Oh is it hot yet?
Well to say we've had a warm Christmas season down here at Outlaw HQ would be a bit of a understatement.
The unfortunate thing is that all things Barndoor have slowed just a tad. Productivity has slumped to a all time low, while the gentle sport of watching the cricket( including just a little lounge chair coaching for the Aussie batsmen) and sipping various bottles of cold amber has succeeded in works place. This should not be seen as a lack of interest in reaching my goals, oh how contraire!
Oh no, definitely not, Ill be back in the shed, just as soon as ive polished off this stubby !
So the silly season is generally sprinkled with the ritual of passing (out) gifts to friends and rellies.
Only, of course after you have met head on and successfully navigated the hoards at your local unacceptably large shopping centre to first purchase said exchangeable gifts.
Subsequently,I have received some great trinkets. My sis gave me an early sixties Microbus deluxe sales/promo catalogue. What a gift, just fabulous art work and exceptional design and print quality.
My little bro Nathan, dropped a copy of Mark Frauenfelder's book 'Rule the Web' on me . Which is the be all and end all, of text's for workin the interweb from the man that brought us Boing Boing ,"A directory of wonderful things".
No doubt Nat thinks I could use some pointers on internet etiquette! What a great book for us learner web users.
And lastly from my delicious Scarlett, a great book of Antony Gormley's work, with many pictures and interviews with the artist, his work is spread world wide. Even here to outback West Australia, an installation in the dry lake beds close to the goldfields town on Kalgoorlie. I have wished to check this installation out for a while now. Possibly with the Outlaw Barndoor finished soonly, we can then zip out to the site this coming winter for a quick squiz.
And my house has turned into a sort of sweat shop. Not because it is hot (cos it is) but because Nat is flat out making hundreds of coin purses for sale at the upcoming SouthBound Festival.
A little more Electrics.
So ive rolled on a little more with the electrics. Got the horn mounted and wired and decided to make some little shrouds for the front indicator bulbs in an effort to separate their rays from those of the head lights, worked too!
The headers interfered with the rear apron so a little more surgery was required to the back end of this old fella.
I guess I should have expected as much cos the same header interfered with Burt's apron as well and some rubbin was require to his rear as well. And for the final time I hope on went the sunroof and also in went some of the glass with the new Wolfsburg West rubber.
My plan to have the rear brake lights flash also as direction indicators failed miserably so I went to plan C, which was, buy some cheap crappy light and screw it to the inside of the rear corner windows, which was a success of sorts.
I have promised myself, that I will sort this aesthetic sin system out in the future and remove those hideous pieces of plastic from this old Barnddoor.
Headlights 'n' such
More electricary. I searched out a decent group of parts that I could build a passable set of headlights. Rubbed em up a bit and splashed a bit of acid and paint here and there and viola, restored headlights with custom internal indicators.
As im using the OG wiper mech for the moment, im running an adjustable resistor to it so the arms dont fly off the windscreens at full noise. Yes dodgy, but who uses wipers on a splitty anyway.
I scratched around and found that a Bay window headlight harness would be the ticket. Then I found it had the indicator wiring threaded in with it also, which was a bit of a result!
Rear lights are coming along. I then dug out an old crusty deluxe front emblem that got hit with the wire wheel and a little bit more acid before screwing it to the nose of this, old fella barndoor.
Beautiful,,? In a dirty, handsome kinda way.
Hellectrics
So now a bit more engine prep work. The oil filter mount, mufflers,lights, wiring and a little problem with the new oil light switch which was solved by replacement with a dirty 40 year old one. And again some more issues with the fuel tap, which im close to chuckin in the bin right about now.
Well its summer so !!!!!
Yeah im gettin pretty lazy now. Not a hell of alot of progress.
Good thing is my thumb survived the attempted amputation, the end of it is a bit more pointed now so just maybe it is actually longer than original. Bonus!
So ive been rockin on with the carb linkage and the electrics.
The fuel tap leaks of course, so ive made a gasket for the strainer bowl.
Engine Shroud
Oh dear will nothing go smoothly! Thought I checked all this. The engine seems to be way close to the fire wall now and the front breast plate on the engine is virtually touching the body where its supose to seal against the rubber flap seal. Anyway, after removing and replacing the engine a dozen times, its now working and most importantly sealing all the way round to the rear breast plate, to the body. So I guess after 2 days you could call me successful.
