Thread: My Series 3 Project

Hi Gav,

I thought that the forum rule is something along the lines of "it aint happened if there aint no PICS !!"

Lol.

Ahhh, I didn't want to spoil Cams fun - I'll let him post some.

You'll just have to wait until I've finished with the engine crossmember. Been getting home too late to be grinding and welding this week. Another hour or two and it will look like its always been there.

Hi Gav,
any more progress?
love to see some photos....
Cookey

Bit slow at the moment due to other commitments, but hope to have the chassis finished soon. Got all the repair bits for the firewall, and been collecting other parts. Once the chassis is done, we're going to clean and repair the tray and reinstall it, so we have a workbench to do the front and back diffs and gearbox.

Hope to have some pics soon.

Ok, things are finally back on track after an extended interval. Cam is now an Apprentice Butcher, so he has his weekends back and that will allow us to get a bit done now.

The chassis is now finished, so we can get on with the oily bits. Apart from cleaning and painting, the crossmember under the back of the engine was replaced, the gearbox crossmember was neatened up - it has been converted to a bolt in unit by the PO, but it was a pretty awful job. The back LH corner where the lights sit was stoved in and repaired badly, so a bit of work, but luckily there was absolutely no rust - gotta love that it spent its entire life in outback NSW. A couple of pics below are of the back end which is the bit we have just finished, so it looks the best. It is painted in satin black.

This shows the back LH corner of the chassis which was stoved in. A new section was made and welded in. A good grind and a smear of bog and it looks like new again.


A couple of other pics.




So, next up is the tray which is off to media blasting in the morning. Once that is done, a few small repairs will be made and that will get bolted back onto the chassis to be used as a bench. Then the rear diff comes out for an overhaul. In the meantime, I'll be starting to mount the twin fuel tanks - need to make a couple of brackets for those.

Hopefully have something else to report it couple of weeks.

Quick question as I don't have the bits sitting around I need to measure things up. The fuel tank is the larger style with the step up that goes up into the seat box. I'm trying to work out how much room there is between the top of the tank, and the bottom of the the floor - the lower part of the tank. Does that make sense? I want to know if there will be enough room between the tank and the floor to run a fuel line?

Any ideas?

Cheers.

I'm pretty certain there is - I think the top of the lower part of the tank is level with the top of the chassis, and the floor is about an inch above the chassis. If I remember, I'll have a look in the morning.

John

So a bit more has been done. The fuel tank has been modified/repaired and the tray has come back from media blasting. As you may be aware the design of the front bracket for the fuel tank allows muck and moisture to get trapped between the tank and mounting plate. I cut the end of the tank off and welded a new bit on. All pressure tested and leak free. I then modified how it mounts by leaving the plate out and welding a bit of angle iron to the top of the tank, so this sits over the outrigger. The reason that isn't done when these tanks were originally retrofitted is that you can't drill holes in the top of the outrigger - the bulkhead is in the way. With that currently removed, I've drilled holes and put nut sets in them - this will also me to remove the tank if needed once the build is complete but I'll need to pull the floor up, but won't allow the build up of crap there.

The tray came up a treat, and with a sand and polish around the edge that will be seen, it will look better than new.

A couple of pics. No before shots unfortunately, but it was crudded up really bad underneath and there's no way I could have cleaned it any other way. I'll drop it back on the chassis tomorrow to see what it looks like.