I made a post on the pre67 forum about how i got my Thames ( http://pre67ford.hyperboards.com/index. ... 9&latest=1 ). Since then ive made a start stripping it out and assessing all the crap i have to do to get it back to life.
I figured out how the 'dining table' was set up
and how the seats fold out into 'beds'
This is the first weekend we went to the garage and the magic started.
My girlfriend has taken an unusal interest in helping me to restore the van. I think its great as if i was in the garage myself it could get a bit boring but its a good laugh having her around and helping me out. Its ok right now at the stripping down stage but i think she may get bored when im welding and cutting **** up. I was thinking i could buy her asewing machien adn she could re-upholstere the seats and curtains etc..
Yeah, check out those comfy ugly slacks im rocking.
I got Jana started on removing the light lenses and units etc.. she even managed to get the rear bumpers off herself. I dont mean to sound patronising but when someone calls a ratchet the "clicky-thing" its quite a big step for her.
I even bought her a special tool kit for the job, shes since bought herself a proper tool bag and plier set.
First door removed. It was a bitch as the hinge bolts were rusted solid, lucky for me there is a huge tool store opposite the garage (machine mart) so i managed to get an impact screwdriver.
All the seats and interior came out easy, the gas cooker was a bit of a joke really, The cage that held the gas bottle underneath the floor was about 8 inches from the ground and about an inch from the propshaft, then the gas pipe went to the cooker where someone had used a T-piece for some reason, with one pipe going to the hob and the other pipe was bent round a few times to stop gas leaking.... i dont know why the never just used a single pipe. There was a lot of cork insulation which i think had been stuck on with tar. Oh what fun i had with a scraper. Jana 'helped', but well, she got bored of it a lot quicker than i did.
Handsome eh,
Then i got stuck into the wiring loom, there was a lot of house-hold wire in one colour for switches and lights all over the place. I know im going to be re-doing the interior lighting differantly so those got binned and i kept the standard loom. Note the intesity of my concentration.
The next weekend we started on taking the pop-up roof off. The fabric of the roof its self isnt too bad. There is a rip in it but its along the seam so once stiched up it will be ok. It was held down with aluminium strips and brackets.
WEST SIDE Y'ALL
peek-a-boo
Starting to get quite bare now, in total we found 3 dead birds in the van, 2 of which were skeletons and the other was quite fresh looking underneath the radiator intake, perhaps from the drive home on the trailer, oops.
We got the other door off and then i set about the lower panels, there pretty easy to come off as there all bolt on panels, something Ford promoted as a key selling point apparently.
The right lower panel its self was not bad, just a bit of surface rust and a few dings. Even behind the panel it was not bad. You can see the battery tray is pretty much gone but thats not really a problem at all, its just a welded up box. Although a lot of rust came flaking off as you can see.
The back of the wheel well is the worst, good thing is a lot of the panels to replace are just flat sheet with bends in it.
The other side was a bit harder to take off as it had spot welds along the side door opening but it came off none the less.
During all this a few bolts were completly seized and i had to grind them off, sending sparks flying. I finally thought id be a lot safer doing all this **** with the petrol tank out. Only problem was the bolts underneath had seized and the only access was to rip the floor out and take them off from the top.
So out the floor it went. The guy that rents the other side of the garage popped down and gave me a hand. The floor was inch thick plywood and all the coachscrews holding it down were, as you could guess, seized. We came up with a plan of him using a big leaver and me drilling lots of holes around the coachscrews. You can see the petrol tank is quite small for something to go travelling with, may need to find something bigger. Once i dissconected the tank i poured the petrol away and it was pure orange, like irn-bru. Must have been laying in the tank for years.
The weekend after my brother came along instead of Jana as i wanted to get the engine/gearbox and the rest of the glass out. We even managed to get the rest of the doors off.
Glass out
Checking out how to remove the engine. We disconnected the gearbox first and tied rope around the engine to lift it straight up.
My garage buddys engine crane came in handy.
CHEEESE!!
A full 53bhp or so of pure antique metal
This is the hole that has been left from taking the motor out, The plan is to replace it with a 3 litre Cologne/Essex V6, i know it fits as ive seen the set up before in a Thames van. Im going to go for an automatic box too as i just want it as a cruiser and i hope to keep the coloumn change and rig it up to the autobox.