Had to do lots of mods though. Im running the post 1971 oil cooler 'Dog House" system on this project which has an exhaust chute down the front left of the engine. Well this chute just hit virtually everything, so I had to hack the hell out of it to make it fit and it does now. Also I had to move my extra air intake on the other side closer to the starter motor cos that rubbed the body as well. This engine bay looks large but the firewall area is way tight, like an oval I guess.
Then I found the accelerator cable wouldnt pull full throttle on the 2 barrel Holley. So I made an extension to the foot of the linkage at the front under the cab floor. That seemed to do the job.
Clutch and Battery
Naturally I had to make a custom clutch cable. That was after I actually managed to thread the cable through the 50 year old conduit of this old fella barndoor. And of course all the bouden tubes I had were to long so I had to pick the one that best fit the conduit end and then shorten to size. All done and all good now.
Onto the battery cables, which I am running along side the rear light harness on the inside of the right hand chassis rail, for a cleaner look. Had to modify and make mounts for the factory style battery clamp. I dig these old clamp straps, they are so medieval and cool lookin. And a bonus is they work great if set up properly, defo better than plastic clamps and wing nuts, Yuk! too mod for this old Outlaw.
CV's and Axles.
Arr such is the life of a Hot Rodder (sorry to all those real hotroders out there!).
Nothing ever fits straight out of the box, so you have to be able to modify the part so it fits and works harmoniously with the other parts around it. Now this can have a domino effect and can quite quickly turn into a huge rolling snowball charging towards your base camp. So while some people who watch me and wonder why it does sometimes take a whole half a day to do what on the surface seems like a simple modification procedure, the truth is that the old worn out cogs that inhabit my brainium are figuring all these possibilities out for me. even though on the surface I may physically be lying in the sunshine, yes, but I am actually hard at work! Ask anyone who's done it.
And so with these thoughts fresh in our minds we shall tackle the catastrophe that is IRS axles and CV's.
I am gonna run Bus CV's cos they give a little more angle than T1's, this will hopefully allow me to drop the wheel down a little further to aid in rear wheel removal. So I cant run T1 auto short axles cos Bus CV's a too wide so Ive ordered a pair of Empi's shortest off the shelf axles which should work. Im running 944 stubs so Bus Cv's will bolt straight up to them, no worries. But, last year while I was in California I bought a pair of Empi gearbox output bells to fit a T1 box and have the flange that Bus CV's will bolt to. Well they look like they would and for the last 12 months I have had them sitting on my bench safe in the knowledge that they would fit, which they do of a sort. Sure the bell slides on the output spline and sure the Cv outer sits inside the bell properly, but when I went to screw one up with the factory 8mm cap screw,,, yeah it fell right through the threaded hole, Damn! 3/8" shit! Why wasnt I told. Why when everything else is metric does Empi do this? Anyway so its Friday afternoon and i gotta get some High tensile 3/8 capscrews. So I call around and nothing. What to do? I did manage to order some in however not till the following monday. So I waste time by sorting out a good set of CV's , drilling them and the lock plates for 3/8 bolts.
Then I find the axles are too long, mainly because there is no step at the end of the spline to stop the axle sliding through the CV to far and hitting the output shaft or stub. So Ive cut 5mm off each end and re-machine the snap ring groove.
Hopefully that will sort it out.
Then it was onto the lovely job of packing them with grease and fitting the assembly to the bus.
Beautiful!
More Engine and more Paint
And on goes another 4 litres of grey and about 1 and a half litres of the new blue.
Next back into the engine. On goes the new alternator and fuel pump. The Scat pulley was a bastard to get on (and off several times!) and I had to make a special puller for it cos regular ones wont work. The inlet went on all ok, but as the heat pipe to the centre section was cut, on the vintage PIS manifold, I had to make a custom bracket. Ive got some cool old scool stuff on this engine so I hope it all works when I fire it. The Holley is an ancient one as is the Truehaft sump and of course the OBerg filter an old Berg merg and Thunderbird dual muffs. I have my cut down offset shroud and modded front breast plate too. Lovely!
Prime & Engine
So a quick spot prime over where the rust had come through. Next we will spray the grey and then some more blue, though a slighlty different hue!
Just as I was to start the top end assembly of the engine, ive now noticed the engine will not turn without jamming. But its only in one spot on every second rev. Ah ha! I here you say, it must be in the timing gear and yes you are right. But the case is together and im loath to crack it open. So after much head scratching I deduced it must be the cam gear on the new cam hitting the oil pump. And sure enough, as soon as I pulled the pump (again!) the culprit was in there staring at us.Bastard! So a little grinding and we are sweet.
