Flash's 1965 Ford Thames

[Flash]

Overnight I had the same 400e FB Group member post a second photo of his dissected factory tank and although the image is quite dark it does show the final position of the business end of that internal fuel pipe.

Looks like so:

Apparently the end of the pipe comes to rest just a few millimeters off the bottom of the tank and the pipe end is cut at 45 degrees which isn't really noticeable in this photo.

In other news my bits of kitchen paper holding my tank debris had dried up so I was able to scratch through the debris without fear of the paper falling apart. Surprisingly what I thought was bits of solder actually turned out to be tinfoil and in fact just about all of the debris is slithers of tinfoil in various sizes. Some bits are quite  discoloured whilst others are still nice and bright. So this got me thinking about how tinfoil ended up in the tank and I now have a theory.

So when the van was still running it's original Ford engine the previous owner was using a lead replacement additive in the fuel. I know this because he mentioned it to me and there was also a half bottle in the glove box.

I'd kept the bottle and dug it out for a look see.

A dinky 100ml bottle of Valvemaster.

Now I can't be 100% certain but I'm almost sure that those little bottles came with a tinfoil seal under the screw on cap. That tinfoil seal had to be broken on first use and I'm picking old mate used to just stab the seal with a key and then pour the contents into the tank neck. So maybe loose parts of the tinfoil were falling down into the tank as the good stuff was being added.

Well that's my theory. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can confirm whether the Valvemaster bottles did in fact have a tinfoil seal under the cap.

My other concern with tinfoil is that it isn't something that I would necessarily hear rolling around in the bottom of the tank during my shake and stir exercises so it may very well be the gift that keeps on giving for a little while longer.

Only thing to do is to put the tank back in and give it a go, so that's the plan for tomorrow.

 

[Flash]

I checked out the tank this morning and despite the rainy weather that we have been enjoying for the past three days the interior looked pretty dry.

@rip suggested that I run a length of curtain wire through the internal pickup pipe in the tank as it is much stronger than the insulated electrical wire that I had previous tried. Bloody legend. The stuff worked an absolute treat and although it was a bit of a hard push I was able to thread the wire all the way through the pickup. Looking down the sender unit hole at an angle I could just make out the white outer sheath of the wire poking out the end of the pipe.

I did have a nervous moment when the wire began to unravel as I started pulling it back, but It eventually came free and no tears were shed.

I then proceeded to give the tank a half dozen good flushes with a litre of fresh fuel each time. No signs of water in the leftovers which is good and all the task yeilded was a little bit of black sludge so I'm picking I'm over the worst of the tinfoil.

Before reinstalling the tank there were two additional items that I wanted to address.

First up when I was originally removing the fuel tank I noticed the distinct smell of fuel coming from the tank sender unit, so I decided that a fresh gasket was needed.

The old gasket is still in one piece but it does look to be well past its "sell by date"

The old gasket was made form vellamoid and is clearly a home made item, but from factory these were fitted with cork gaskets so I've gone back to the original.

The other thing that I wanted to do was convert the sender unit wire from a round lug to a spade connection. Reason being that each time you want to remove the tank you have to undo the sender wire first. The little nut is a 7/32 and muggins here only has a small socket in that size which won't fit inside the little floor opening.

So each time I have to grab the nut with the ends of my long nose pliers and the bloody nut is tight all the way to the end which is bloody typical when you are battling with something.

Anyway I had this little doohickey in stock and figured a conversion was required:

Slapped it onto the sender unit using the socket while the sender was still loose and then soldered a new spade connector onto the end of the sender wire.

Didn't take a photo but the sender wire still had its little enfo factory sticker on the sheath so I felt a bit bad hacking the original round terminal off, but needs must as I figure this isn't the last time I'll be dropping that tank.

Conversion almost looks factory I reckon:

 

Then without further ado I chucked the tank back in and plumbed everything up.

By that stage it was smoko time and the sun had made an appearance so the pool and our sun loungers were calling.

Tomorrow I'll need to run my jerry can to the servo for a fresh batch of fuel as I've used up most of the tank contents through the cleaning process.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Flash]

I've clocked up almost 150km since flushing the tank and not one glitch so far. It's hard to believe that all of that angst was caused by a few crappy old bits of tinfoil, but there you go.

