Charlie's Echo/Madam Mayhem - glacial Bedford RL project

[Tamber]

No, the welds look spattery because there's no gas at all! Shroud's irrelevant at that point! It's supposed to be flux-core, but I have my suspicions... It's not going to be the strongest weld, which is why I only use it for sheet metal and just suffer; anything that needs to be structural, I've got the ol' faithful stick welder and a big box of rods.

Getting a bottle of gas is a mission in itself, unfortunately. I'm at work all the times anywhere's open. One of the first things I'll be doing with my upcoming week off is getting a fresh bottle for the tig set so I can finish the exhaust manifolds!

Engine colour's BS 381C 101 "Sky Blue", which seemed to be a pretty standard colour for the army to paint engines in, presumably so that oil leaks all stand out; compared to commercial practice of painting 'em black so the oil leaks all blend in.

Or Gardner's "doesn't matter what colour you paint it, it'll be dirt coloured in a week because it weeps oil everywhere regardless"! (It's how you know they have oil, don'tchaknow!)

As for the cable pipe: Yup! I have a body-hammer with a conical end; heated the ends of the pipe up, drove the body-hammer in a bit to flare it out, then went round the outside with the other hammer just to tidy the flare up around the hammer I was using as a mandrel.

[kevins]

I use hobby gas which is a bit dearer but no montly rental and the local hire place does it who are open saturday mornings.

[Sweetpea]

The Gardner is just marking its territory. I wish it wouldn't because I get Gardner Dribble in my hair every time I go under it.

I had a vague memory that you were using gasless MIG but then thought I'd seen a bottle in one of your photos.
Ah yes, gasless wire with no gasless stuff in it would definitely cause you a problem. I'd be sticking a bottle on that but I can appreciate the problem of having to work when the shops are open.
Do you have to swap the positive and negative over for gasless too? Or is that aluminium? Or both? I can't remember, I've never used gasless MIG.

Anyway, keep it up!

James

[Tamber]

Sept 15, 2022 9:55:08 GMT Sweetpea said:

The Gardner is just marking its territory. I wish it wouldn't because I get Gardner Dribble in my hair every time I go under it.

They don't make 'em like they used to! (Thankfully)

Sept 15, 2022 9:55:08 GMT Sweetpea said:

I had a vague memory that you were using gasless MIG but then thought I'd seen a bottle in one of your photos.

Yeah, I've got a bottle for the TIG. Can't really do that gasless... (I've tried, accidentally, and it just makes a big sparkler effect and it's done. )

and yeah, kevins, I get my gas from hobbyweld (via Nuts of Chorley); but, again, the problem is that I'm at work 8.30-17.30 M-F and 8.30-12.30 Saturdays, so by the time I'm out of work, everywhere's closed!

Sept 15, 2022 9:55:08 GMT Sweetpea said:

Ah yes, gasless wire with no gasless stuff in it would definitely cause you a problem. I'd be sticking a bottle on that but I can appreciate the problem of having to work when the shops are open.
Do you have to swap the positive and negative over for gasless too? Or is that aluminium? Or both? I can't remember, I've never used gasless MIG.

For some reason, I recall my welder threw a tizzy when I swapped polarities so I run it same as I would for normal wire, but I have heard that it should be swapped for gasless (theory being that it puts more heat into the wire and that's more effective for the flux core). Aluminium would be AC welded anyway though I have seen DC used in a pinch, it's just messy, smokey, and didn't really do a good job; but it worked well enough to tack things together while the AC MIG was out for service.

Sept 15, 2022 9:55:08 GMT Sweetpea said:

Anyway, keep it up!

Keeping on keeping on!

[Tamber]

Pretty? No. Getting better at it, though! Managed to spend two evenings after work *not* in crippling pain, so welded 'til past 10pm...

The 3-to-1 merge didn't go like I planned, I thought I had it figured out but apparently not. Ended up having to slice, heat, beat, and weld my way out. But at least it went better? less bad? than the first one.

