BUGA Community

If you want some tuition then look at your local tafe, they have short course that will enable you to learn the welding skills and thus practise etc, this means you can then either hire a welder for a weekend of purchase one whihc will allow you to do the repairs whenever you wish.  If you wish it to be more vehicle orientated then look at doing a body repair course (vehicle not human ) and this will teach you both how to weld patches in but also how to make the patches.  check out you local TAFE.  There is onyl so much you can learn from video and youtube, best thing is to practise and or get taught correctly to start with.   Best investment I ever made, bonus is that if you have a door panel etc you can bring it in and they will assist you to repair it as well.  I know a number of guys who just did a second or third set of the course so that they had access tot he teaching staff and some of the other nicer tooling.  They are happy to assist when they can.

Cheers

Hello all,

I have a SWB single cab chassis truck which I plan to restore and bring my tow truck abilities back. (used to have a LWB single cab which got torched.. )

She has been abused by a burnout clown and been hacked in many ways.  Had a L34 308 in here running a T350 behind her.  The numb nut has hacked off the clutch pedal (not remove the pedal just ground it off.) His use of the angle grinder in making a hole in the floor was supreme and I am missing alot fo the finer parts (headlight trims, bolts gear box crossmember.  This same genius then went in to the stadnard Bedford diff and applied a great amount of metal to enable this "Burnout monster" to sing and smoke.  The big problem with smoke is you cannot see where you are going to you hit walls as well so panels need repair too.

All in all though there is not too much rust and should be somewhat straight forward to repair.  I will need to lengthen the chassis which i have spoken to my resident engineer and it should be possible. (not too easy but possible) will need to wait for my TIG to arrive, oh and to get teh walkinshaw out of the shed and to the racecar stable when reassembled.

Plans will be to raise teh drivers floor slightly. and somewhat keep the EFI 304 underneath it so I can have a manual and left foot room.  Chassis fix, dual wheel upgrade, disc brake front, square hitch tow bar conversion, restoration fo the 3 seating options.

There are afew question I will need to answer along the way but here are some photos.

Cheers

Beautifully done.  Awesome example.  Definately somethign to be proud of.


Cheers

Hi yes it is an easy repair.  However, it is a timely one.  I did ahve a huge explanation for you but the board kicked me out and then lots my post.

I have attached a post of how much metal you may have to replace.  This would eb doen in 5 ish patches and could be done with one but stay manageble.  you might find you will need to repair the under structure and replace parts of it too.....

You first job will NOT be cutting. the vehicle is currently together and will be great to use as a pattern.  keep the van together as long as you can as it will act as a reference.  You dont need any specialist tooling.  Some of the lower socieconoic climates use made dollys adn ahmmers to form patch work etc.  You this as a reference to see what I mean.

CARLOS TIMOCHENKO - DATSUN BLUEBIRD - PART 1

Cheers and good luck.