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

Also, no progress on the truck of late, I'm afraid.

Work is seemingly working hard on being covid central, and unsurprisingly it's wiped me out. I ended up dragging myself through a coupla days of being almost pass-out rough -- and being almost the only person in the workshop -- before testing positive, and now I'm out isolating & trying to recover. (I suspect I must've used a test that'd been sitting around a while and had gone duff, at first.)

I did spend some of my christmas money and replace my camera, though, so that's cheered me up! (Just need to move on the old camera(s), and the lenses that I've accumulated for 'em.)

Oh, it utterly kicked my up and down the street. The worst part of it was, the symptoms came on fast, so I'd cycled to work feeling just a little under the weather and then it whupped me. I don't remember anything about that day other than getting home and crawling into bed as a shivering, twitching wreck (...and then having to go in the next day because I had an MOT prep to do... )

When I did manage to rustle up the co-ordination to do a test, it went instantly positive and there was a sort of "...ah! That'd explain that then!" moment. (Then I got a few days to rest up, recover a bit, and all that.)

I'm hoping that being triple-jabbed means there's fairly minimal long-lasting effects, but I fear the fatigue & occasional tremors might be here to stay. I got lucky, though. Some have had it much, much worse than I did.

In truck related items: I've managed to snag a second-hand park-brake hand valve, that I can fit somewhere towards the back of the cab for trailer brake stuff when I start plumbing all that up.

could you make the starter off something like a 4.6 range rover fit, they churn over at quite a reasonable rate and cost less than £100 for a reman one.

Hole drilled in the wrong place?

...What hole drilled in the wrong place?



Not the neatest on the inside, but it was my first go with bronze brazing and it seems to be staying put, so I'm still happy with it.

That's almost a race engine now! Bedford airport crash tenders had twin Zenith 42VIR fanimolds so they could reach terminal velocity quicker. Would look good on your equipe.

Thanks! That sounds highly entertaining... extra performance for getting to the scene of the crash quicker! (Whether the aircraft's crash, or the fire tender's, is left as an exercise for the reader. )

I'm hoping I can come up with something for the intake manifold that is something that looks like a mysterious factory piece or some sort of period bizarre custom work. ...well, it'll certainly be bizarre custom work, anyway.

(Also, odd aside, but out of curiosity do you happen to know the Red Goddess' DTp number? Hoping to see what the Official™ idea of axle weights, etc, comes out as...)

Tapped the thermostat housing for the temp sensor for the EFI! Took over a week, because the first tap I used just broke off with little to no effort or warning.


Fine, be that way.

New tap was ordered from a trusted supplier, and after a few days I could finish that off.



Loosely assembled, waiting on heater hose for that little link stub that goes down to the top of the water-pump, which I now have.


Exhaust headers coming together bit by bit.



Currently stalled on that because it turns out the 6 meters of 38mm stainless tube I bought ages back, which has been stood up against the wall in the unit in the packing material, was in fact 30mm diameter. Not sure if that was my screw-up, or their screw-up, but it makes no difference at this point.

Thankfully, I think I only need another meter or so of 38mm, so I've ordered that so that I can finish the damn header. The 30mm? Not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I'll find something...

Once I get the merge and 90 done, I think my next step is probably some flanges (probably V-band, honestly), and make up an unequal-length Y to merge the exhaust and bring it about level with the bellhousing in such a way that I either avoid blocking access to the oil filter housing or if that's unavoidable then at least the offending section is easily removable as needed.

It would still somewhat suck to have to remove a section of the exhaust to drop the oil filter, but it would suck even more if I did a Subuwu and gave myself a ring of fire to wrestle the filter out from...

Oh! And I have potentially got a solution in the works for the wiper spindles; I just have to get some time on the lathe at work for some hole-drilling so that it's all concentric. Y'know, because wiper spindles are really a big priority when I still have the cab corner all in bits.

Still no change on the starter, so I'm no closer to firing it up yet. In fact, I think I went backwards because I have to re-do the coilpack mount because it runs right into the dipstick...

That's really nice. Properly period stuff.
The bus has a few of them on it. I might go off them when we get to the bit where we pull cables through them.

I had a thought that might turn into a cunning plan See them inlets?



You remember my reminiscence of the Bedford twin carb manifold? Well I hunted out these stripped out SU's from an abandoned project



It's relatively trivial to fit a couple of big injectors in these 2 inch carbs to make throttle bodies, add a Microsquirt, bit of wiring, bit of plumbing and you have EFI and extra performance.

They're yours if you want them.