Ute photos

[bear]

Try again

[BLACKZOOK]

Hurry up with the photos mate I'm busting to see them. Make sure you put up the before shots when we picked her up in Sydney and tell the story of woe in getting her over west.

[bear]

Hurry up with the photos mate I'm busting to see them. Make sure you put up the before shots when we picked her up in Sydney and tell the story of woe in getting her over west.

Chapter 1:
Come up with f*&^ing clever idea. Why not buy an Austin 1800 Ute to haul the Busa around in on those special days?
Immediately finds one in Sydney! Not so clever but since onlt 2300 ever made, and this one looks good, go and waste FF points and go pick it up!
Maybe ask someone to check it out first in case it's a complete lemon!
Enter Blackzook!
Ute looks pretty good, minimla rsut and basically sound, waste FF points fly to Sydney, hand over loot drive up Blue mountains.mmmm Noisy!
Battery is loose, Fark, so is engine mount!
Back to Bruce, sit around get pissed, (thanks for great time, worth the points on it's own!) book flight back to Perth next day. FF points now wasted totally. Pay $1300 and wait for a truck delivery!
On the lawn in Perth
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010640.jpg
Boss very generously lets me use shed at work so start looking for noises
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010642.jpg
Not here but check the fluffy dice!
Still looking
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010642.jpg
Getting warm!
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010656.jpg
Nah, not yet!
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010659.jpg

[bear]

Typing above is shit eh?
Chapter two: Close examination reveals all four engine mounts are either loose or only fitted with two bolts out of four....or both. Black paint in engine bay looks like done with broom, so first decision is to remove engine/gearbox unit. Found a guy who runs Austin 1800 business in Perth so he's doing the mechanicals. To date he's reported that the guy who sold it to me wasn't lying when he said the engine had had $6000 spent on it. pistons, rods, crank grind, everything balanced, new valves, springs, timing chain and sprockets. Pity he stopped there though! distributor almost fell to bits and the clutch plate was in back to front. Thrust bearing.....? Gone!
Two different model drive shafts, one that looked like it had been welded. Ditto different model front hubs. But this guy Ken has shit loads of parts so now engine completely re-assembled with nasty bits re-newed. Even found the pin that locks the rocker shaft in place so less oil pumped out that hole now. Mind you plenty of oil in the engine because the dip stick was wrong model and the sump had a generous extra topping of about 3 litres! So far so good.
Found one ball joint shimmed with....wait for it....cardboard! Alls well now and on Saturday I get the entire assembly back all tickety boo. Oh, gearbox sounded a bit nasty so he's grabbed a late model job with oil leak free rod gearchange off an Austin Princess.
Body wise, bloody good. Bugger all rust, and easy to patch and fix. Hardest part is getting the 10mm of paint off. But most of it has gone back to bare metal and is ready for colour. Nothing touched from cab back yet, except rear window out to fix the edging and make sure it doesn't leak.
Colour will be what's shown in engine bay (but that is only colour without gloss at the moment). Flame red Monaro colour.
Chapter three: starts soon, stay tuned.
Oh, why the 1800 Ute?
Very low floor height, very long tray, and hydrolastic suspension. Possible to modify to make it kneel down at the back end, OR if that proves too hard, it should be able to take air bags!

[Louwai]

http://www.airbagman.com.au/


I just got a quote for airbags from these guys for a tandem trailer.

$1200 for the 4 bags only.
All other suspension parts were extra.
If I wanted adjustable height etc I would also need a compressor & controlers etc which was another $1500 odd over & above the bags + all the susbension bits.

[bear]

Not cheap eh?
My first choice is to play with existing suspension. The ute had the same units front and back, but unlike the sedan, also had torsion bar assist at the back. That catered for the wider variations in loads it was expected to have. So I thought my cheapest way of getting it to drop it's back was to arrange some means of twisting the bars. Relieving the preset torsion should make it drop at the back and at the same time, the hydrolastic nature of the units will raise the front a similar amount. That may be enough with a load on board, but when loading the bike on, the ute won't have a load and therefore sit higher. So I thought you'd then apply "unloading" torsion to pull the back down. With some enerpac rams and a hand pump it could all be done reasonably cheaply. And of course with an electric pump, anything is possible. The next trick could be to actually pump the fluid in the hydrolastic system from back to front and use that to drop the rear end. But that would mean valves and a pump (air conditioner pump would do) but amount pumped is very low. Last option is to replace entire system with air bags. But at least then you can make it dance if you want to!
Only problem with playing around with hydrolastic is they don't make the units any more, so if you blow one, you start searching ebay for NOS or second hand units. Tonnes of second hand ones, but the youngest ones are getting on for 30years old. Rubber ages.
So playng with the torsion bars seems the best option, and probably the cheapest.
It's going to take a while to get to that stage. Lot's to do on the ute yet!
Mind you, the combination would probably go faster if I tied a rope around the Busa and towed the ute....

