Mazda B-serieses. The year of the minitruck.

[Dez]

I know Hotwire has declared every year since about 2009 as such, but I have another now so it’s the year for me.

I’ve been jonesin’ for another minitruck for a while. Personally there’s only really two minitruck contenders for me. The Mazda b-series and the Chevy s-10. I’d have liked another shortbed squarebody s-10 but they’re quite expensive over here for what they are. You can buy a real truck for the same money.
I’ve had about have a dozen Mazdas and love them, even though they’re massively underpowered and rot like f-k. The thing that is going to totally change the market for them over here is they will start going tax and MOT exempt next year. I'm acutely aware of this and have a few chassis stashed away because of this. But I wanted a good stock-ish truck, not another chassis donor.

By chance foxy of this parish contacted me about sort-of selling his. Well, he was asking me what I thought it was worth, and me being the idiot I am was at his house a couple of days later with a recovery truck 🙄


Now being pragmatic, no one would ever have described foxys truck as a good example. It had a lot of good parts with it, but both the cab and chassis are quite rotten. The bed was a donor better one, but is still only middling. It did come with a hell of a lot of good parts though, which is what swung me on it.
It’s got new rear leafs and polybushed shackles, brand new belltech street performance shocks all round, decent lowering blocks, some ok alloys and tyres, one new and very good front wing, and boxes of new parts like lights, mirrors, accessories etc.
oh yeah, and it’s got a 13b rotary in it…

[Dez]

Nice bits-















Not so nice bits-

[Ratchet]

Yes! ive loved mazda B series minitrucks since seeing loads of them in street machine magazine back in the 90s,

have at various points wanted to build a minitruck myself and actually got as far as buying a bedford kb to build one.. but ended up selling it before doing much other than some rust repairs (lack of cash etc..)


looks like a lot of work needed on that cab, i guess the panel situation is much the same as whats available for the KB.. ie naff all

[redratbike]

oooh rotary for the win 👍

[Dez]

Jun 21, 2024 20:05:01 GMT Ratchet said:

Yes! ive loved mazda B series minitrucks since seeing loads of them in street machine magazine back in the 90s,

have at various points wanted to build a minitruck myself and actually got as far as buying a bedford kb to build one.. but ended up selling it before doing much other than some rust repairs (lack of cash etc..)


looks like a lot of work needed on that cab, i guess the panel situation is much the same as whats available for the KB.. ie naff all

You can get a bit more than you’d expect. Front wings, all front bumper parts. Possibly tailgates I think. They all end up mega expensive with shipping though. But as for actual repair panels, no there’s nothing available.

[Dez]

Jun 21, 2024 21:01:31 GMT redratbike said:

oooh rotary for the win 👍

I have no interest in it tbh. It’s for sale if you want one!

[Dez]

So, having a ropey truck and piles of good parts, what I needed was a slightly less ropey truck to fit them all to.
This is fairly tall order these days, half decent ones are money now. Even ones that aren’t really half decent are still money to be honest.
I knew about this one for sale in Barnsley. Terrible advert, not really publicly advertised either as it was on a private group.
I had intel that despite the advert being up over two months no one had even gone to see it. This is probably because it was missing its bed which would make most buyers instantly lose interest, but I had one of those. It also didn’t run and was missing the bench seat. But it was the cheapest one for sale in the country by some margin so thought it was worth a look.















The pictures flatter it somewhat, the paint isn’t as good as it looks and it’s a blue truck repainted red. It needs some welding but not as much as the other one. The glovebox lid and various other small items from the interior and engine bay were missing, and it had a plastic rear window. Front bumper was junk too.
On the plus side, It’s actually very straight with no dents and the interior is immaculate.
The full brand new stainless longlife-made exhaust is also a nice item. It’s also wearing a 4/2 format dateless plate, one of the old counties ones, which has a value.

I was poking round it and had more or less talked myself out of it when I found the bottom of the slam panel was rotten as well as a few bits on the sills. I said about it and he said ‘oh I’ve got one of those’. Before I could ask what he meant he pulled this out of the garage!






My jaw pretty much hit the floor at that point. A full new old stock slam panel for one of these is unheard of, I’ve never seen one.
Some of the other small parts also materialised, so I bid him a grand and he took it.
I dragged it back home and dumped it in the middle of the lawn. The wife was ecstatic…

[zeberdee]

As a B2000 mimi truck owner , definitely looking forward to seeing what you do with this .

Would be nice to find an early chassis to rebuild mine onto , tax is a killer on a slightly used vehicle .

Saw the 13B set up for sale , but unfortunately just don’t have the time or money right now .

👍

[braaap]

Yeah, a new Dez thread!

Seeing You decided to grow Your collection again makes me think Your estate situation got better and You just hadn't find the time to continue Your house thread.
I was going to comment on that cab as it seems quite similar to the transit wrecker. But that problem is solved obviously. Well, it got less a big one.

I'm going to bookmark this thread right now.