Whilst I was investigating the fuel related issue I picked up two other items that need addressing.

First up is a bit of coolant weep around the radiator filler neck. 

Looking closely I can see a hairline crack in the solder joint. It's not something I want to mess with so I've pulled the radiator out and will drop it off at the Radiator Man in town on Monday.

While running the engine with no engine cover in place I could also hear a subtle exhaust whistle which I tracked down to the joint where the front pipe joins to the muffler. So pulled the pipe out for a closer look:

 

The rest of the pipework still feels really solid, but the portion around the flange joint is a bit frilly:

Here:

And here:

I thought I'd have a go at plugging the holes but as I was wire brushing the scale off more and more holes were appearing.

So I'll also take that into town to see what the exhaust shop can do for me.

 

 

[Flash]

Got a call yesterday to say that the radiator was ready for pickup so took a quick trip into town in the Moke. Filler neck joint re-soldered and while he was at it Dave sorted out some separation that was happening between the side mounts where they attach to the upper and lower tanks. Looks good with a fresh lick of paint too.

Fitted it up this morning with a fresh cap that Dave provided as part of the service.

In other news the rear section of my exhaust "branch" has been declared beyond repair so the plan is to replace the connecting flange and the section of pipe shown circled in this photo:

I'm happy with that as it will get rid of my dodgy looking weld job where I had to cut and shut the original HiAce pipe.

Only issue is that they want the whole van in order to do the job and the earliest they can book me in for is 4th February. So I've chucked the pipe back on as is for now.

 

 

[Flash]

I've been running my latest version of the gear selector mechanism for a good few months now and I'm pretty happy with it. The short cable that I am currently using for gear selection came from one of my donor vans so is pretty well used and was supposed to be just a stop gap so I really need to get a new one ordered. I'm thinking of splashing out and getting a custom roller ball cable made up and if possible I'd like to add a few enhancements.

First enhancement I'd like is adjustable cable ends on the outer sheath with retaining nuts rather than solid ends that use those little factory clips.

So much like the ends on my longer cable that looks like so:

 

I'd also like to be able to refit my air deflector plate which I can't currently do as the outer cable has a straight end. I'm hoping the cable manufacturer will be able to incorporate a solid 90 degree bend in the outer sheath allowing the cable to travel almost perfectly horizontal just before it enters the holding bracket.

Anyway, as a starting point I needed to pull out the existing cable to take some measurements for the replacement so that was this morning's little exercise.

While I had ithe cable out I noticed that the end point on the outer sheath on the gearstick side has become quite elongated. The reason for this is that the swinging arc of my selector arm exerts a sideways force on the inner end. Apart from being bad for the cable it also means that I am getting excess drag on the cable towards each end point of the arc. 

So that got me thinking about a possible longer term solution and I ended up pulling out the side mounting plate for a closer look.

 

Giving it the once over I started wondering if I could somehow make a swinging holder bracket that would prevent the extra drag. 

Okay, so what if I remove one of the mounting bolts and just allow the holding bracket to pivot on the remaining bolt? Will that work ?

Pulled the holding bracket off, scratched through my washer drawer and found a little fibre washer that I thought might work.

Slapped a little bit of lithium grease on the washer then chucked a nyloc nut on that I nipped up just enough so that the holding bracket swivels nicely.

Re-assembled everything and took the van out for a quick test run.

On the up side the gearshift is noticeably smoother. On the down side I'm experiencing a mettalic "clunk" when selecting 2nd and 4th gear.

Back home I chucked the van in 2nd gear and climbed underneath for a look see.

Yep, the swivelling bracket is working a bit too well and is hitting up against the edge of the adjacent pivot mounting bracket.

A bit hard to see due to angle of things in the above photo but the red circle is where the clash is happening.

So I'll need to drill some fresh mounting holes in the second bracket and then trim off the edge that is clashing.

I'll tackle that sometime over the next few days.

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Flash]

Managed to get a gap this morning, so pulled out the gearshift side mounting plate for a little nip and tuck surgery .

Before:

After:

I've now got heaps of clearance between the side of the swiveling bracket and the fixed one.

