Mick's 70 Lowlight

So the engine is in and running but I'm not getting a stable tune. I've traced the problem to a bad voltage regulator on the board which is giving an unstable board voltage, which in turn is giving inaccurate injector timing and ignition events. Rather than fix it I'm replacing the board as the one that's in there is a very old Speeduino version. But the cool thing is that I've driven the bus for the first time in nearly two years and IT FELT GREAT. Didn't realise how much I missed driving my bus.

Unfortunately the hiccup with the tuning meant that I did not want to risk the run to ReVolks so decided to give it a miss this year. Looks like none of the SA crew went apart from @Choco. It's a real shame as I really enjoy it, but didn't want to take the risk of such a long trip on a dodgy ECU.

I did however manage to get the rear safari fitted to the bus. I needed to get a rear glass in the replacement tailgate for the ReVolks trip so decided to finish the tailgate to the point where I could at least fit it - this meant fitting glass and adding catches. It still doesn't have the stays fitted, and the frame needs some more fettling to get it to fit properly, but considering it's scratch made, it actually works, although I did smash one rear screen fitting it - oops.

Fitting the glass was a complete PITA - even worse than doing safaris and I think that this is mostly as the frame is aluminium. It's simply too soft to hold its shape, so where the rubber seal and glass want to push it out of shape it has no resistance. The end result is that it does not follow the contour of the hatch. I'm going to leave it for the time being but I think I'll remake it with a steel frame. Having seen how the loose nuts guys do it I think I'll do it a little differently next time. The steel frame will also make it much easier to mount the catches and stays as well as they can simply be welded to the outside of the frame.

I've also finally finished the front dropped spindle conversion. This uses adaptor plates to change the late bay bolt pattern to wide 5. I finished machining the plates and fitted everything up. I had a make a small spacer for the hub as the rear of the wheel studs just fouled the brake calliper, so rather than simply grinding the calliper to clearance it, I decided to space the entire hub out. I turned some washers in the lathe to get the correct dimensions and then used the Demco T&C grinder to surface grind them down to the correct thickness (0.8mm in case anyone wants to do the same).

So basically the adaptor is a flat steel plate 10mm thick, the studs are pressed out of the original hub and refitted into the adaptor plate. The hub is then drilled and tapped for M14 bolts and the adaptor plate countersunk to accept the countersunk bolts. I used the 0.8mm spacer to allow the studs to clear the callipers but it could quite easily have been done by using a spacer between the disk and adaptor plate or by using a 12mm plate and machining a recess in the rear (probably a more elegant solution).

So all that's left to do now is fit them.