Humber SS's 4V Century V8 powered Dyna Camper

[HumberSS]

Well behind on updates here. Slow progress, school hols and general business has not seen the results one ambitiously thinks will happen in the desired time frame. #projectlife. 

Where to start? 

Have now finished engine cradle including a few notches for critical engine bolts.

 

Made a complicated pipe to move water around. Started with ally bends off aliex but ended up going with tighter ss bends I had. Have since swaged ends to help with pipe retention

 

Next stop has been to get engine to a point where I can start it. Got a belt, made a dummy wiring rig for startup. Cunt won't start, have spark, suspect I m not pouring enough fuel down the hole, and also haven't checked if I have 8 sparks, so need to do that. Pretty sure I've got the timing bang on. It's using and early chev hei ignitor. Was hard to find definitive info on wiring but eventually got there, and spark at plug tells me I have done something right.. before doing that I used some clay to measure my seal thicknesses and ordered these, buttoned up rocker covers with fresh coat of wrinkle black, Im happy with the look. Really want to hear this bitch now.

 

I managed to get in touch with the original engine builder, it was built about 20 years ago. It's had head work, skimmed, block decked and cam reprofiled. On cranking I was seeing about 40-50psi oil pressure which is reassuring. 

Other things. My mate has been doing some of the bolt on panels as he owed me a favour. I've also been partaking in my other favourite pastime of staring at other parts, using motivational herbs, and figuring out next moves. Toilet will go under drivers seat, under the D40 Navara rear bench seats I acquired some time back. 

 

[HumberSS]

More pics. 

Also, I only have 7 original plug leads and they are not flash, and one oddball. I'm really struggling to find replacements that fit and would appreciate any Intel on sourcing something suitable. Amayama list but no stock..  wondering if maybe I could butcher some 7M leads perhaps? 

 

[HumberSS]

Been getting a bit done, cbf smacking out a big update right now. Couple weeks ago we got the bitch fired up. Thanks to the GC @fletch for his exceptional trouble shooting abilities.And timing light.

Working on water pipes now so will hopefully be on  to diff next

Chur

https://youtube.com/shorts/loj9hqDgwQE?si=C8Xhtq75FGZGLL2j

[HumberSS]

Posting a better startup vid, finally got it all plumbed up. Had a few comedies of error but she seems all sweet. There is a pretty decent oil leak under the oil pump drive so I need to have a look what's happening there, and the stupid silicon rad hoses don't seal up that nicely..

Aside from that, listen to it in all its glory! It's an angry little thing..

https://youtu.be/7W1fyjg7ixE?si=2oTXfh21blaNmg9b

PS how do I embed the video?

[HumberSS]

The cadence has been poor on this one. Many distractions. Many more pressing things, unfortunately. However in the spirit of making me feel better with all your likes, and hopefully kicking my ass into gear, I thought perhaps an update is in order. I did work on this thing for the first time in two months last night, so that's a start. 

Winding back, I obvs got it going, which necessitated finishing the radiator pipework, i kept the rad in the factory posi, so needed to pipe it accordingly. No issues with bleeding air given the relative height diffs, which is good. 

 

Also got some sweet mufflers/resos from rock auto. 2.5" spiral flow resos, 18" long, and a nice 2 into one muffler. The prices are stupidly cheap compared to here, even with freight. Brought tube and hangers locally as that didn't compute.

 

Also got some 7mm ply floor glued into the front of the camper body. 

 

And finished off the ally flashing to cap off the hole, which is partially visible above. 

Yesterday started finishing off collector. Tapering to 2" for a bit then step up into 2.5" resos and then into the muffler. Will add more muffler if it needs it thereafter. 

My old starlet turned up for a visit this week too. I restored this about 5 years ago, it's holding up pretty well. 

