1994 Subaru MV Pickup - Moving dolly completed!

[georgexs]

Starting doing stuff with my pickup recently, so i'll start a project thread, and i'll try and keep it well documented.

So why have I bought myself a small rusty beige pickup (sometimes still questioning myself on this...)?

My current main car is a 1989 Mazda MX5, fun but rather impractical, although if you are willing to shed dignity and get points and laughs from strangers you can carry a lot poking out of the passengers seat (Current bests include a 40" TV, a rolled up mattress and myself and a friend complete with tent, gazebo, BBQ and all other stuff required for a week at Le Mans.)

I bought a practical second car last November, a 1972 Series 3 109" Land Rover, which hasn't worked out well. It's broken a lot. It has its charms but I can't stand the top speed of 55mph and the constant issues, driving me insane.

With fun plans ahead for the Mazda (supercharger + other goodies) a sane person would have bought a sensible, reliable already MOT'd car to fill in after the Landy, but in my twisted mind apparently another project is exactly what I need.

Bought the MV in May from Cirencester, here it was arriving at its new home, some dead land round the back of my work!



A reasonably straight 1994 beige MV, without MOT. And what was stopping it getting an MOT? Rust, obviously.

Have held off working on the Subaru until I finished fixing the Landy and getting it ready for selling (which it nearly is), has meant that not much has happened since May. Started working on it this last month though so here's whats happened so far.

A good wash:


Back removed:


Strip down for rust investigation (patches in the arches not done by me, will be redone much better!):


A screwdriver poke revealed what I feared:

Bumper mounts not made of much:


Passenger wing has a small hole but is worth saving:


Bed floor is genuinely very good:

Front Valance not so much...


So I paid Scoobydo from the MVBrumbyBrat forum a visit and came away with these:

I'm going to fit the GRP passenger wing despite the current one being easily saveable just for peace of mind. Are metal ones worth anything now GRP ones are available?

Some scouring on Ebay found this badly listed Weber DGAV:


Brand new but old, old stock. Made in Italy, Webers haven't been made in Italy since 1992 (now made in Spain). Italian Webers are regarded as being better, nicer casting and generally higher quality. This one is jetted for a 2 litre Sierra so shouldn't be a million miles off initially.

Went and spoke to the man who mapped my Mazda as he's a proper old school carb guy as well and walked away with a manual choke conversion for free! He's a great guy. Fitted:


That's where i'm up to for now, will be taking the inlet manifold off this week to do some measuring up and porting out ready for a adapter to fit the Weber on. I'm lucky in that I have full access to a bunch of CNC mills at work so i'll be making my own adapter up.

My priorities are just so wrong, swapping out a perfectly fine carb for an upgrade before sorting the actual problems with the thing! Oh well! :lol:

[oukie]

I like these, bookmarked.

[georgexs]

I forgot to add one very important photo:



Spare set of steelies have been banded courtesy of MrSpeedy, they look so much better with dish! Powder coating coming soon...

[SmokeEm]

Cool, bookmarked!

[oukie]

As for your question, are steel wings/fenders worth anything.

I would say yes, if they're salvageable, then some people are out there who probably prefer steel over grp, then there's the are they cheaper to fix up than buy grp options.

[baggabones]

I need one of these pups in my life...bookmarked

[Aaron]

Oct 15, 2015 19:00:06 GMT baggabones said:

I need one of these pups in my life...bookmarked

Amen to that!

[georgexs]

Update time, albeit a quick one as it's late.

Not got as much done as i'd like although things are starting to progress! Moved house a couple of weeks ago so that has eaten a lot of time, but it does mean that I know have a garage of my own:



Big enough to do genuine work in so this is a big step in the right direction for getting Sh1t done!

I love working where I do, lots of facilites at my disposal. One of the machining apprentices owed me a favour and so a carb adapter was created:



Bought some gasket paper off the bay of E and used the CAD model for the above adapter to make some perfect gaskets to mount it on using the laser cutter.



Trial fit time:



And its good, everything fits perfectly first time, very satisfying!

Next monday it's going for a tune up on the rolling road, and before that it's getting a really big service and treated to new fuel lines and filters. Wheels have also been sent off for powdercoating, so should have them back soon, I just wish there were more options available for 205/60/13 tyres, they are very thin on the ground these days.

Next update hopefully on the weekend, as I get all the above fitted.

[forkliftfred]

Bookmarked! I love these trucks

[mattiwagon]

That carb should give a hell of a lot more pep when setup dude, slightly hate you for the garage by the way! Lol

[georgexs]

Nov 21, 2015 9:03:58 GMT mattiwagon said:

That carb should give a hell of a lot more pep when setup dude, slightly hate you for the garage by the way! Lol

Yeah they're really mean to make a big difference, the standard Hitachi carb is tiny for a 1.8! A garage was my only real criteria for moving house!

