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

Yeah, port injection. Going to give it a go, anyway; if it doesn't work, I suppose I can always put the original manifold back on and make it single-point injected. As far as length goes... a 600mm (2 foot) length of fuel rail will just about cover all 3 runners.
Still trying to make my mind up on the basic form of the manifold... whether to go for something in the style of the original manifold -- with a 'down-draught' throttle body -- or more of a 'log' style manifold with the throttle body at the front (Which would certainly be easier!). Trying to come up with something that at least looks half decent, or at least could pretend to be an early factory prototype sort of deal.


Glad it was of use! That trick's a bit horrible, but it does work well when there's not much other option. Needs must, and all that!

Did some measuring, got a 36-1 trigger wheel for the crank trigger. Turned out, I screwed up my measuring.
Outside diameter of the teeth is ... pretty much spot on for the outside diameter of the pulley.


Thought I'd give it a try, since there's that nice heavy bevel on the edge of the pulley/damper. If it works, it makes it a little more protected, I think?



And with that, time to fasten it on there proper, like. It remains to be seen what the runout is like, since I had no fancy tools to do this with. Will just have to try it and see; maybe fettle the heights of the teeth by hand, if it turns out to be too bad.



And then a splash of paint...



I also went through & double-checked the torque on all the main caps and rod bolts; threw some new hardened washers under the head nuts -- because apparently I lost a couple of them in the move from the previous unit. Fantastic -- and got the head torqued down, with its new O-rings and a new head-gasket.

Getting closer and closer, now, to having an assembled long-block! Head-scratching still on-going over the inlet manifold design; though I'm reasonably convinced it's not going to be a log-style manifold. I managed to dig out the original one -- which required some surgery to the truck body to allow me to extract the locker door hinge, to remove the door, to give me enough room to extract the manifold from the locker! -- to squint at.

Made a minor start on body-work. Went to set the go-pro up, it wouldn't turn on. Put it on charge, using the charger & lead that charges my little torch just fine. Still wouldn't turn on. Then I dropped it and got crud in the microphone port and when I went to try clear the port, I managed to poke its ear out. All it can record for audio now, is crackling.

Not happy at all. Then I lost my glasses. (Absent-mindedly put them down somewhere.) Between all that, and my knee being agony, I'd had enough. Managed to find my glasses -- picture me hobbling about hunting all over the workshop, with my nose 6" off everything I'm looking at, cursing growing louder and louder -- and went home.

Time for the tiniest of updates! As a treat!

Progress on the welding? I welded part of the passenger's side door step back in the wrong place, and I'm still in a little bit of a mood about it, two weeks later. It's not the end of the world, but I've got to unpick and re-weld in the right place, and I'm not feeling like it.

Not helped by me also having to do a load of welding on the car, which I am also not feeling like doing. So it stays where it is for the time being. (I will have to sort the car out & get it MOT'd, because I kinda need it to be able to haul parts around. Also, if I leave it sitting there too long, the landlord might notice...)

As for what I have done...

Tappets, pushrods, and rockers have all been thoroughly cleaned, appropriately lubed, and installed. Rockers aren't adjusted yet, because it's rather sketchy to bar the engine over on the stand as it is and I don't want to tempt fate.

I've cleaned the threads on the manifold studs & bolt-holes, so they all run on nicely.

And I've cleaned & refitted -- mostly -- the oil pump. I say mostly, because the bottom of the pump has been left loose for now as I need to sort out a new oil pickup to go with the new sump that I still need to sort out. After all, the sump I have is the wrong one and I'd rather not do damage by assembling it with the wrong sump then having it hit the diff again. How likely that is to happen is debatable, but knowing how I drive, and how tempted I'd be to take it offroad a bit... yeah, it's tempting fate.

Flush with success on that, I cleaned, painted, and refitted the oil filter housing with a new gasket.

Gasket still to be trimmed, and paint needs a little touch-up. I'll be ordering filters at some point in the near future. (Sogefi FA3448 is what I used last time, cross-referenced from the AC72 that's on the housing.)

Having sorted that bit out for now, I went hunting for the side panel. Didn't find it, but did find the starter motor, so decided to clean that up too.



It's a Lucas M45G L7. OE number of 26043A. Isn't it great that pretty much everything used the same parts bin for electrical parts?



Anyway, as part of cleaning up, I decided to take off the cover band and... ew.


Looks a bit like mud, but is glittery. Pretty sure it's dust from the brushes combining with other assorted grunge. But that's when I noticed something else rather concerning...


That wire shouldn't really look like that, I feel!



Looks like it's got caught on something, shredded up and arced a bit. Being that it's a wire feeding a brush, it shouldn't be the end of the world, other than it's connected to the wire coming out of the field windings. Not ideal.
At some point, I'll be running this starter down to the place work use to have their starters & alternators worked on, and see about getting that straightened out.

Thankfully, since so much stuff used the same basic M45G motor, stuff like brushes should still be readily available, surely? (In the absolute worst case, I could probably get a modern-type gear-reduction starter to suit, I guess?) Anyway, that'll be up to the starter shop, and in the future for the time being.

Still didn't find that side-panel for the engine, though. It'll turn up.

Incredibly belatedly (...is it? Probably. I don't know. I have no sense of the passage of time any more.), that'd be grand! I'll send you a PM!


As for further updates: Oh my god it is too hot, help, I have radiation damage and I think I may have melted at the edges.

*stumbles off singing "The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear fur-nace~"*

A spring park brake obviously gives a layer of failsafe in the event of vacuum loss, which is in general a good thing and is great on something that gets a lot of use. However, leaving the wagon parked up for extended periods with the rear brakes hard on is a recipe for stuck brakes. I’m fairly sure that is why the military Bedford MK and MJ models retained a separate handbrake despite having air-over hydraulics right up until they were phased out in the late 80s. I’m not saying don’t fit a spring brake, just be aware of the downside.

Using up some older footage

Yeah, it's hardly going to set the world alight when it comes to performance! Might be highly entertaining to find somewhere to put it on a dyno if I ever finish, though! One thing I've noticed, now that I'm allegedly a truck mechanic, is that... it's very stoutly built, for the 'plated' weight! More like an 18 tonner than an 8-and-a-bit!

Still, I'm not planning on running over any land-mines, regardless of how stout it is... Not much left of that one.

I think it was in the process of being phased out circa 1958, so mine has it but it's capped off and doesn't have the little mounting balls for the gun cradle. All it'll have to hold up now is the beacon

In unrelated news, I was looking at the 1958 handbook again, going to see what they listed for the fuel economy back in the day; and I managed to find an error in the handbook.
It lists the target fuel consumption as 10 MPG (imperial) or 35km/litre. Now, 35km/litre translates across as 2.86litre/100km, which is nothing short of miraculous.

What does 10 MPG convert across to, though? 28 litre/100km, or ... 3.5 km/litre. Oops! Someone moved a decimal point somewhere! Now, while this is the consumption figure for the older, lower-compression, lower power engine; I'm not expecting miracles out of the current engine.

For sake of some comparison, I found a review of an 18tonne Euro 3 DAF LF with the 6.7 litre, and loaded up to its plated weight it averaged 19.8litre/100km.

It will be quite painful filling up the tank on the Bedford, I'm sure. (Just got to think of it in terms of *smiles* per gallon, because the alternative is lots of crying.)