1964 Econoline camper in the UK.

your gauges and switch box look great, i'm curious what your going to do with the new roof opening ?

For now i will be sticking a sheet of aluminium chequer plate in there, but long term i would like to fit a sliding ragtop....

Well, i had a quick look under the van, where the fuel tank was, and look what i found....



A huge chunk of metal...... weighed a LOT....!!!! Anyway, i lowered it down using the trolley jack. Didn't fancy trying to bench press that thing, and i'm glad i did, as i just tried lifting it and only just managed to lift it off the floor....!!!
So, i'm thinking about leaving this off. Does it affect the handling very much....?

Sy

Dang!Thats a good size piece of plate under there.Somebody was wanting some serious weight back there.

Sy,

Engineers put it there for a reason...

...it's call "weight polarity" and it does affect handling.
BTW, where is your fuel tank now?

George

The fuel tank is being sealed at the moment and will be going back in. I was thinking about leaving the weight out because of all the stuff that will be fitted in the back that will add more than that amount of weight over the rear axle....

Sy

Whoaaaa....that's some serious counterweight there

Oh great you are re-doing your tank. I see why you are pondering
the weight as it is "on top" of the tank...

...the weight was put there for the worst-case scenario (empty shell
van.) It would be your call to forego the weight with permanently
mounted things.

Engineers went to the trouble of putting 150 to 300 lbs of dead weight
in a new production vehicle as the handling was an issue. Keep in mind
that more weight aft is a good thing in these vehicles as they will
handle great. (More and more like a true mid-engine vehicle.)

I reckon it would be nice to keep the weight, just my 2 cents worth
(or 2 pence, ha ha.)

Figure the only way to tell if you are helping or hurting the polarity effort
would be to use individual wheel scales, before and after...

George

I guess another easy way to find out is to try both....
I took the weight out because i could see that there wasn't much rust proofing above it, and wanted to underseal properly. I'm glad i did, as it looks like someone painted around it at some point.
The good thing about these vans is how easy it is to remove the fuel tank. It even has a drain plug....!!! Never owned a car with one of those before...! So i think i will try both, once it is on the road, and see what difference it actually makes to the handling.... I suspect i will be leaving it out once the full interior is fitted though.
Sy

Ah good points. By "handling" I meant a little less savory, like
a panic stop on a curve with wet conditions, having the rear
end get light lose traction and careening into a hazard like
on-coming traffic and such.

It will no doubt work without the weight, should go down the
road to the corner store, etc.

George

OK, so that wasn't a very fun weekend. I am still waiting for the delivery from Mac's to arrive with the new kingpins and brake cylinders, but i had the whole weekend allocated to remove the King pins. What a HORRIBLE job that was....!!!!!!
I have read through the kingpins thread that i found in the Econoline general discussion part of this forum, so i knew it wouldn't be easy, but i hadn't expected them to be quite as stubborn as they were....!!!
Firstly i had to get the locking pins out. I spent quite a bit of time trying to bang them out, using a blow torch to heat up the area in question, but this had absolutely no affect. I had no way of telling which way to hit them, so i tried both ways. They were well and truly seized...!!! In the end i resorted to carefully drilling them out.
I center punched the pin and carefully drilled from both sides, up to a maximum of 9mm, which is slightly less than the pin size. The remaining part of the pin was then easy to tap out....
Ok, so on to the king pin. This is where the fun really started, they were completely stuck....!!!!! I was running out of ideas, but a picture i found on this site of somebody removing them with a bottle jack gave me hope....
So i spent a couple of hours making this thing, i don't have any proper workshop tools, but i do have a welder and lots of metal pipes and stuff kicking about....




Not the prettiest welding you will ever see, but i was in a bit if a rush at this point, as half the weekend was gone, and i hadn't even removed one king pin....!!!!
Anyway, with a bit of tweaking, and a 12 tonne bottle jack, i got the pins out....



Once i had done one side, the second side was done much more quickly. The locking pin had to be drilled out again, but once this was done the homemade press made short work of the kingpin. It is now under my workbench, and will probably never be used again....!!!

Fortunately, the axle appears to be ok, the kinpings are a very tight fit in it, it was just the bronze bushes in the hub that were worn out.



So, thats another weekend gone, all i need to do now is fit the new pins when they arrive, and replace the brake lines and rear cylinders....

Sy

I know it was a big job, but you'll be happy you went to the trouble, cool homemade tool!!!!

Very nice Sy! Great tool. Keep the ballast weight.