Assembled everything one more time and took the van out for a test run.

No more metallic knocks from the two brackets clashing so that is good news.

However there is still a pre-existing "knock" when I engage 2nd gear which has been around since I converted to the shorter cable, so I figured now would be a good time to resolve that as well.

Got Mrs Flash to climb in the cab and select 2nd gear whilst I crawled under the van for a look see.

Turns out its my little threaded intermediate rod touching sides with the semi circular cut out on the original outer cable mount as circled in red below:

 

Under rest the little threaded intermediate rod sits perfectly in the middle of the opening, but the sideways movement of the mechanism when selecting 2nd gear causes the rod to hit up against the side of the defunct cable mount. So tomorrow morning I'll pull out the gear selector mechanism and cut out the offending bit.

 

[Flash]

Pulled out the gearshift mechanism first thing this morning as planned.

Photo taken before my butchering:

Photo taken after my butchering:

Chucked the mechanism back in and took the van for a blat around my little test track.

No more clunk noises, so I'll take the win.

 

[Flash]

Okay, so we have a charge light. whats the big deal about that ?

Well first up in factory format the charge light wire runs from the external voltage regulator that sits under the dashboard and then up to the instument cluster. This meant running a brand new wire from the old regulator location all the way back to the alternator. It's a run of almost 3 meters that follows the original wiring harness down the nose panel and then through a rubber grommet in the floor, then across the body panel below the front grill, then along the left hand chassis rail and then up into the engine compartment. Any normal person would have just chucked the wire in with a few dabs of insulation tape to fix the new wire to the existing  wiring harness but not Mr OCD here. No, no, no lets re-wrap that whole section of the harness with cloth tape because we don't really have a life do we. 3 hours later....

Then we are running an aftermarket 140 amp alternator that was designed to hang off the  right hand side of a small block Ford V8. Of course now that it is mounted to the left hand side of a Toyota 3Y engine the charge light terminal sits closest to the engine block with no way to get at it. Due to the tight confines of my engine box the only way to get the wire connected is with the alternator out and on the bench. And to get the alternator out requires the removal of the lower radiator hose. Luckily I thought ahead when I had the radiator out for repairs last week so did that side of the wiring at the same time.

So all said and done I'm now the proud owner of an alternator charge light.

Whoop de doo.

 

[Flash]

While I'm adding little luxuries of an electrical nature I figured a couple of interior lights would be a good thing to have for night driving.

In factory format the old Thames was blessed with a pair of roof mounted interior lights that were fixed to the two main roof ribs. Each light had its own on/off switch but that was basically your lot. No such thing as door activated switches.

Now I don't really want to go drilling mounting holes in my newly covered roof panels, so instead I'm going to fit a pair of underdash lights much like I did in the 66 Mustang a few years back.

Grabbed an eight pack of these little crackers off eBay:

And also picked up one of these three position toggle switches from Jaycar during my last town run:

The clever lads at the Dagenham factory have blessed the Thames with a little pre-drilled hole in the steering column supporting bracket that was meant for the heater switch. Since heaters weren't an option offered on the Aussie assembled vans the little hole has been languishing quitely for the past 60 years just waiting for its moment to shine.

And today was the day:

So that's the little switch in and wired up.

I finished off the morning by cutting two bits of 1mm thick aluminium plate out of a leftover bit of window flashing. These will form the backing plates for the new lights.

I'll poke a few holes in those tomorrow and then hopefully I can mount the lights in their final position.

I've got a cunning plan for the door switches but I need to do some more homework before the big reveal, so stay tuned.

 

[Flash]

Something prompted me to test those new interior lights under cover of darkness last night and I'm sure glad I did before going to all the touble of making up the mounts and drilling holes in my dashboard lip. Turns out the lights are bloody dismal.

This morning I woke up with the beginnings of a fresh plan in mind. It just so happens that a while back I bought a pair of roof mounted lights that I was planning to fit before having the roof panels recovered. When I chickened out on that plan I shoved the lights on a shelf in the shed and forgot about them. Dusted them off for a closer look:

Not too bad looking, but they are quite a bit chunkier than the previous version so if I had to mount these under the dash they would severley limit my ability to access the wiring harness, wiper motor and wiper assembly for future maintenance purposes. So if I'm going to use these lights an alternate location is required.

