Monday September 5, 2016 Guerneville CA.
Today was going to be another day working on the old van. I had an exhaust pipe shield to construct and some other stuff too.
I started out with this piece of pipe I got from the muffler guys. It’s about three feet with a diameter of 3 and a half inches. The tail pipe is two inches in diameter so half of this will cover the exhaust pipe nicely and not take up too much room.
Here’s the piece of pipe I need to turn into a heat shield.
My power hand band saw with a metal blade in it made quick work of it. I almost messed up by cutting the pipes first, but at the last instant I got wise and didn’t cut the pipe. Cutting the pipe would have have made them hard to hold while using the saw. Leaving it long meant there was enough extra to clamp in my vise which made this job easy. I slit the pipe and then cut them off to size.
Here’s the pipe now after cutting it up for the pieces I need to make the shield.
I notched out two of the pieces so I had tabs on the ends so I can use clamps around the exhaust pipe to hole this all on.
Here’s the two end pieces with tabs. I will clamp the two end pieces in place and make the middle piece match up to the end pieces and try to get it welded together. The tabs are bent about a half inch to hold them off the hot pipes.
Here’s the finished product. I brazed it as it was thin metal. It doesn’t get paint as it gets hot.
I wasn’t sure I could get the finished piece in there with all the curves and not much room under there, but I found one and only one way it would twist into place.
Here you can see the shield is in place and close to the fuel filter as I haven’t moved the filter yet. The shield also helps protect the gas tank behind the filter as the pipe goes close to it.
I added a longer hose to the filter so it clears the pipes a bit better now.
I was also trying to protect the fuel pump too which was above the pipes. Here is the fuel pump showing the shield below it. Fuel pump is in the top center of the picture.
As long as I had some spare pipes left over I decided to make a small shield to protect my speedo cable that crosses over the top of the pipe. I painted that one green to see how hot it might get. If it gets really hot, it will turn the paint dark. The red stuff is silicone I put on the speedo cable where the brake cable there has worn away it’s protective cover. I was able to add a cable tie to hold it off the cable so that won’t happen again.
My next job was to drain the water out of the engine and the radiator and fill them up with the proper coolant. I drained it ok, but I found I only had one gallon of coolant and I need another one, so I only got the job half done.
I wanted to set the idle and check the timing, but without enough coolant that didn’t get done. I did install the passengers seat and finished off all the little things I had to do under the van like protect wires and hoses.
And I adjusted and tightened up the fan belts.
A couple more evenings working on this and I should have it mostly done.
Another productive day.