Rogue Trooper

[Rogue Trooper]

Here is a blurb about my van. I've been a member here for sometime so I'm just transferring over my first email at the old site as it has most of the info about my van there already.

[Rogue Trooper]

Hi

My name is Al and I hail from Wellington, New Zealand. I have an 83 CF Bedford SWB and have owned it for around 16-17 years now. I went off on it with a hiss and a roar when I first got it but it has kind of languished for the past 12 years or so. As you can see from my avatar it has been somewhat modified. I have had this done myself as I bought the vehicle stock standard. I have finally decided to knuckle down and finish it so hopefully within the next year or so it should approach something resembling a final state.

I have read some of the posts here with great interest and have posted my first question in the brake section so if anyone is able to answer this for me or provide a little help I'd be very appreciative.

Thanks for viewing.

Al

[Rogue Trooper]

Thought I'd add a couple of pictures I took about a month ago when I started putting things back together again.

Here's a better view of the front...



And here's a couple of the engine bay which now sits between the 2 front seats. This is a mid-mount 186 but as it's found to be seriously lacking this will be making way shortly for a new donk. You can see in the background that I've partially fitted a VK commodore dash as well but that is now making way also for something new and improved.



And a close up....

[Rogue Trooper]

The engine is a 186 with a 149 head on it and a 2 barrel Holley attached. It drinks a lot of gas for not much result. I've decided to replace it with a 4.0L EL or AU Falcon motor with multi-point injection and I'll run it off a Link ECU. Plenty of torque and it'll run unleaded as well. I may have to trim the hole a little to make it fit but it won't be too far off.

[Rogue Trooper]

Dragged the van out today so here's a few more pics...






So I think you can see why I really want to finish this thing with the work that's been put in so far.

[Rogue Trooper]

This is the latest pic I had just before I pulled it all apart again...

[eddy]

great work Rouge, I like it 

[Ratbag]

luv the body mods great job . Did you do it all yourself?

[Jock]

What car is that dash out of? Jd

[Rogue Trooper]

luv the body mods great job . Did you do it all yourself?

Thanks. No I didn't do it all myself. I have 2 very clever mates, Phil and Rob who have helped me out a lot.

Rob has done most of the panel work as that is something that would just take me a month of Sundays to do and even then I wouldn't be happy. We've done labour swaps mostly. I told him what I wanted and he made it happen. Rob was involved in the NZ vanning scene himself through the late eighties. He owned a bedford called Conquistidor. By the way, it's all steel. Rob's an old-school panelbeater.

Phil helps me out with some of the specialised engineering jobs like creating the splines on the steering shaft for my EB steering column conversion and milling out the discs for the HQ conversion etc. Things that I just don't have the equipment for. We do the labour swap as well.