Quickly ruled out the roof lining as its just too pristine now.

Poked my head around the interior and came up with an alternate location being the narrow vertical footwell panels just forward of the A pillars. Like so:

Grabbed one of the lights for a test and if I was to mount them with the longer side running vertically they fit quite nicely in the circled space. The plan being to mount one in the same location on either side.

Again I'll need to test them in the dark tonight before I fully commit to the plan. So I've extended my new wiring to the proposed locations and have temporarily connected up the lights for tonight's little exercise.

Being in a bit of a holding pattern I turned my thoughts to possible mounting options for the lights. This is going to be tricky as the A pillars themselves are fully enclosed with very little space available to get to the hidden face of each pillar for hole drilling purposes.  I could surface mount a bracket attached to the prominent face of the pillar and drill a few holes for self tappers, but it would look fuggly. Apart from the A pillar the rest of the side and front panels are single skinned so no obvious options apart from say bonding in a bracket. That would work as the units are pretty light weight, but I don't fancy the idea of doing something semi permanent in case I change my mind further down the track. I then turned my mind to other alternatives and I think I've come up with a cunning plan.

So the upper hinges on each of the front doors have three fixing bolts that are located above the boxed section of the A pillar. Looks like so:

Feeling around the back of the hinge mount I can confirm that there is a thicker "sandwich" plate that has threaded holes to accomodate the hinge bolts. The bolts themselves are pretty long so I can feel a good bit of thread protruding through the back of the threaded plate.

Offhand I don't know what the thread type is, but I dug out my box of imperial sized nuts and bolts for a bit of a nosey.

Scratching through the stash I ended up with two handfulls of nuts that looked to be about the right size. Then it was just a case of trying each nut in turn on the back of one of the bolts. Had to work just by feel so it took a bit of time, but out of the potentials I whittled down the group to these 10 successful candidates:

To keep my mounting brackets as simple as possible I'm thinking I'll only need two nuts per mount, but I've put the stash to one side for now.

So if tonight's light test goes well, the next step will be a bit of cardboard aided design to come up with a suitable bracket. Something L shaped should do the trick.

Tomorrow's a bust and Wednesday is the day the van is booked in for the exhaust repair. So Thursday looks like being a bit of a fabrication day.

Thanks for looking. 

 

 

[Flash]

Checked light brightness last night and I'm much happier with the larger lights in their proposed position.

Tuesday's are normally gardening day but we woke up to high winds this morning so rather than chasing clouds of grass clippings about the place I figure I'll make a start on fabricating the mounting brackets for the lights.

Should be able to provide a quick update at close of play today.

[Flash]

Started the morning off with a some arts and crafts and ended up with this little template:

Another little offcut of roof flashing proved to be the perfect size.

A few spins of my grinder of angles resulted in this lovely pair:

Bendy, bendy:

Then poked a few holes and splashed a bit of satin black about the place.

I'll let them dry overnight and will fit them up in the morning.

 

[Flash]

I started the morning off by fitting my new interior lights. I've soldered little male and female spade connectors on each light wire so they are easy to remove if need be and the wiring is all wrapped in spiral bind to keep things neat.

I then had a quick smoko and headed through to town for my hot date at the exhaust shop.

They ended up moving the flange joint to just after the two into one split on the intermediate pipe and then replaced the section of pipe up to the stainless steel muffler input. They also found a leak on a previous weld just after the muffler which I'll stick my hand up for.

Note to self ... Flash mate, your gasless welding is far to dodgy for exhausts, so just dust off your wallet and take the bloody van straight to the professionals next time.... you cheap bastard.

 

[Flash]

Okay, so I think I've painted myself into a bit of a corner with my recent gearshift shenanigans.

You may recall that about 6 months ago I fabricated this complex looking thing:

 

Now whilst it works perfectly I have been unable to reinstall my air deflector plate due to the pronounced droop in this cable:

The issue is the lazy bend in the cable.