Thats as far as ive gotten with the van. Im pretty much at the stage where i need to take the suspension, steering and rear axle off but before i do that i need to make up a way of supporting the van off the ground. I was looking at building a rotisserie but i came up with a slightly differant idea. Im going to build 2 huge dodecagons that split into 2 pieces. That way i can roll it on its side and sandblast/repair underneath then roll it back, unbolt the top half of the dodecagons and work on the roof etc..
dodecagonWell its been a few weeks since i have made an update. To be honest i had no money to make the dodecagon chassis tilter so everything came to a standstill untill i had more money. I managed to get 2 homers fabricating gates, each one took about 2 weeks to make and fit, only because i have a full time job 8-5 and i can really only fabricate my own stuff after work and on saturdays. The first one i made was for some retro shop on cockburn street in Edinburgh. Im not sure if anyones familiar really with Edinburgh but cockburn street is just of the royal mile so its good to be getting my work in a classy area (i.e, more money).
After that one his neigbour wanted me to fabricate a couple of gates for the front of his shop too, so, more money is better than no money and i done that too.
Finally i could start on my own stuff for the van. I bought 4 lenghts of 50x50x3 box section for the frame and struts, 2 lenghts of 25x25x3 for bracing the inside of the van, a 8x4 sheet of 1.2mm for the body and some 1.6mm for the underside and any other areas i want to protect a bit more. Last time i got as far as drawing the idea of the dodecagon.
I know that there is other ways for me to work on the underside of the van, from rolling it over onto old matresses/tyres to make a proper rotisserie. The reason i decided on the dodecagon was its simplicity, i dont have to jack it up **** loads to rotate it and i can mount it straight onto the chassis using the suspension mounting points.
I decided before i go cutting anything to check over all my measurements and see if i can adjust the sizes. I went to the garage and made a cardoard template of the outline of the front of the van, after messing around with the sizes i realised i could make the bottom and top rail 37" the side rails 32" and the corners 20", meaning instead of the overall hight and width being 104" its now only 87" (if my memory serves me right). I then got 2 sheets of 3mm plate from my work and laid them flat on the ground and tacked them together to make a 8ftx8ft working area. I traced around the cardboard template (you can vauqely see that) and then made a full size drawing of how the dodecagons should look in chalk. Once that was done and i was happy with it i cut 24 bits of 50x50 at 50 long angle and tacked them around the perimeter of the dodecagon. That way once everything was cut i could clamp the box to the angle and know its not going to move and warp.
I then started to cut the 50x50 box to the sizes i need with a 7inch grinder, Its not my chop saw so to save the blade a bit i cut them with the grinder square, so when it comes to cutting the 15 degree angle im only cutting 3 faces, therfore using less of the blade.
This photo is a bit crap but you get the idea, with everything cut i could place the metal on the sheet and using a **** load of clamps, clamp everything in place and start tacking. Once it was all tacked i kept the clampes in place and welded the top face.
I then stood it up so i could weld the inside and outside.
After that i then laid it back down with the other non welded face pointin up onto the jig to make sure it never warped and i laid the other bits of metal on top and tacked them to the complete dodecagon, that way i know both will be the exact same (or close enough anyway).
I then broke the tacks holding the dodegcagons together and welded everything up completly.
The next again weekend i went back to finish them off but i forgot my camera so il need to show what i done later. I wanted to add strengh to the corners so i cut some 25x10 flat bar and welded them in place like gussets. The other thing i done was to cut them in half and sleeved an insert inside both cuts. Unfortunatly once i cut them in half they bowed in, so i had to cut 4 corners and pull them out a few degrees and weld them back up. Easy enoguh to do but time consuming.
The weekend after that i decided to fabricate trolley dolleys so can move the whole thing around a lot easier. I bought 8x125mm castor/brake wheels, and 2 x 65x130 U channel @ 40" long. Using some left over 50 box i joined the whole lot together and im quite happy with how they turned out. I left a 60mm gap from the floor to the channel. Im hoping that when i go to roll the dodecagons i can roll them into the channel, il just need to see how it goes. The wheels should be strong for the job, they hold 160Kg each, so altogether thats 1280kg in total and im guessing the van isnt even going to be 700Kg fully stripped.