OK, so i have made more progress towards getting this thing on the road.
The kingpins were totally knackered, as previously mentioned, so i decided to have a go at fitting the new ones myself.
First of all i had to get the new bushes into place. These are a really tight fit, but i don't have a press, so i used an M12 (about 1/2 an inch) carriage bolt of suitable length to fit.


I just wound the nut on the end to pull the bush into place, this took a lot of force, and i had to use a new bolt for every bush, as the threads couldn't take the continued abuse, but i found that plenty of grease helped a lot....
Once the bush was flush with the surface, i used one of the old bushes to sink the new one in to the correct level for the end cap to fit in place....

Then i started to ream out the bushes. I was a bit nervous about doing this, and came up with a few ways off ensuring that the hand reamer went in straight. Here is the method i went with in the end...
In this photo, you can see the adjustable hand reamer, and one of the old grease caps off the original kingpin. I removed the grease nipple from the end, and drilled out the hole to 12mm which is about the same diameter as the shaft on the reamer.

This then allowed me to put the reamer in place, with the grease cap in the opposite end, which lined up the reamer dead centre. The adjustable reamer is great, you can wind the adjusting nuts back and the reamer slides through the new bush, and then you tighten it up an 8th of a turn at a time and ream away until the kingpin fits....

This method worked perfectly, i reamed the holes out just enough to get the new kinpins in with a light tap of a soft mallet. Once greased up, this meant the kingpins were nice and tight in the holes.... and thats it...!!!! It worked a treat and they are all back together now.
I also replaced all the brake lines underneath with Kunifer pipe, and replaced the rear wheel cylinders that were leaking. Now the brakes are bled and they feel very positive.
And thats it. All i am waiting for now is some metal pipe to be delivered that i can shape into a pipe for the vacuum modulator on the gearbox, and the van is ready for an MOT test. This will be a week on Wednesday as i have stuff to do before then.
The only thing that may be a problem is the steering box. There is a small amount of play in the box when the wheels are on full lock left or right. Once straightened up this goes away. Hopefully this won't be an issue.... We'll see
Then once the van is MOTd i will be patching up the hole in the roof temporarily, and fitting some seats in the back... Then the van should be ready to use....
I cannot wait.....

OK, so i have been doing some little jobs tonight.
I have made up a pipe for the vacuum modulator, and one for the carb overflow.
I was also missing a section of the kickdown mechanism, so i knocked up one of those as well... I'm doing everything i can think of to ensure this thing makes it the 5 miles to the test station and back without any hassle.
Sy

That's a lot of progress in short order Sy!

Another small update. My van now has seats in the back.
I couldn't decide what to do in the back, but when i saw these come up on Ebay i decided to get them. They are a perfect fit, and have infinite adjustability as they are mounted on rails, so the seats slide backwards and forwards as far as you like.... Also it takes 2 minutes to remove both sets of seats if i ever need to carry anything big, although i have a newer van for that anyway....







And they fold down flat to form a complete bed. Well chuffed with these. Cost me £100 and we can now use it as a camper. Just need to sort out one of the hammocks for the little one for when he is a bit older.....

Hey those look great in there Sy !

Awesome Find! I wish I could be so lucky!

they look very comfy.......

They came out of something called a Mazda Bongo....!!!!



They are a Japanese thing, they have loads of them over there, and quite a few have now been imported to the UK. They often get the rear seats taken out to convert them into a proper camper, so they come up on Ebay quite often. My Father-In-Law used to have 2 of them, and he has been telling me for ages to get some Bongo seats... I finally decided to get some and i'm glad i did as they fit really well....

Sy

seats look great!!!!

Well, had a very good day today. Just took the van for an MOT test. They check all the suspension and steering for play, check the braking performance on a set of rollers, all the usual stuff, and it passed with flying colours....!!!
We are legally allowed to drive to and from the MOT station, which is about 8 miles away, so i got to drive the van for the first time.....
Holy cow....!!! Its very different to anything i've driven before....!!!
It seems to run quite well, although it sounded like it was revving quite high at 60 mph. Going to fit a tacho this week so i can keep an eye on the revs. Does anybody know what a good rev limit is for these...?
It didn't overheat at all, and the standard drum brakes work really well. The MOT tester was very impressed with it.
All i have to do now is wait for the registration documents to turn up in the next few days, and then i can get some number plates made up, and it will be legal for road use. Until then it has to stay in the garage unfortunately....!!!

Sy

Congratulations!!! Yes, driving a cab-over-engine vehicle for the first time definitely provides a strange sensation!!! I love it now though!