Not particularly much to report since last. I did some more rolling around on the floor, connecting air-pipes up, and ended up taking an hour-long nap while I was there.
Last weekend I couldn't really find the motivation to do some more bodywork, so instead I decided I'd take the front tow point off that ... crude crossmember.
This took a little doing, and a bit of heat; but everything did unbolt nicely in the end. Which revealed just how badly bent that crossmember is.
And, for scale...
While I had the torch out and the bottles on, I managed to extract the old fittings from the compressor.
The inlet from the unloader valve (top fitting) is a 3/4BSP to the weird fine thread unions that the original air-system used. The compressor's outlet port is 1/2BSP, again to the fine-thread thing. Both of those will be replaced with different fittings once I decide on the hard-line pipe I'm going to use to run to the air-dryer and unloader valve.
Having got my motivation warmed up, I gave the coupler a quick few coats of paint...
...and quickly made up the panel I need in order to reinstate the bottom of the passenger side vent.
Monday evening, I thought I'd get that nice painted floor panel in to
see how everything fitted, and the door kept swinging shut and
annoying me. Well, I have just the thing for that!
Only the inner end welded for now, because I have to tweak the step around a bit to get the door gap vaguely close to correct; but it works lovely! Spurred on by that, I went and bunged some temporary bolts into the floor panel to see how everything fits.
Nice!
Got the locations of the missing bolt-holes marked, so I can drill those out at some point. There was also a lot more grinding and cutting at the front of the cab, hunting out some rot just below the vent; but I didn't take any photos of that, because there's not much to see.
Tuesday evening -- on a roll, here! -- was a lot of paintbrush waggling. Couldn't work up the enthusiasm to do bodywork, again; so instead I put the best part of 3 litres of red primer on the boom. Another round of paintbrush waggling will be needed to turn those bits black; and there's still other bits I need to get to, but there's stuff in the way and I was getting rather cold.
So as far as the air-system goes, currently:
- Air dryer is connected to 4-way valve.
- 4-way valve is connected to the two main tanks.
- Relay valve has an incoming air-line that will go to a manifold block I haven't made yet.
- Handbrake quick-release valve has its incoming air-line run up into the cab, to roughly where the trailer park brake control will be. And there's another pipe running out from there, that will go to aforementioned manifold block.
- Compressor is sitting on my bench, awaiting refitting once it's not in the way of cab repairs, and new fittings & pipework.
- I've ordered the second batch of fittings and a roll of the other size of air-line I need.
One piece at a time