I got them down to my garage and with the help of my beautiful although slightly unenthusiastic assistant got to see how they would look in place. It was exciting to see all the hard work starting to make sence and feeling worthwhile.
My brother and I went to the garage last wednesday after work and started to strip the front suspension out. We got the whole front end out but by that time it was getting quite late and i had an operation the next day so thats as far as we got. Im hoping next week to get back along and bolt the plates i have cut to the mounting points and weld more box to join the chassis to the dodecagons and fingers crossed it should go to plan. I also have to brace the inside of the van extensivly as i plan to chop the roof of first. Thats why i ahve 3 sheets of MDF, im going to join my 2 benches together and make a huge 12ft x8ft table, screww the roof down and repair it.
Hopefully il have another update next week and a video of it in action.
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Thanks for the comments, The jig was a bit of a pain to setup but i had it all planned out in my head about a month before starting so i had a good idea about how to go about it.
Ola - The suspension at the front will remain standard, the layout will anyway. Its got double wishbones at the front with quite a bit of adjustment considering its a 50 year old van. I will change all the bushes ofcourse and depending on the weight of the engine and other stuff I'll need to fit tougher springs and shocks. It would be good to have a balance between comfort and handling. The brakes will get changed to discs. At the rear I'm going for a Ford Capri rear axle as its the exact same width and i know it can handle the power.
The steering could be changed to powersteering but id need to find a car that has a power steering steering box as its old school and isn't a rack and pinion . I know some Mercedes used them so I'll need to have a rake around the scrap yard. The Scorpio V6 does have a power steering pump though.
I want to try and find a Ford Granada Scorpio, the first model, because that has the same 5 stud bolt pattern (5x112). That way id have everything, the 24V V6, the gearbox, the discs brakes and hubs, the ECU etc....
As far as entertainment I'm happy with a cd/M.P. changer and a few decent speakers, I also have the idea of getting a TV which would mount flush to the headlining then flip down to watch. A cheap car PC or laptop to go with it would be good. I'm not going to go 'pimp my ride' style mental though and have a candy floss machine inside a candyfloss machine or some stupid **** like that.
For cooking I'll just have a basic double hob with a grill underneath. It does kind of scare me a bit that I'll have a flame less than foot from curtains or other flammable material so I'm going to plump in a racing car style fire extinguisher with pipes above the cooker and along the inside. That way if it catches on fire i can press a button and the whole inside of the van will be extinguished.
I managed to fix the works spare plasma cutter so my boss has let me borrow that and a guy i know form another forum has let me borrow his sandblaster so that is a huge help!
I've been a bit busy again but managed to get the tilter pretty much finished.
First thing i had to do was Clean up the chassis where i want to bolt the plates onto
I measured and cut up the plates, then drilled the holes out.
Then i bolted the plates to chassis and tacked them together, that way i knew it was going to be a good tight fit.
Unbolted the plates and welded them up. Before i welded them i tacked a few bracers between the angle so it wouldn't distort with the heat.
Whilst the plates were cooling down i took out the first bottom of the dodecagon and positioned it to where i needed. It took a while because your working with 3 different axis of movement and the only thing i had to hold it was a black and decker workmate. I first made sure the van its self was level then i leveled the dodecagon, trying to keep it centre to the van and then level it the other way. Awkward.
With that done i measured up for the supports, first the horizontal one was cut and tacked in.
Then the vertical.
Once all tacked i jacked the van up and let the frame drop. I tacked in a few more braces and welded it all up, gave it a quick dress up and bolted it back on the van. That was the first test over, if it would actually hold it and not bend or warp, which it did, success!
It looks like I'm advertising a can of GT85 but I'm really putting in the bolts so the top half doesn't come off when it gets rolled over.
The next again weekend my brother came along to give me a hand with the rear. He done a god job of stripping the axle out and disconnecting various bits. Then he cleaned up the chassis for me,.
just chilling out on the floor
Whilst he did one side i was measuring, cutting, marking and drilling the plates for the brackets. Same story as the front, bolted them up and tacked them.
Here you can see the bracers i tacked on so it wouldn't warp when welding up.
