give the vinyl a damn good clean I decided to give the front doors a bit of TLC.

Cleaned the paintwork up as best as I could.

Then grabbed my rust proofing gun:

I was able to sneak the nozzle pipe down a small gap between the inner and outer skins and proceeded to load each door with a full litre of Septone.

Kept the centre panel nice and clean so I could slap a bit of sound deadening on.

Closing the doors feels nice and solid now instead of the old "jam tin" feel they had before.

I'll report back on the show tomorrow night hopefully with a few photos.

 

[Flash]

I was up bright and early this morning. Left home at 6am and headed down to Hervey Bay which is about 140km from home. Stopped on the outskirts of the town to gas up and spent a bit of time cleaning the bugs off the front of the van. Reached the show 10 minutes before kick off and the place was already buzzing. Probably about 150 vans in attendance. Heaps of Holdens as one would expect here in Straya but also a few of us with something different. I parked up next to a ratty VW splitty that was bloody well done and probably one of my favorite vans attending the show.

Majestic Vanners were the organising committee and they did an awesome job. Entrants had the option of entering for just the show and shine or also for the Van Nationals Concourse. I entered the nationals just for a hoot as it was only an extra $5 entry fee.

The highlight of the day for me was getting to meet Phil and to finally see his CF Bedford van in the flesh. It is even more stunning than it looks in the many photos that I have seen of it over the years. The murals are a fairly recent addition and have taken the van to the next level. This van is no trailer queen and Phil drives it all over the country to attend van shows. His next trip is across to Western Australia for a show that is taking place there.

The gathering wrapped up at 2:30pm and I got home around 4:30pm. All in all a magic day spent with really great people. The prize giving dinner is scheduled for tonight at the campsite where most of the vanners have been staying. 

I took a heap of photos which I'll drop into the panelvans thread over the next few days, but in the mean time here are a few that I thought you folk would appreciate.

 

[Flash]

My thermo fan started sounding a little sick, which isn't really suprising as it is one of those cheap and cheerful units that I removed from the Mustang about 3 years back. It was supposed to be just for mock up purposes but like most things on the van it ended up becoming a permanent fixture.

Ordered a Spal pusher in the same 14 inch straight blade. Even the box it arrived in looked impressive.

 

Of course the mounts and the electrical plug were different so I figured it would probably be more comfortable working on a loose radiator. So out it came.

Got it all mounted up and then scratched through my stash of old electrical plugs and luckily I found a match for the Spal one.

Yikes, these Spals can move some air. 

My thermo switch kicks in at 95 degrees C and drops out at 90 degrees C. Sitting in traffic the new Spal runs for less than a minute before the temp is back down to 90. The old fan would run constantly until I was back on the open road.

A+++ Would trade again.

 

 

[Flash]

Fame at last .....

 

[Flash]

Some of you will recall that I was experimenting with a new location for my temp gauge and I came up with an option that involved a repurposed A pillar gauge pod that I had mounted like so:

 

So after a few weeks of riding around with a mock up gauge in place I decided that further modification was required.

First up the gauge closest to the driver wasn't that easy to read without twisting your neck. Secondly although the gauge pod just cleared both sunvisors the visors couldn't be tilted up fully due to a clash with the edge of the pod. Lastly the pod just looked too cumbersome.

All that I really need is a single temp gauge so I decided to hack the pod in half to see how that would look. 

Much better:

 

But I wasn't happy with the gaps at each end of the pod:

So I made up templates for little end caps out of some old cereal box and then scratched through my shed where I found a piece of flat plastic that I figured might just work.

Cut out the bits from the plastic sheet :

 

And left little mounting tabs that I bent at 90 degrees like so:

Epoxied each end cap into place and let the glue go off overnight.

Then slapped a bit of 2 pack epoxy primer about the place:

Next day I spritzed a few coats of my favorite satin black and it started to look half decent:

Next step was to figure out how I was going to get the wiring through to the pod.

Some of you will recall that I fitted this small loom for future use a while back:

As most of you know I really battle to drill random holes in the old Thames and I wanted to make sure that I could reverse things if I changed my mind about the gauge pod further down the track. After giving it some thought I decided to drill a hole in the centre of my aluminium rear view mirror mounting bracket. That way I can always cover the hole by fabricating a new bracket. So this happened:

 

Gulp ...

And then I tickled a few wires with my soldering iron and ended up with this:

Slapped everything back together one last time.

 I'm much happier with the look. It's way more subtle and the gauge angle works really well. Just a quick glance down whenever I look in the rearview mirror.

And that's another small job ticked off the list.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Flash]

With the van due to head off to the upholsterers for a birthday anyday soon I figured I'd best complete the prep work that Shane had requested.

So out came everything one more time:

During my last trip to town I'd wheeled past my favorite alloy supply place and picked up a good few lengths of 32mm aluminium flat bar. I'm using a mixture of 6mm thick for the flat portions and a double layer of 3mm for the curved portions

Started off by running the strips midway along each side. These even out the existing bottom panels and will also form the lower mounting point for the new window surround panels.

Each strip is pop riveted to the vertical factory ribs and then in the case of the double 3mm strips they are sandwiched together using regularly spaced pop rivets. 

 For the lower support I just used a single 3mm strip.

With both sides done I moved onto the roof. Again three new aluminium fixing points running from front to back and fixed to each of the factory roof braces.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

Something that has been irritating me for a while is this:

Happens every time I have more that a quarter of a tank on board and its got to the point where it is starting to discolour the clear coat. So time for me to do something about it.