[BLACKZOOK]

Jeez mate you have done an awsome amount of work on her in such a short time. So happy to hear that the body was good under all that paint, mechanicals can be changed but as you know a sound body chassis especially on a vehicle of that age is the clincher.

Busting to see the world's best busa carrier finished. Dare to be different woohoo.

[Louwai]

Not cheap eh?
Mind you, the combination would probably go faster if I tied a rope around the Busa and towed the ute....

I'm building a new trailer to transport my telescope.
My main requirement is smooth ride. I want the trailer to ride out the general road travel as smooth as possible without all the little jolts etc of general road driving, and also be able to be towed "very slowly" across a paddock or bare ground, without falling badly into holes & washouts etc.
My trailer will be a 8x5 tandem, fully enclosed with a ramp tailgate.
It will never carry much weight. Only the weight of the trailer itself + the scope which will be about 200kg.
So I need s suspension setup which will work to it's full potential with minimal load.

Right now I'm tossing up between an adjustable torsion bar system (similar to VW Combi rear end) or a fully adjustable airbag setup set on trailing arms.Cost wse the VW style is winning so far.

Airbags are fully adjustable at the push of a button (so to speak)
VW type rear is adjustable, but it's a good days work to pull it apart, reposition & then re-assemble to the new psition.

[bear]

Should have bought a DS Citroen wagon! Best suspenders ever!Is it possible to stick the telescope onto a dampened carrier within the trailer?I would expect the air will give a better ride than torsion bars, after all a bar is just a coil spring straightened out.
Advantage is space and the fact that you might be able to adjust height OK, but stiffness stays the same.
If it's never going to carry a load, then maybe do trailing arms with bike coil overs and shocks, then you have fully adjustable damping and height adjust easy as.
As for the ute, today I got the engine and gearbox back and it seems like a gem. So some paint on the donk tomorrow and it will be ready to pop in. Needs a final coat of paint in the engine bay.
Then the rust and after that ,it's really a case of sticking things together, painting bits, and lots of slow work!

[Louwai]

The ute progress sounds good.
Looking forward to seeing more pics.
It is going to be a full custom job??? Or a general rebuild & clean up??


I used to have adjustable bike coil-overs on the front of my VW Beetle. They held it up really well.
I did contemplate using a Combi twin torsion bar front end (wider than beetle) with coil-overs. Would just need to fix the stub axils.
Still thinking. Plenty of time. The scope is not delivered until December.

[Rev]

Austin 1800

Now there's a blow back to the stoneage

A spritely torquey performer for it's day though

Nearly on par with a Vanguard

[bear]

The other nice thing about the Austin 1800 ute is that it is exclusively Australian. Exclusively NSW actually! They (leyland Oz) asked head office if they could build a ute and a van. But UK only gave the green light to the ute, and it was built from 68 till around 72 I think. 2300 odd were made. Mine is build #30, 68 model. Lot's died of rust and they are underpowered compared to the XP and EH's of the day, but bigger tray, lower stance and better suspenders. Engine is the MGB and they were a better engine being Oz built. Rods out of 1800 are sought by MGB guys! Better, lighter etc.
The engine bay is reasonable, but transplants would be a bit hard. If I ever get the doh ray me though, I'll stick in a VW VR6. That should do the trick!

[bear]

The other nice thing about the Austin 1800 ute is that it is exclusively Australian. Exclusively NSW actually! They (leyland Oz) asked head office if they could build a ute and a van. But UK only gave the green light to the ute, and it was built from 68 till around 72 I think. 2300 odd were made. Mine is build #30, 68 model. Lot's died of rust and they are underpowered compared to the XP and EH's of the day, but bigger tray, lower stance and better suspenders. Engine is the MGB and they were a better engine being Oz built. Rods out of 1800 are sought by MGB guys! Better, lighter etc.
The engine bay is reasonable, but transplants would be a bit hard. If I ever get the doh ray me though, I'll stick in a VW VR6. That should do the trick!

Think I'm getting closer to finding that bloody noise now.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010683.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010671.jpg
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d175/b...010680.jpg