. That was that for that day. My brother had to go home for his dinner (family man) so i took the brackets to my work and welded them up there. Last weekend i went with my girlfriend for a wee cheeky long weekend away up north for our 4 year anniversary and she was kind enough to not be pissed off with me by letting me to go to the garage on the Sunday afternoon. I forgot to take photos as i was going along though, i think it was because I got pissed off after spending an hour trying to level up the rear dodecagon and cutting the horizontal supports when i suddenly realized that, yes i had everything level but the rear ring wasn't level with the front. Luckily i noticed just in time as it was off by about 40mm. Once i got it packed up it went pretty much the same as the front did.
It was good to see my creation starting to actually be complete. Next step was figuring out how to slide the trolley wheel frames underneath. For the rear i managed to just lift the van up myself and kind of kick and shuffle the frames under. The front is a bit heavier so i jacked that up , as i did the whole back off the van started to veer towards the wall. Once i put the brakes on the wheels i jacked it up again and slid the front wheels underneath.
Front:
Back:
I tested the van to see if it would actually tilt and i got it onto its first step. I want to brace the inside of the van properly before i go any further but atleast i know it works so far. I recorded it on my mobile so the quality isn't the best.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpW23wM3yrk
I also made a video of it being rolled about on the trolley wheels. I have a bit of a cold and sore throat so i pretty much cough all the time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrcuuezMqBg
Next up i need to brace the van and make struts so that when its tipped over it will stay there and not roll back. Then finally , finally i can actually do something to the van , woohoo!
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New update -
I have kind of went off the cosworth V6, i managed to get close to one and it is a lot wider than the standard ford 2.8 V6. I have found a guy close to my area who has a few old mk2 Granadas and i should be meeting him when i have money to get an engine, auto box, wiring loom, front and rear hubs and braking system.
When i ordered the metal for the bracing i thought id only need 15 metres worht but turns out i need an extra 8 metres so the whole bracing isnt fully complete yet, I did get most of it done though.
Last weekend i went back to the garage to make a start on the welding I know at the front cab the top of the door openings would need braced as the roof was quite rusty around here which led me to belive that underneath the roof it would be rotten (as i was proved right later on). So the openings got 2 horizontol braces, top and bottom and a diaganol brace (all the bracing is 25mmx25mm box).
To stop the sides folding in once i took the roof off i put in more diaganols, from the body to the chassis.
This was where i ran out of material, i need to go to my old work and buy some more to brace the rear door openings.
Yesterday i went back along to the garage determined to get the roof free. The roof mostly has 'ribs' inside it, which kind off supports it and the bracing for the pop up roof is quite ridgid so i just made a little cross brace at the front to help strenghing that part. I think when Dormobile converted it they welded the ribs to the body of the van and so i had to cut the welds with the grinder as well as taking out bolts. After that i was thinking how to get the roof cut off. I tried to angle the grinder and cut through the guttering on one section but it seemed to waste a lot of the disc. I realized that if i just kept the cutting discs vertical and followed the guttering around it would seperate from the roof and left me the part of the guttering that is spot welded to the body. After a bit of cutting and light tapping with a hammer and chisel i got it freed, success!.
To lift the roof off required an extra pair of hands so i spent the rest of the night tidying up and moving my benches around. The idea is to take the 2 benches in the corner out so i can get the van in the corner and make up a shot blasting shelter. Using the corner is ideal as i only need to make a 2 sided frame to put clear tarpolin or something similar on the roof and sides and make a sealed box. With the 2 benches il use some rotten floor boards i have here to make a 6ft x 12ft base for me to screw down the MDF onto it and make a nice big strong table to work on the roof.
This afternoon i went back along with my dad to help me life the roof off. It was a bit heavier than we thought it would be, it was also catching on the lugs and stuff as we were trying to lift it free, all the blood was draining from our arms but eventually we got it off. I made up a temporary table as i hope to take it to my friends place and use his big caustic tank to strip the paint off it.
Some parts are better than others, these parts arent.
With the roof off i could now see the real extent of the rust to the upper van body, it is bad. But im either naieve or brave as i know inside me that i can fix it.
And an over view of the roof missing. You can sort of make out the horizontal brace i have lightly welded to the dodegacon joining the inner van bracing to the dodecagon. Thats my idea at the front so that when its on its side the body wont move at all, once i have the rear door opeing braced it will also be attached some how to the rear dodecagon.