On longer journeys at higher speeds I have noticed an increase in engine temps without having the air deflector plate in place and this does worry me a bit. If I back off the speed a bit the temp comes down again, so I can only assume that at speed the air starts to flow under the radiator rather than through it. Also I'm not a fan of looking under the front of the van and seeing a loose looking loop of cable. I have tried fitting the air deflector by forcing the cable to bend but the cable doesn't like it and the gearshift becomes very heavy.

I was hoping that I could get a new push/pull cable fabricated with a fixed 90 degree bend in the outer sheath that would negate the need for a lazy loop. So earlier today I made contact with a couple of places that make up bespoke cables. Both gents confirmed that a 90 degree bend is not an option for these heavy duty cables, not so much due to the structure of the outer sheath but more to do with the makeup of the inner cable that cannot handle sharp bends. I could achieve a bend with a lighter inner cable but run the risk of the cable not being able to withstand the push forces on it. What a bummer.

This leaves me with two options:

Option 1 - cut a slot in the air deflector plate that would allow the lazy bend to poke out below the plate. (lowering the whole plate is not really an option)

Option 2 - look at raising the holding bracket for the outer sheath to the point where the cable loop is high enough to clear the air deflector plate.

Option 1 would solve the air deflector plate clash but I'd still be left with the untidy looking loop of cable visible when viewing the van front on. My OCD couldn't live with this option.

So for the rest of the morning I spent a bit of quality time under the van investigating Option 2 and ......

Nyet !

Whilst I can raise the holding bracket sufficiently high enough to clear the air deflector plate I don't have enough headroom in the air tunnel to extend the lever by the same amount. When I say lever I mean this piece:

And that's the corner I've painted myself into.

So what now :

Well another option might be for me to scrap the intermediate pivot mechanism up front and then reinstate the longer looped cable that matches the cable I'm currently using for the gate movement. This will allow me to reinstate the air deflector plate but will result in a return to the longer gearshift throw. Not ideal to my way of thinking.

Then I turned my mind to a different approach. What if I reinstate the longer looped cable and then fabricate an intermediate pivot type setup for the gearbox end of the cable. The pivot design would need to change though or I'd end up with a reverse shift pattern.

So to my way of thinking something like this:

 

One single pivot arm with two holes. The looped cable would attach to the hole closest to the pivot point and an intermediate solid rod would attach to the gearshift arm on the gearbox at the point on the arm furthest away from the pivot. If I got my mounting points right on the pivot arm it should shorten the gearstick throw to the desired length.

Well that's the theory anyway.

I already have the longer push/pull cable in stock and I'm sure I can find the makings of a suitable pivot setup somewhere amongst my stash. So all that it is really going to take is a bit of fabrication effort on my part and hey my time is free so what the hell.

Tomorrow's a bust but I'm thinking I'll make a start on Wednesday.

What can possibly go wrong.

 

[Flash]

Today was a non van day, but I did managed to steal a few minutes to scratch through my pile of scrap left over from previous gearshift related adventures and came up with this promising looking pile of possible candidates:

Of particular interest is this little pivot type setup which I think I can repurpose for the next version:

The plan for tomorrow is to cobble together something rough and ready just to prove the concept.

[Flash]

First thing this morning I pulled out the front pivot point and short cable currently being used for gear selection. I'll put this to one side for now just in case.

I then dusted off the longer cable that has been languishing on a shelf in the shed for almost a year.

It didn't take long to couple the longer cable back up to the L300 gearshift mechanism that I'm currently using. I had to slap on a pair of large flat washers to hold the outer cable due to me hacking off the cable mount last week. Oh well such is life. If this works out I'll either source another shifter or weld the cable mount in from another hacked base plate that I have in stock.

Anyway cable is now in and as you can see in the photo below the gear selector cable now follows the same route as the gate selector cable which means I can reinstate my air deflector plate.

With the front end of the cable installed I turned my attention to the new pivot selector that will be needed on the gearbox side.

As previously mentioned I don't want to waste time making something pretty until I've proved that it will work. So for now I'm just cobbling together something from whatever I've got lying around.

She aint going to win any beauty contests but here is my first itteration:

Next step is to drill a hole in the pivot arm in order to attach an intermediate shaft that will run between this monstrosity and the arm on the gearbox. It may take a few goes before I get the position of the hole to match the throw that I want on the gearstick. But that's tomorrow's job after I've mounted my latest creation to the chassis cross brace.