First up a bit of background to the issue:

In original factory format the van comes out with a non vented fuel cap that looks like so:

Under normal circumstances the non vented cap works perfectly as the fuel tank is equipped with a little breather inlet that draws air in through a piece of hard pipe that is looped up in the right hand rear fender well. 

Now in my case the Toyota 3Y engine has a return line on the factory fuel pump that looks like so:

Back when I did the engine swap I cunningly ran a return fuel line from the pump back to the tank and repurposed the breather inlet for the returning fuel. 

Then in order to let the fuel tank breathe I installed this vented cap which not only allowed in air but also enabled me to protect my precious fuel with lock and key:

Clever me ..... not.

Little did I realise at the time that I was busy creating a source of ongoing irritation.

Anyhoo, what to do.

So first step is to ditch the non vented fuel cap. Easy peasey, just go back to the original cap that was languishing in my box of spares. Thoughts of fuel theft be damned I say !

But how do I vent the tank ? Well how did Toyota do it ? Aah, I'm glad you asked. They had one of these:

Vent pipe built into the filler neck. Damn clever those Japanese !

However, not so easily replicated on my van as the factory filler neck tapers down from the cap end and pushes snuggly through the rubber body grommet from the outside. So there is no way of getting a similar vent pipe through the body hole. I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to fit a gubbins like so into the Thames filler neck:

 

But ended up putting that idea aside for now.

My next thought was to see if I could make use of the Toyota fuel tank neck (I have two of these leftover from my donor vans). Quickly pulled out the Thames neck and laid it alongside one of the HiAce necks for comparison.

The difference in pipe diameters is more noticeable at the cap end with the Toyota cap looking pretty dinky.

Also the Toyota cap is also not the prettiest of things as it's usually hidden away behind a petrol flap, so I'd need to consider that.

On the plus side the Toyota pipe is equipped with one of those spring loaded flaps to prevent fuel back surge.

Looking closer at the Toyota neck, in order to make it fit I'd have to cut the pipe just off the lower bend - about here:

 And that makes it tricky as the pipe is quite a bit narrower than the Thames one at that point.

Apart from the ugly Toyota cap, the other challenge would be trying to make the narrower Toyota pipe look half decent where it passes through the body as there would be a huge gap between the skinnier pipe and the rubber body grommet. I could make up some kind of metal collar to fill the gap, but again I've put this option aside for now.

On to my next train of thought.

What if I teed into my return line and reinstated the looped breather pipe in my left hand rear wheel well.

I've got a few doubts about this plan. First up when exactly does the return pipe feed back fuel. Quickly pulled off the pipe at the tank end, shoved it in a jam jar and fired the van up. At idle fuel started pissing into the jar almost immediately and is a constant stream. I'm guessing at full revs the stream will become less, but either way I need to factor in almost constant fuel flow. Okay so what are the chances that fuel will exit the vented loop rather than going back into the tank.

Only one way to find out, so I rummaged through my stash and came up with a brass tee that looked like so:

More rummaging uncovered some rubber pipe offcuts of matching diameter and a few "used but not abused" hose clamps.

Chucked it all together and it ended up like so:

Not pretty, but okay for a test run.

Then bent up a bit of left over bundy tube and clipped it into the original bracket inside the wheel well like so:

Fitted the non vented cap then fired her up.

No fuel pissing out the vent pipe, so that is good I guess.

I'm hoping that the returning fuel rushing through the pipe will draw in air from the looped breather tube. But that's just a guess at the moment.

I'll need to take the van out on the road for further testing, so thats the plan for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flash]

Some overnight thinking on my tee piece based fuel tank vent left me with visions of the ol' Thames going up in flames, so I put everything back to the way it was and will spend a bit of time coming up with an alternative that doesn't leave me in a cold sweat.

Anywhoo, over the weekend I gave the old dear a bath and at the same time I checked fluid levels. While I was pottering around in the engine box I happened to glance over at my fuel filter and something caught my eye. Pulled off the glass bowl and peeked inside for a closer look:

Yikes !

Decided to drain the tank to see what dregs might be lurking in the drained fuel. Easy enough to do just by removing the main line from the bottom of the tank:

The fuel ittself looked okay but there were some nasty bits in the dregs:

Double yikes !

Decided it would be prudent to pull the tank out for a quick flush.

Removed the sender unit so I could have a gander at the tank innards:

A bit discoloured but thankfully no loose flakey stuff.

Chucked a little bit of fuel back in and sloshed it about then flipped the tank over to drain it. The fuel came out pretty discoloured so I repeated the process a good few times until the fuel coming out was clean. Ended the job off by blowing out the fuel line before reassembling everything.

That got me wondering about the state of the fuel bowl on the carby. Luckily I have just enough space to get the top of the carby off in situ. THe bowl was pretty clean with just a bit of staining in the bottom so at least my fuel filter is doing its job.

While I was busy my mate Grunty dropped by and after sharing a few yarns about how awesomely powerful the old 3Y is he suggested that we tweak the timing a bit.

Factory setting is 8 degrees BTDC and after a bit of experimentation we finally settled on 12 degrees BTDC. The new setting has made a noticeable difference in performance. So far no pinging, but I'll keep an ear open for that as well as keeping an eye on the temp gauge to make sure that side of things is okay too.