Next step is to get the roof stripped and on the table to get it fixed and rust free. Also, i could make a start on building a frame for the sand blasting.
Not too much of a huge update but a bit of a milestone for me.
The dodecagon and bracing is now complete so i can roll the van around and not worry about distortion (thats the theory anyway).
Here its on the second step,
And on its side, I thought i took more photos of it on its side but apparently not. I will make some braces to attach to the side to stop it rolling back, it was steady enough to take photos but i wouldnt feel safe working on it like that.
I couldnt get a full shot of the underneath so this is a photomerge of 3 photos if your wondering why it doesnt look right.
It was a bit weird to see the underside at a decent viewing angle, not really something you see.
I also made another video of it being rolled on to its side.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Kr22KSuAM
It is possible for one man to roll it on its side but i think any further over i would need some help.
Now that that is done i can on with actually fixing the bodywork. My plan is to shotblast the van body next. Im going to build a 6 metre x 5 metre shelter using clear tarpaulin in the corner of the garage. Ive never done shot-blasting before so it will be a bit of an experiment until i get the hang of it. I think it will be similar to painting the whole van with an artist paintbrush, joy....
I havent been able to do much recently as im now working overtime and Saturdays at work to try and make some extra pennies for christmas.
Last weekend i started to strip the rest of the van. Being able to put it on its side meant taking the steering system, brake lines, fuel lines, master cylinders etc.. off a lot easier.
The next thing i have to do before i can repair the bodywork is to see exactly where i need to repair it. For that i need to strip all the paint and i decided to shot-blast the whole thing myself. I dont want to make a mess and create dust everywhere so i bought 3 heavy-duty polythene sheets to create a smaller space to shot-blast in. I was able to staple the sheets to the rafters on the roof.
The guy i share the space with gave me an old zip cable tidy he never needed anymore so i cut it in half and attached it at the corner so i could seperate the front and side of the sheets.
I also attached a weight to the bottom and rope so i can pull the sheets up and have a bit more room for the other people that have to gain access to the back of the garage.
Before i went home i was able to get a quick shot of shot-blasting for the first time. I was able to get the hang of it pretty quickly, but i guess with practise il be able to do it better and i'll have alot of practise with this van.
This weekend i went shopping with the girlfriend in the morning to keep her happy and after that i buggered off to the garage. I wanted to do a little more of the blasting. I bought one bag of fine glass bead from a local media blaster for £10. I think that was a good price, much better than machine mart prices anyway. I continued on from where i left last weekend with the front corner.
Shot-blasting seems the way to go for me. The finish you get is great and i like how it gets the paint and dead metal away so easily. The only other alternative for the DIY person would be using paint stripper and a wire cup brush/paint removing pad. For the bigger flat panels i do intend to use paint stripper as i dont want to distort them. for example, you can see in this photo of the A-post the rust and pinholes going all the way up. Before i blasted it it looked like it was just surface rust but giving it the once over i was surprised to see how bad it was. The repair of it wont be hard but it all adds up.
I was able re-use the glass bead. At first i just brushed it up and put it back in but i clogged it up when i started blasting again. I went to morrisons and bought a kitchen sieve and sieved the glass bead. I never realised just how much other crap i had swept up.
For a comparison shot heres a before.
And an after.
I never done too much as by the time i got to the garage it was 3pm and havign to set everything up etc.. took a bit of time. Plus Edinburgh is having its worst snow fall in years, this is the worst i've ever seen it anyway, and in the garage i only have a halogen flood light for heat so i went home for my dinner.
I want to say a HUGE thankyou to Andy (302zeph) for lending me his shot-blaster, i cant express my gratituide enough, cheers mate.
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January update
I haven't put up any pictures recently as , well, it doesn't look like a lot has been done. Just before christmas I got a bit more the blasting done.
