Thread: Coming to Australia - Blueys Rebuild Part 2

Hello all,
its been a while since I started the thread on Blueys rebuild so here's the latest.
I did get the axles and various small parts shot blasted. It cost me £150 for both axles and 30 other bits to be blasted and painted but it was well worth it for time and effort saved!

After rebuilding the axles it was a relatively quick job to get them bolted to the chassis. It was the first goal achieved to get the new chassis on its feet. It was lovely building it up with all new parts and bolts or at least shotblasted parts.

I received my new gearbox from Ashcroft Transmissions and had it fitted in an afternoon. It was remakably easy to split the transfer and main gearboxes, I couldn't believe it! However just to spoil it one of the bolts was totally trashed and had stripped the threads from the transfer box so I had to tap out the hole to the next size bolt up. This meant I had to open up the transfer box to get the swarf out- not a problem just more time added to what I thought was going to be a quick job. On splitting the gearboxes it was apparent that the wear on the mainshaft splines was miles worse than what I thought so I was very pleased with my decision to replace the main gearbox.

The engine was degreased and cleaned up and a complete new clutch was fitted. When we were stripping Bluey down we noticed that a stud was missing so when fitting the clutch two new studs were fitted - this was to be our downfall. Fitting the gearbox back in the chassis was a ten minute job but fitting the engine to it was a 2 hour nightmare. No matter what we tried we could not get the engine onto the box. Just as I was beginning to seriously lose my sense of humour Rosy noticed that one of the new studs we had fitted did not have a hole to go into!!!! Once that was removed the engine literally fell into place. Ho hum. Put that one down to experience.

Today I refitted he main fuel tank and fuel lines and the front shockers and towers. At the moment progress seems to be very slow as there are loads of small things to do.

In the meantime we have been to a small indoor 4X4 show and bought £1200 worth of storage boxes to fit in the rear and Rosy gave me permission(!!?) to buy a stainless steel sports exhaust, uprated intercooler, silicone and stainless steel turbo pipes and a K&N airfilter to pep up the performance of the engine so Bluey wil hopefully go as good as she will look!

Andy & Rosy

^^ What BigJon said! ^^

Wish my chassis looked like that. Nice work.