Oh the joys of working on a vehicle with a wooden floor.

 

 

[Flash]

Managed to get Frankenstein bolted up to my chassis using an existing hole in the cross brace that just so happened to be in the right location. I then measured up the length for the intermediate shaft and cut up a piece of M6 threaded rod to suit. With everything finally in place I hopped into the cab to put the gearstick through its paces and .....

Bloody awful !

Gear movement was hard as hell. Why oh why is it so ?

Started to do a bit of diagnosis.

First up I disconnected the cable from Frankenstein, climbed in the cab and put the gearstick through its paces with the furthest end of the cable now attached to fresh air. Smooth and effortless as one would expect.

Back under the van with Frankenstein and the intermediate shaft connected to the selector arm of the gearbox I proceeded to put the gearbox through its gears by manipulating the pivot arm manually. Pretty easy going too.

Scratched my head for a bit and then decided to bypass Frankenstein and just use the long looped cable attached straight to the gearbox arm. This is the exact setup that I ran when I first got the van on the road. Luckily I still had the original outer sheath mounting bracket for this setup so quickly bolted that in place.

Back in the cab for a quick test and ..... 

Bloody awful !

How can that be ?

Gave it a few more test tries and then realised that the amount of effort needed for gear selection is exactly what is currently required for gate selection. The issue stems from the use of the longer looped cables. It's just not as noticable for the gate selection as that is a sideways movement on the stick rather than a forward and backward movement

I've now realised that the incremental improvements in shift effort that have resulted from the linkage modifications that I have made over time have spoiled me.

Needless to say I spent the rest of the morning banishing Frankenstein and the longer cable to the naughty corner and reinstating my latest front pivot setup. Took the van for a test drive and all is good in the world again.

So what's next.

Well I still think a new cable in a slightly shorter length will go some way to reducing the ugly loop of cable sticking out underneath the front of the van. In fact I tested this theory by disconnecting the cable from the gearbox end and pulling the slack through to the back. Sadly I can't deal with the excess cable length down that end as the cable runs inside the boxed section of the RHS chassis leg. So the ugly loop will have to stay up front until I can get a custom length cable made up.

Once I've got the new cable in place I'll then be able to work on a solid plan to modify my air deflector plate so I can get that back on.

Sadly I was so caught up with this morning's failings that I neglected to take some photos. But fear not as I've got some other photos on a little side project to share.

So spurred into action by @yoeddynz's latest ICE installation and the fact that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery here is my take on his latest invention:

Take one Boze mini bluetooth speaker:

 And just jamb the bloody thing into the glove box opening like so:

No fancy brackets for me. Just brute force and ignorance.

Works like a bloody charm.

[Flash]

Quick and easy job today.

I haven't had a working oil pressure light since doing the engine transplant. I know they are basically useless but it has been on the "to do" list for a while so why not tick it off.

Main reason I couldn't connect it up earlier was due to a snapped off electrical connection point on the pressure switch itself.

I was hoping to pinch the switch off my spare engine but it was in even worse condition with a whole chunk of bakelite missing.

Not really a drama as new switches are cheap as chips so I ordered a decent quality one off eBay which pitched up earlier this week.

Quickly swapped in the new switch which sits on the oil pump housing.

The wire in the factory loom was a tad too short to reach the new switch position so I soldered on an extra bit of wire together with a new end connector.

And we now have both an oil pressure light as well as my recently connected charge light.

Sometime in the future I'd like to connect up the factory water temp gauge even although I also have an aftermarket temp gauge fitted. I've also played around with some LED globes for instrument lighting but I was experiencing globe flicker which I've heard is common when using cheap and cheerful LEDs. I'm now back on the original globes which give the instruments that sickly yellow glow. The globes are the small BA9S type and I've heard good things about the Narva Arctic Blue incandescent globes so I might give a pair of those a try.

In other news I swapped a few yarns with Mark from Multiflex Cables in NSW this morning. He is such a good bloke. With a bit of luck my shorter push/pull cable should arrive towards the end of next week.

Thanks for looking.

 

[Flash]

Thought I'd share this for anyone who is interested :