 

[HumberSS]

[HumberSS]

As promised, time to start making headway again after far too many distractions. Had a good couple nights on this over the weekend in pursuit of exhaust nirvana. Of course, ran out of/underestimated bends needed. So will grab another 2.5" this week some time. Made a couple of brackets to sling the main muffler off the xmembers. The trainspotters will notice I bent a prong the wrong way. It made sense in my head. Bending it back is probably not going to happen, I'm comfortable with accepting my failures. I also dropped the muffler at least twice. Dents upwards it is..

Started putting tube on, need to go up and out rather than just coming out at the 45. It would prob be ok but I don't want to risk diff head vs exhaust. This angle is a bit tight as it runs close to the shock so need to massage a little more along with deviating upwards. Will sling resonator next then connect the dots. Exhaust systems are harder than they look to get nice, muchos respect. 

Furthermore, cut my handbrake disk on the plasma and owing to selling my big lathe, I had the shop that brought it spin the necessary detail in to it to spigot between driveshaft and pinion flange. Need to chuck it on the mill and pitch out to holes, then set it up properly to start mounting calipers and weld mounts to diff housing.

 

[HumberSS]

Work in progress of exhaust being built. Will take me a while at this pace but chunking little bits at a time, as is the order of the day.

To save you using your imagination..

 

 

 

[HumberSS]

[HumberSS]

Chipping away. Finished most of one side and plasma'd out the collector flanges, as well as got the other side reso welded into place and slung off its mount. Have to kinda joggle across from the collector to the resonator. The dogshit coby 2"mandrel bend I got was oval through the bend so I hacked it up to make a dirty template for section between collector and resonator.

Any recommendations on where to buy decent u bends with long legs (around 200mm) would be welcomed.

 

[HumberSS]

So in all of my froth I neglected to take account of my handbrake shenanigans. The exhaust route was a but tight (see comparitive pic 1 below) and whilst would have been fine if no handbrake stuff was going on the diff, I realized I was blindly ploughing on without considering that. Luckily I hadn't finished the exhaust, so I spent a night chopping it up and rerouting with more space around the diff head, it's much better. Just gotta connect the headers now, hopefully tonight's mish. I'm excited to hear it.

[HumberSS]

Finished joining the dots. It sounds perfect, not too loud, doesn't get raspy with a rev.  I'll post a video some time. I'll put a tail pipe on once it's all together and I figure where it's going to run.

It had a slightly noisy lifter sound this time which seemed to dissipate with time and I noticed some fan belt squeal too. Perhaps I couldn't hear those things prior when it was uncorked. Will investigate. 

Stoked to get to this point. It's no show pony but good enough.

Final engineering tasks on/around chassis are to mount spare wheel hanger a bit further back, as the muffler occupies the position where that was. Build the handbrake caliper mounting. Finish gear shifter things. I got an auto column shifter from an early Previa at pickapart which have a similar 4 speed auto. It also has an overdrive button. I need to check out lever linkage ratios but have a pretty good idea how that's all going to go, half of it's already built.

Probably only other things are to build an additional fresh water tank which will occupy void above the trans or down low in front of radiator above front axle to push a bit of weight forward to counter the engine setback and spare wheel shift. Also think about mounting a trans cooler - I'm not sure if I should do this now or just wait till it's on the road and measure trans oil temp to get a feel for size of cooler needed? 

 

[HumberSS]

Made a thing for holding the spare wheel. Not sure if I'll drill through the hard AF chassis to bolt it or fashion a few little edge clamps. I fucked it up a bit as didn't allow clearance for the protruding wheel centre as I lifts up. Nothing an angle grinder won't fix, but defeats the purpose of having done a mint job of profiling it...Such is life..I want to throw my mig in the bin too. Grrr.

Tonights shenanigans involved trying to put the 4 holes in handbrake disk for mounting to diff flange. Fyi, I am not a machinists asshole. More of a crayon guy.. So I spent quite some time fishing around for the right clock (long story, my machinist left nearly 1 yr ago, lots of unpaid bills so I've effectively taken ownership of all his gear. Lawyers. Boring...) got it all clocked up with .01 on the centre bore and proceeded to pitch out the holes. Hole 1 went well. Broke the pilot drill on hole 2. Managed to fish the broken bits out without too much drama but when I went back to have another crack with a new bit I realised the part moved. Motherfucker. Now home on couch with beer. Was feeling defeated and unsure how to clock it all up again but my good friend who actually knows what he's doing has furnished me with the approach for setting up again so I'll have another lash tomorrow. He clearly did not want this shitty job. Will report back.

