Time to text-dump the forum thread here, too!
2016, Feb, 11: Not content with having a car that occasionally decides it doesn't want to run, I take leave of my senses, and decide to buy a truck that I saw in a breaker's yard listing back in 2008. Somewhat surprisingly, it's still there 8 years later, and they don't want the earth for it. So I managed to work up the courage (or foolishness) to phone them, ask how much it was, get a bank loan, and buy it. Based off three tiny photos (They were 340x255 jpegs. But if I zoomed in real far, and squinted... :D), and without ever having seen it in person.
And then I end up hiring a recovery firm to haul it up from Colchester, to where I worked at the time. Still without ever having seen it.
Nerves were setting in. I got the phone-call from work... "Your truck's arrived. You've got your work cut out for you."
One mad rush down to work, with my brother, and I laid eyes on it and that was it, all was right with the world. :D
The tyres were still warm from the journey, since they brought it up from their yard on an under-lift, and all I can say is that their driver is braver than I am. :D
48898 miles on the clock. :o Turns out the speedo cable is broken, and I have no idea how long it's been like that; and I still haven't fixed it...
Things of note that were discovered then:
- It didn't run.
- The rear propshaft was kinked, and not usable. Well, bum. The other three are all usable, though.
- There's no paperwork for it. Not a V5, not an old-style logbook, nothing. ???
- It has rust. I know, shocker, right? Don't worry, it gets worse before it gets better.:D
2016, Feb, 17: Having spent the time since I got it taking the spark-plugs out and squirting oil&diesel down the bores, I managed to carefully break it free with the Big Adjustable Of Doom. Once it rotated easily using the BAOD, with no nasty noises or interference, I did a quick Negative Earth conversion (Swapped the terminal clamps. :D) and borrowed work's jump battery trolley. Moment of truth, I pressed the big ol' Lucas starter switch, and it started to wind over, slowly freeing up until it was going great!
2016, Feb, 22: It was cranking over nicely on the starter, and I'd gotten it its own battery. At this point, it still didn't run, but that was narrowed down to the ignition parts. Understandably, coil & condenser (Also points, but I hadn't figured that out yet.) were rather poorly; so I ordered up some replacements for those, and all the parts needed to make some new HT leads, since I was in that general area already.
By the 24th, I'd gotten the parts in, and it was spitting & popping, which is an encouraging sign, albeit in the wrong order. The firing order is cast into the intake manifold, but I'd put all the leads onto the distributor one over from where they should be, so when I finally figured that out...
Yeah, that's more like it. :D
The next few weeks of work were removing crusty & disintegrating bits of radiator hose, cleaning things, doing an oil-change on it (Which included going to the parts shop with the old filter, an 'AC 72', and having them figure out what would replace it. (A Sogefi FA3448, for reference.), pondering what I was going to do with the wiring, and so forth.
2016, March, 23: An alternator was fitted, in place of the generator; a new belt was fitted; and my little clack-clack fuel pump had turned up, so it got wedged into a jerry-can in the passenger foot-well, and everything was bodge-wired up. So, of course, what needed to happen?
Yup. :D
Notice, in that video, the radiator is out. It was leaking from -- I thought -- the end-tank; so I dropped it off with a radiator shop in Chorley (Phoenix Radiators.) to see what he could do with it.
Unfortunately, the answer was "It needs a new core, it's all rotten." So that stung a bit. Looking back, it seems like I could've just found a radiator that was similar in size, and made it fit; but the original one had all the brackets and holes to fit right in place, so while it hurt the wallet, it saved a lot of messing about to have a modern core put in it.
2016, March, 28: Continuing on my foolish puttering, I spotted a plate behind one of the side lockers, which turned out to be the Ministry of Supply plate that listed the chassis number, original ERM, contract number, and suchforth. The ERM (It's military registration, thus confirming that it was indeed an ex-mob vehicle) was 11 CE 32; thus "Charlie's Echo". (Or "Madam Mayhem", depending on how I'm feeling. :D)
I also carefully -- okay, flat out, trying to get it done before it boiled out the water from the total-loss cooling system at the time -- ran it round to roll it over work's weighbridge, for no reason other than curiosity.
---------------------- 13:13:25 25 Mar 16 Vehicle: 5970kg Number of axles: 2 Axle 1: 2480kg Axle 2: 3490kg Speed: 0.8km/h ----------------------
Not too shabby. Though, I'll admit, the truck did look pretty shabby at the time.