There's a bit of twist in it yet, and there's a specific order it has to be bolted up in order to pull it into place properly, but I will see whether the heat of running the engine relaxes that a bit. (It probably won't, and I'll have to break out the gas & oxy to stress relieve a few welds)

Spent some time polishing the most visible bits of it up, too. Nice! Next step will be getting the marman clamp on the other header, then I have the freedom to start it up without potentially contaminating surfaces I need to weld, followed by the unequal 2-1 that merges both headers into one exhaust.

Still no closer to having a coherent design for the inlet manifold, though I did get to confirm that I absolutely made the right decision by deciding I don't want to try and weld injector bungs into the original manifold. Went to braze in some leftovers of the aluminium pipe into the ports, to replace the horrible little steel alignment rings that always fell out while trying to jiggle the manifold into place; and it would. not. braze.

No matter how much I cleaned it, scraped it, scrubbed it, fluxed it, changed gas settings... it would not braze. I could get the rod to wet just fine to the new aluminium tube, but it rolled right off the old manifold like water. I eventually settled for chemical metal, seeing as I had a lump of that left sitting around. Some gaskets on it, and it'll do for testing.

[Tamber]

There has been a tremendous cock-up with the exhaust headers. I'm very disappointed in all of you!

...



...

...how come nobody reminded me that there's a bloody great front diff I need to make those pipes fit past?!



Current clearance is: Negative a lot.

Frustrating, but not the end of the world, there's plenty of space, it's just in different places than where I put the pipes originally.
I am pretty confident I can cut n shut n weave my way through the available space, but I have learnt a very good lesson here and I am not going to make any more changes to the exhaust until I can sit the engine in the truck, and then know what needs to go where and what clearance it has. Looks like I'll get a chance to revisit those merge collectors after-all! But the headers are going to stay in their lovely long-tube form at least for a while yet, I want to have the engine running before I go to reinstall it. Easier to fix leaks that way.

In other items, once I stopped sulking from discovering that, I've gone and dug the spigot bearing out to get a replacement, and I've gotten in touch with the good folks at Powerlite about a gear-reduction starter.

Not the cheapest, but does have the advantage of being an improvement over the original, and also I can order it online rather than try and find a window in my perma-death schedule to drop the original starter in with a rebuilder for them to make that horrible tooth-sucking sound and pronounce "that's foxed, mate". Also, they have them on the shelf.

It's an RAC402A, for anyone interested. Fits Aston Martins from 1948 to 1972, and also through the wonders of everybody using the exact same parts-bin (Thanks, Lucas!), a Bedford RL.

Also, the spigot bearing appears to be the ubiquitous skateboard-wheel 6202 (albeit a quality SKF one), which I find highly amusing.

[Tamber]

...and yes, I have been sulking about the header cock-up for about 2 weeks.

[jamesd1972]

Oct 18, 2022 23:38:03 GMT Tamber said:

...and yes, I have been sulking about the header cock-up for about 2 weeks.

That's a proper good sulk !
Keep doing something as it's a great project.
James

[Sweetpea]

Oct 18, 2022 23:35:00 GMT Tamber said:

...there's a bloody great front diff I need to make those pipes fit past?!

Mate, just move the axle, it'll be a piece of cake for a chap like you.

James

[Tamber]

Casually flipping the axles upside down, and adding a reverser box in the middle of the driveline to make up for it, so I don't have to cut my nice(ish) headers about! Genius!

[Frankenhealey]

Go 2WD? I was tempted with the clearance problems with the Cummins gearbox.

[Tamber]

Oct 19, 2022 20:29:15 GMT Frankenhealey said:

Go 2WD? I was tempted with the clearance problems with the Cummins gearbox.

Ehhhhh, kinda misses the point, IMO. How am I supposed to do 4WD burnouts without it?!

[Frankenhealey]

Oct 19, 2022 21:46:06 GMT Tamber said:

How am I supposed to do 4WD burnouts without it?!

No no no no no! Having had a slight problem with the air-assisted Cummins clutch this exact situation occurred and the transmission wind-up can be spectacular. It's the classic black hole gravity well conundrum translated to old British Army trucks. With the length of the propshafts and any play in the transfer box it seems that the rear wheels or front wheels can be in motion before the front wheels or rear wheels have finished having a smoke. Then whichever wheels they are need to catch up, quickly. Depending on tyres and road/field surface that gives rise to an extremely disconcerting motion which is not quite bucking bronco but something that 4 tons of old truck should not be doing. The only saving grace is that as 4WD is automatically low range it's unlikely to get away from you.

