Mick's 70 Lowlight

Haven't had a chance to do any more work on getting the engine installed but have spent a few dollars treating the bus to some new goodies.

One of the mods that I have planned for the bus was converting the front to use the new drop spindles available for late bays. The reason for this is to improve the ride a little as lowering the front solely by beam adjusters has left the bus with a bit of a bouncy ride. The issue with this conversion is that late bays run disks with a different bolt pattern to early bays (which run drums and wide 5.) So to get the wheels to fit you need to make up an adaptor plate to convert the late bay stud pattern to early wide-5 and run the disk brake set up. Unfortunately at this stage they do not do a drum brake version and it is not possible to fit drums to the late drop spindles without a lot of modification which is not something that I want to risk with my brakes.

I previously made up an adaptor plate (which needs machining) and purchased the drop spindles, and was looking for someone wrecking a late bay to get the rest of the parts that I needed. But after a couple of dead ends and failing at getting some sent from interstate I gave up on that idea. Somehow I recently stumbled across the fact the Rod Penrose stocks all of the necessary parts (new) for this conversion. Rods obviously had the foresight to realise that the hubs, bearings, etc are also needed so he keeps them in stock. So I've taken the plunge and ordered all of the parts required to finish the brake conversion including a new master cylinder and front brake lines.

This now takes the list of jobs that need doing up to several hundred - lol.

In addition to the brakes I've also pulled the trigger on a diesel space heater. Not exactly a necessity for the Australian summer but a nice bit of kit to have for those colder evenings and one to take the chill off the bus on a cold morning once I have sorted out a remote starter. I'll obviously post up about the install, as and when that happens. Next hurdle is to figure out where to install a diesel tank.