[HumberSS]

[HumberSS]

Zero excuses for shit welding now. 

Woke up this morning and though fuck it, just gotta work harder this month.. Thanks santa

That was third pull of the trigger. 

[HumberSS]

Bit of work on the shifter linkage to translate it up to the chassis rail so I can hook to the estima shifter cable. Got an early rwd estima column shifter with the OD button on, cable and the linkage off the trans, which was a direct fit. Took the pull length of this to mod the original one, drilling a new hole, will tidy up later. Made a new rod for upstairs, all the pivoting linkages are 1:1. Cable length looks like it will be pretty much bang on to reach into the cab. 

Tis not the season for working on projects this side of Xmas. 

 

 

[HumberSS]

Finally got back to disk for handbrake. Better experience this time, wasn't too bad to get it clocked up again and I learnt things. Also it actually fit, which I guess is the most important metric. The disk looks large, and it kind of is, but it doesn't hang below the diff housing. Once I have dummied the caliper into place I'll look at how much I can reduce the od of the disk without it causing any issues. I'll also run a shield on the bottom to protect it.

 

[HumberSS]

Work/Life/house jobs are kicking my ass. Mostly work though, which is such a fucking boring story.

My shed will be erected in the next 2 weeks, which means more distractions, but in a good way for the long term health of the projects. I expect up until about may/june there will be little in the way of project progress while I sort the finer details of wiring, benches and storage..

However with chassis/engine engineering tasks feeling like they are nearing completion, or so I keep telling myself, I have started thinking about the cab. You need to go back in the thread to page 1 so see how bad it is, but its pretty stink how many holes there are. I started fishing around in Oz to see if I could locate a decent cab or some rust cuts. The first vein I explored found me a free dual cab tipper in tidy condition. But 6.5 hours inland from Sydney. It made no financial or logical sense. The second vein netted me a rust free bare dual cab shell with all the rust cuts I needed for $500au (yes the idea of a dual cab has so much appeals, but the scope creep and associated work lengthening the chassis, combined with realistic assessment of my life saw those thoughts quickly dashed.. ) this one was 330km from Melbourne, and just a bare cab. Still $2500AUD ground freight before sea freighting. And then Id be cutting it up (dude wasnt keen on chopping up on my behalf.).

Once we both agreed that was a no go, being the GC he was he had a search on FB in Oz on my behalf and found a very mint complete single cab truck. 220km from Melbourne on the right side of the city to the shipping depot. We have been haggling the details but he has agreed to remove the cab and slap on a pellet for me and arrange the drop off to Melbs. 

I will be somewhere between $4-5k all in on the cab by the time it gets to me but I think for the saving of several hundred hours of metalwork and the expedition of the project (meaning camping missions far sooner than they otherwise would be), it is invaluable. I will likely keep the cab colour as is, give it a little spit and polish and just rustproof for now. But how good?? No amount of repairing what I had compares to the bone dry rust-free desert goodness of this thing.

[HumberSS]

This took way fucking longer than it should have. No project updates owing to the list of jobs that now need completing within the big black box. Wiring, then concrete. Maybe project time before spring.

[HumberSS]

Matariki meant I actually kind of planned ahead to carve a day out on the camper.

First job after rewriting my 4 lists and condensing to 2, thereby remembering where I was actually up to, was to finish the spare wheel holder. 

Next job was complete shifter mount for the shifter cable. Went oldschool and did not bust out the CNC plasma for this job. Tucked away down inside the rail, made sure I can still pull plug leads.

Of course being the Friday of a long weekend I ran out of mig wire. Meh. Mostly done