[georgexs]

This car doesn't like me. What an annoying week so far!

Spent last weekend sorting it out for the rolling road session on Monday, no pictures unfortunately, other commitments and a deadline set way too soon by myself meant I had relatively little time to sort a lot of things.

New fuel lines and filters, spark plugs, ignition leads, dizzy cap and rotor arm fitted. Carburettor bolted on, and I got very very lucky where it ended up, the carb just touches one of the ignition lead silicone ends on the dizzy, must have measured slightly wrong when I was planning the carb adapter, thankfully it wasn't any nearer.

EGR blanked, lots of curse word emissions rubbish removed, the spare vac and breather lines going to said curse word blanked off, water heating to the carb blanked and a new throttle cable bracket made in 15 mins flat as I forgot about it until the last minute.

Ran out of time to do a few things, choke cable and air filter the major ones. I'm going to modify the original airbox as I quite like it!

Sunday afternoon rolls around and I try to start it for the first time with the new carb. Great success, two pumps of the throttle, first turn of the key and it fires up! I was delighted, didn't expect it to go that smoothly considering how quick I had to throw it all together.

Come Monday morning and everything was going well, got to work (where the pickup is currently housed) and my transport arrived to get it to the rolling road. The location of which is incredibly close to work, 500 metres, very handy! Due to the lack of choke cable and a very cold morning we elected to tow it there as it didn't want to run under load without choke. I steered the Subaru for the 1 minute journey, but I forgot to deice the screen before I jumped in, and there are currently no wipers on the car. Before I could do anything about it we were underway, and so followed one of the most tense minutes i've ever had, driving completely blind trying not to hit the kerb behind the tow van!

Thankfully I didn't hit anything so the pickup was pulled in and fired up on the rollers, idling very happily with the choke manually held on until it got warm. Getting it warm proved to be where things went wrong however! The radiator sprang a leak from what looked like the seam below the bottom hose, disaster!

Not wanting to risk any large coolant losses when being pushed on the rollers, disappointingly we decided to call it a day.....at 9.30am. So instead of taking a few hours off work to watch/help tuning the carb, we towed the Subaru back and I went to work and sulked all day!

That evening I took the rad off, couldn't see any cracks etc. but the general condition of it is awful, it's about knackered, lots of ins falling off and corroded. However the Subaru will be trailered home this weekend to start welding work (watch this space, this weekend will provide big updates!) and so I want to get it tuned whilst it's so handy to the rolling road as it's a fair way off an MOT atm. With that in mind, took it to be pressure tested at a local place, only to find no issues! Checked the hose and it's in good order too, so I think its the clamp I used, a wide mikalor hose clamp which i found at work (the old original clamp was ruined). The only thing I can think of was that the clamp was too wide and was therefore clamping the small flared section of the radiator pipe and not the proper flat section, causing it to leak.

So, i'm gonna put it back together tomorrow night, run it to see if its ok with a narrower clamp. If that works it'll go back on the rolling road Thursday and get transported home that very evening!

And the last nugget of annoyance, I emptied the jerry can of fuel into the car so I could give it back to guy I borrowed it from. The fuel tank leaks! It's had a crappy repair where the filler joins onto the main tank and it was dripping out! Argh! Very frustrating.

[georgexs]

Success!

Radiator went back on smoothly, it was the clamp to blame, brand new jubilee clip and all was well!

So it was rolling road time today to get the new carb set up



The carb was jetted for a 2 litre sierra, so wasn't a million miles out for the Subaru's 1800, a little too rich on the secondary, a little too lean on the primary and some idle mix adjusting and it runs sweet!

However it benefited most from a good thrashing, it hasn't been run regularly for a couple of years and it showed, after an hour on the rolling road the emissions dropped massively as all of the curse word was burnt of of the cat and it actually started working! Much more responsive now as well, I can see why they're a popular upgrade.

Mid-jetting:


And now it's home!



Tucked away out of the elements, at home, now some good progress can be made on it! Feeling very motivated

[metroman]

So what did it make on the rollers?

[georgexs]

Didn't push the revs mega high, but made 70 bhp at 4800. Was still climbing though.

Book figures are 75 at 4800.

Made lots of torque! Really quite punchy.

[pneuma]

Looking great so far dude. Great to see another Brat on here!

[luckygti]

Looking good, do love these pick ups and you can do a lot to them whichever direction you want to head in. Another one bookmarked

[georgexs]

Thanks guys, pneuma yours is awesome, certainly an inspiration for this project.

Got my wheels back from powder coating, i'm rather pleased they look great!






Tyres are ordered so they'll be tried on soon, can't wait!

Thanks again to MrSpeedy, the banding has transformed these wheels 

[1978]

Those look excellent! do you mind me asking what the banding cost please? My pal is building one of these and I'm trying to persuade him to band his original wheels too.....

[georgexs]

Cost £40 per wheel for 13" wheels, any width.