Please post a video if you try

[kevins]

I don't know if it was the same for these but I was told by a long dead uncle who drove tank transporters in the war that they were instructed to take up all the backlash before applying full power (what little there was), on those the gearing was so low they would be in second by the time the wheels had done one revolution.

[generallee]

Ages ago, on a lorry thread, someone mentioned wanting Rubbolite marker lamps. I am tidying the shed and found these... if it was you, and you want them pm me your address and I'll send them.

[Tamber]

Thanks for the offer, generallee , but they're a bit on the bulky side for what I have in mind! They are very definitely of a certain time period, tho, aren't they?

(Funnily enough, work have a cardboard box on the upper floor of stores full of lenses for lights like that, and other odds and sods that nothing uses any more. And usually, I can pick something out and my boss can name what truck it's off (often what customer they ordered the bits for, too!))

I'm piecing together a set of Rubbolite Model 50s; they're nice and compact, which makes them easier to fit in the spaces I've got.

In other items thus far:

Snazzy New Starter!

Marked improvement immediately! ...for all of one turn. My battery is totally scrap at this point, I took it to work and used the drop-tester and it went from 12.8 volts to "just take it out behind the shed and shoot it" instantly. Ah well, it's just more money.

Replacement spigot-bearing!

Yup, it's definitely our good old friend the skateboard wheel bearing, but I got a genuine SKF one so that should do nicely.

Rocker cover hold-downs! (almost)

I should've gotten bigger washers... Also, not shown -- because I've not made them yet -- is that I'm going to make up some leather washers that go underneath the (replacements for the) pictured washers, that will act as a seal and a bit of compliance.

I screwed up getting new belts!

1090 is too short with an alternator! So I got... *drumroll* one that was 50mm shorter still. This is why I write things down, otherwise I am guaranteed to forget measurements. Thankfully, they're not expensive, and I needed to order belts for the compressor anyway so I just added replacements onto that order. Anyone need a pair of 1040mm long B profile V belts?

Aaaaaaaaalso, I still need to come up with a good replacement for the alternator pulley.

It being for car use, it's for an A profile V-belt (10mm wide) and has a 15mm shaft, but the vast majority of the pulleys I can find online for B profile have a 17mm centre bore; and the ones that aren't, seem to either have way too much offset, or are much larger so as to underdrive the alternator on a high-revving engine.

Seeing as the Bedford's 300 revs out in the region of 3300rpm and the alternator speed might be a bit marginal at idle, I may need to get myself a chunk of metal -- or maybe a blank-bore pulley with the right groove and a touch too much offset -- and spend some time on the lathe at work to come up with something appropriate.

Sealing!
I'm trying out some ... potentially interesting techniques for making a couple of replacement gaskets, utilising EPDM rubber strip. A sheet of appropriately thick bonded-cork large enough to make a rocker cover gasket (and a 2nd thinner one to make an engine side-panel gasket from) is ... eyewateringly expensive. The rubber strip is significantly cheaper, and there's a lot less wasted material.

I shall keep you updated on how well that works out. (5mm thick for the rocker cover, and 2mm thick for the engine side-panel. And I have more than enough of each to repeat the process again if necessary. There will be sealant involved in order to ensure oil-tightness. Hoping to invoke the magic powers of Hondabond in order to imbue my engine with the legendary oil-tightness of Japanese engines. But it's entirely possible that it doesn't work, and I end up with an engine that leaks more than a Gardner! Won't know unless I try, though! )

[gtviva]

Is there any reason why you cant use normal/origional gaskets? I might have some about

[Tamber]

Mostly, I want to try some stuff while the engine's out and it's easy to try it; it's not like original gaskets for stuff like that are in wide supply, and I know... normal people would buy a sheet of gasket material and make one that way, but I am definitely not normal.

[gtviva]

Here you go 300 petrol stuff, a bit of choice if you need anything

[Tamber]

*vibrates ferociously*