[redratbike]

Jun 21, 2024 21:23:38 GMT Dez said:

Jun 21, 2024 21:01:31 GMT redratbike said:

oooh rotary for the win 👍

I have no interest in it tbh. It’s for sale if you want one!

i’d love too but i think that’s too much power for the herald back axle

[mrbounce]

I'm in. Fascinated to see what you do with this one Dez

[Dez]

The plans arent radical, just a well executed, clean-ish truck lowered well that I can use. The chance to get such a thing is rapidly disappearing so I want to get in whilst I still can. I don’t even think I’ll bag it, even though I have the stuff to hand.

[Dez]

So with broken truck no.2 now collected, I set about making it work before the wife kills me.

First thing I did was went to see a mate of mine called Joe who is over near Sheffield, and well known in minitruck circles.
He had a spare pump as the engine in his truck had done a head gasket which I helped him diagnose, and he just bought a complete one to fix it, so he pulled the pump off the dead motor for me as it was known working a week before.
I totally lucked out as the week before he didn’t have a spare bench seat but he’d since sold a vehicle on and now he did. He also didn’t think he had a glovebox lid but then he turned one up whilst i was there that was on the wrong shelf!

I tested the carrying capacity of the panda 4x4 to the max with this lot.
Terrier performing usual post-purchase inspection duties.


In an odd twist I already own the chassis that bumper came off…


I bought the bumper as the metal section is perfectly straight and rust free. A rare thing. You can buy repros but the import costs are huge on such a large item.

As well as the missing intake pipe and the fuel pump, I bought a few bits of dark grey plastics to finish off the interior. This truck had a mixture of dark and light grey plastics which wasn’t correct, the interior seems to have been swapped around at some point, so I got the last few bits to make it all dark grey.

The biggest and most important bit was this.





These trucks have to have a bench seat. It’s the law.
This ain’t actually a Mazda one, it’s out of a Vauxhall brava (Isuzu KB) but I kinda prefer that as they have a bit more shape to them. Oddly the rails are the same spacing width wise. the front tabs line up witg the holes but the rear tabs are an inch too far back- easily sorted with a cut and weld.

So with that lot I have most of the missing stuff sorted. That was far too easy!

[Dez]

It may seem like I’m jumping the gun a bit going straight for pump replacement, but I'm experienced enough to know when a story doesn’t ring true. Even though it wasnt getting 12v to the fuel shutoff solenoid, so technically it does have a wiring fault, I could see the wiring to the fuel shutoff solenoid had been bypassed and wired direct to battery, and yet it still don’t run, so the story of it being solely an electrical fault was wrong.

There was evidence various other bits of the fuel system had been apart and reassembled recently- dirt and dust wiped off key areas, clips not put back in quite the same place, that sort of thing.
A further 5 minutes of testing ruled out any potential air draws in the system. I just plumbed the pump feed and return directly into a can in the engine bay and it still didn’t run. This means I’m very quickly down to it being an internal pump fault. The way it would start after a bit of cranking then run for 3 seconds and then cut out consistently was a bit odd, but with my understanding of how these pumps work, it was just running off the starting enrichment system and the main pump head wasn’t producing adequate pressure to keep it running.
So straight to pump replacement it is. Dead easy on such a simple motor, it was literally a couple hours work including cleaning, checking and retiming everything.

A few bits removed-

You can probably do it without removing the bumper and rad, but it’s much easier of you do and is hardly time consuming on such a simple vehicle.

A pump shaped hole-


And back together again. It really was that quick!


A quick test start without the ancillaries on and all was good, so i was pretty smug about my diagnosis. So everything else was fitted up, coolant refilled and run up to temperature properly.

It’s still a bit slow to start from cold and mildly lumpy at idle, plus a bit smoky, but it does start and run now and revs cleanly. I’ll reset the pump timing as I winged it slightly as I have no fixture to time it, then Next job with be a filter change, all new hoses with new clips to eliminate the chance of any air draws, drop the tank and clean it out as f-k now’s what it’s had in it in the past, and a new pickup pipe so it’s all 100%. for a cost of under £100 to do all that I think it’s worthwhile to prevent any future issues.

[Jonny69]

Crew cab dually build please.

[Dez]

Jun 23, 2024 6:40:40 GMT Jonny69 said:

Crew cab dually build please.

You’re as bad as Matt 😂
He thinks cos I’ve got two trucks to be going at I should build a 6 wheeler!

[redratbike]

was 6 wheeler by me back in the day , pretty sure it was magazine featured there was a group of guys that were all paint and body guys and ended up going to california to work

but before that they always had modified cars /hot rods/cal looks and mini trucks parked up


i can alway remember one week they were all hardtop mini trucks and the next they all had the ratical(?) lift off roofs

[The Cat Herder]

Always up for a Mazda mini truck. 👍

[slackerTHEpinstriper]

You could have called into my unit while you were at Joe's, literally 5 mins away.
I think I helped him get the red truck back to his after it had been at our yard for welding??

[Dez]

Jun 23, 2024 12:32:44 GMT redratbike said:

was 6 wheeler by me back in the day , pretty sure it was magazine featured there was a group of guys that were all paint and body guys and ended up going to california to work

but before that they always had modified cars /hot rods/cal looks and mini trucks parked up


i can alway remember one week they were all hardtop mini trucks and the next they all had the ratical(?) lift off roofs

There was a spate of ratical roofs. A couple have reappeared recently on one of the minitruck groups.