Another day working on the old van engine conversion project.
Here’s my work area. The engine is mostly in and fits ok.
New bolts installed
I started out by installing the new bolts I purchased the other day for the engine motor mounts that bolts to the frame.
Made this little sheet metal tray
Then I constructed this little five by eight inch pan I made to support the radiator overflow container. I tried to install it but I couldn’t get the drill in the tight spot to drill holes for some pop rivets to mount it. I put it aside for now as I wanted to get some other stuff done.
Repairing the clutch linkage
I went under the van and removed the clutch linkage I put on the other day. This lever is wearing badly in the hole and is cutting into the other part that fastens to the lever using that hole. I needed to use that other part to fabricate the new improved piece I have for it. But I didn’t do any more work on that until later.
Electric fuel pump bracket
I needed a bracket to hold the electric fuel pump fuses and relay, so I fabricated this bracket which I added on to the engine puller bracket.
A little paint makes it all look a lot better. Not my best paint job, but it will do.
Rotated the new starter a bit
Then I went under the van and pulled my new starter off. I wanted to rotate it a bit to expose the wire hook up better. This new type can be rotated a little so I did it. Before the solenoid was right on top, but now it’s a little down the side so I can get the big wires on it easier.
No go on the spark plug wires
The next thing I tried to do was install the spark plug wires, but they wouldn’t work out. Some of them were too short to make it, so I’ll have to get some longer ones. The type of spark plug wires seem to be related to what kind of exhaust manifold you have. I seem to have wires not for my type of manifold. I put that aside for now as there isn’t much I can do about it until I go shopping again.
Hooked up the throttle linkage
Most of the rest of the day I spent making adjustments to the throttle linkage to get the throttle hooked up. This isn’t as easy as it seems as the throttle has to go to the lower stop so it will idle and it has to go to the higher stop, but not hit the stop or pushing the gas peddle to the floor might tear it all apart, so there has to be just the right range to get to full throttle, but not go past it so things don’t get broken with a big foot. I fiddled and monkeyed with the levers for quite some time until I got it just right which means I had to go under the van a lot of times which is a bit hard on the body, but good exercise.
I plan to replace the lighter bicycle cable once I purchase a better one, but the new cable will use the same adjustments as the old one.
Annealed the new clutch lever bolt
About this time, it was starting to get dark, so I did one last thing. I got the torch out and heated the new bolt I bought to cherry red and let it cool slowly so the heat treatment will be gone and I can machine it to what I need to make a new clutch lever to replace the old one.
That was it for me today. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but that’s just the way these things go.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
