Maria's Van

[able]

at least keep the picture of mossy.

my first reaction was to laugh with a vision of you chasing a herd of elephants with diarrhea.   

[TOOLKING]

Hey able if the dent in Marias van scared you off you should see the dent in the van im working on at the moment... hehe

(check out mt Gallery)

its taking some doing but we should have her ready by end of January

[able]

what did you do? take a day trip in Iraq?

make sure you post pics of that monster being pulled out!

and i was fretting over my side door being pushed in around the door catch about 3 mm 



 

[TOOLKING]

Yeah I will start to post some pics during the week.

we are going to cut tho old one out and then use the porta power to straighten up a little.
then its a cut and weld job for the new fron guard

[eddy]

I spoke to  Brad from Croydon a couple of years back who did a plasma cut on the front panel of a van at the wreckers and rewelded it on his van, came up noice, couldn't tell there had been a repair job

[ben]

hey toolking how much are those porta powers worth man? sounds like its the way to go for stuff like that.

ben

[Warren]

Ah Ben

More tools for your she..... um paddock

Warren

[TOOLKING]

porta powers usually come in 2 sizes 4ton and 10ton and include the attachments you need.
because they are fairly simple you can also fabricate unusual attachments for the rare job.

you will pay about $149 for a decent one and up to about $240 for a ten ton.
theres not much difference between the top brands and generic brands in quality but the price for big brands gets pretty steep

( 10 ton is very handy)

[TOOLKING]

yeah Eddy , we will be doing something similar.
though we will use a spot weld drill bit to drill out the old spot welds and remove the crushed outer skin, straighten the inner panels and then plazma cut the new outer skin and weld into place

Oh yeah we got the motor running yesterday and the chev sounds very meaty indeed

[maria]

hi all,
just an update. still in melbourne  ,  ben and i changed the head gasket when he was here for the week. had some issues getting it going due to the mystery of the adjustable tappets - unknown to ben at the time and i would never have known. craig came down and helped on saturday, recognising the problem. tried to leave on sunday morning but clunked out. bit of smoke, some oil leaks which were to be expected.

so one of the tappets has come off and a couple of bits have smashed off. have taken photos but can't upload them now. am waiting for craig to come to the rescue. sigh. some of the other tappets seem to be prone to moving a bit too. had to replace a couple of pushrods as well.

ben also took a mould of my custom cab dash, so if any of you are getting one then you'll have a little piece of my van with you.  sadly mine suffered a little in the process but will be restored to full glory after the holidays. assuming i get to go anywhere. sigh again.

hope my next update is a good one. ho ho ho.
maria