Sammy's CF Bedford Van

[Sammy]

thanks Gunning!

[phill]

nice work sammy, i think im going to do the crewman diff also, my tunnel is a bit blurry at the moment

[Sammy]

give me a few weeks and i'll hopefully have it lengthened and in then i'll have all the gory details for you

[Sammy]

Ok so diff updates

I got the axles out and measured them up and confirm they are 95mm difference in length.

so I butchered the stock Bedford diff and cut off the spring mount and the shock mount.

I have located the diff where it will sit on the driver side, and the passenger side is 95mm short of the leaf spring, to give me an idea of how its all going to sit.

wheel kinda looks too small, also I think some lowering would help things!

and I reckon the offset is spot on and its pretty much the same space from the guard as the front wheels so it will look right!

so now I just need to get myself another diff, I have found one local that is V6 Crewman 3.08 LSD so hopefully find out Monday if I can get it or not and then i'll be on the home stretch with this conversion!

I'm debating too, weather I shorten the driver side 10mm or so, I can cut that much off the spline of the axle and have it still go in without bottoming out, so might do that but will lengthen the passenger side first and see where it all sits then decide on that part of it!

[Sammy]

so just yesterday got the second diff, so its now time to start cutting and shutting this biatch and see what we can come up with

[Marky]

after a few different sets of vans w standard bore n master/booster

i fiited..an xb ford master and ..torana booster...

has never worked better..with increased flow..

[Sammy]

yeah I've got the XB master on my Gemini with the commodore twin piston front brakes, works a treat!

after much procrastinating and measuring and spreadsheeting and such, I finally made a bit of progress over the weekend, decided on a length and cut into the diff tube!

so the passenger side which was the short axle side, its been lengthened 85mm which is the smallest I could make it.

once I did the cutting I tack welded the longer end onto the diff and stuck it all in the van for a dummy fitting and measure of track widths, its currently over the maximum track increase by 8mm so it means I need to shorten the driver side by 10mm and i'll be just right!

for those that don't know, the axles are roughly 12mm longer splined than needed and so this means you can put them in ~10mm further and then trim the excess off the end to allow it all to still work and this is the saving grace of my conversion to just get it under the max track width increase....

the below pictured LSD centre is an old one I had (f***ed from water) which I cut into it to reveal the spots I needed to see so I can install it into the diff and work out widths/spline lengths to get the max out of it I can you can see that this axle has 2mm spline left on the end so its not going to bottom out!

I bought some tube to use for sleeves this morning so hopefully this week I can get most of the diff tube lengthening done and dusted!

[Drifter]

Mate your blowing my mind with this diff stuff your doing - so far from my numpky mechanical ability - impressive stuff - I can't get my head around what's the easiest thing to replace the standard diff with and your doing all this stuff.

[Sammy]

thanks drifter, 10 years ago I wouldn't have attempted this stuff myself, or probably the whole van project really! but you live and learn, I am doing a lot of things different/better than my first car project

mind you I have had a thought yesterday that I might be able to mix and match parts from VN-VS diff and the crewman diff to get me a better outcome! so watch this space, once I work out all the details and if its even going to work i'll post it up.

[Drifter]

haha- the mind never stops - I envy your mechanical mind process - Oh well battle on - think Ill be relying heavily on some of my mechanical minded friends - looking forward to your progress reports -