You can really see just how well it highlights the bad Areas to be cut out
During the christmas holidays I got a phone call at 8:30 in the morning to tell me the garage had a burst pipe and it was flooding the whole place. Within 10 minutes of waking up I was doing 70mph..... (or there abouts
) down the motorway to get to my van. As I was driving I was thinking the worst. Maybe a pipe above the van had burst and my nice shiney un-protected paint work that I had blasted was being ruined, or my welder and plasma cutter were now submerged under 2 feet of water. When I arrived I was so relieved, turns out the spot where I placed the van seems to be on a little incline and it was bone dry. What was damaged were 2 bags of grit for the media blaster, they were lying in a little puddle and the moisture had managed to get through and make the grit damp. I wasn't about to let £20 worth of grit go to waste so I went about drying it. I took it home and placed it in the airing cupboard for a couple of days. That never really worked, so I took the grit back to the garage and laid it out in a thin layer on 2 large sheets of wood and left it to dry. In the mean time I tried to get some more but the guy I get the grit of was closed for the holidays and I didn't want to pay 3 times the price at machine mart. I didn't want the day to go to waste though so I got the wirebrush on the grinder and attacked a few spots on the lower half of the van.
That night I was thinking that I might actually be better to prepare the underside of the van before I blast the rest. On the reasoning that all the sticky underseal could land on the bare-metal. Its funny how you can say in one quick simple sentence "prepare the underside" , its straight to the point and sounds so simple, "prepare the underside". Even thinking about the task it sounds easy, which it is. What it doesn't capture is the monotony and dull-ness of the task. Its one of those things where you put a lot of effort and time into it but visually its not impressive at all.
My first attempt with the underseal was to use a wire-cup brush in the grinder and go at it, Wrong! All that does is cause friction which heats up the underseal into a nice swirly pattern. I then moved on to the 'kill it with fire' approach and bought a nice fancy self-starting blowtorch with paint striper attachment and also 3 different sized scrapers. This method does work but my god its boring. Step one, point heat at a 2 inch square, let it bubble. Step 2, Scrape it , then scrape it again, and again. Then you can use a flat wire-brush attachment in the grinder to clean the thin layer of remaining underseal off. This method only really works on the flat areas, i.e , floor pan, wheel arches, chassis rails. When it comes to corners and inaccessible areas ive been using the blow-torch/scraper then going over it with the media-blaster.
I know I wont get 100% of the rust away, even using the blaster and wire brush there's still some areas that have heavy pitting. So I think that once I have as much done as I can im going to buy a rust converter and spray it on the whole underside. Ive been looking at rustbusters fe-123 and it seems to have good reviews. I think I will also use their epoxy mastic 121 as the paint for the chassis and underside. The original was designed for off shore oil rigs and its been adapted for automotive use so should be good enough to protect it for a long time.
On another note, my Ford Consul had been losing water for a while. At first I thought that maybe the radiator cap wasn't working right as I always had a lot of pressure in the cooling system. At first it wasn't bad , id maybe only have to top it up once a week but leading up to christmas it got to the point where I was having to put at least 2 litres back in just after driving to and back from work. During the cold temperatures it started to become obvious that water was getting in somehow, when I stopped at the traffic lights I would be surrounded in a cloud of white smoke. I then thought that maybe the cylinder head gasket had blown, what threw me off though was that the oil was still nice and dark, not creamy as you would expect. I spoke to my dad about it and he suggested it could be a cracked cylinder head (there goes 2 days worth of lapping the valves last summer). I had thought about buying a new gasket and using the cylinderhead off the van engine when my dad came up with the idea that I should just swap the engine that came out the van with the consuls. Another one of those short and simple sentences.....
So basically it was swap this:
For this:
I had taken photos as I was doing this but they are on a different camera that I don't have access to right now. So I will upload them here later.
On the Saturday I got to the garage about 11am, I started by striping the whole front end away, the grill, trim, bonnet, radiator, battery etc.. Then I removed all the electric cables (yes, all 3 of them) , engine fan, alternator etc.. I guess the last person who changed this engine made life easier for themselves by cutting the front panel away so I done the same. Now, came the pain in the arse bit, removing the gearbox from the engine, you can get to the 9 bolts underneath easily enough but there's 3 which are sandwiched between the engine and firewall, (if you have done this to a mk2 you will know what im talking about) I had to sort of straddle the engine and bend over at a degree men find very uncomfortable, find the bolt and using an open ended 9/16 spanner, get a grip at an angle and get maybe 1/16 of a turn then take it off and struggle to do the same, ofcourse the bolts are about an inch and a half long so to remove one bolt ends up taking half an hour. Anyway, with the engine off I could get some rope around it and put some tension on the engine crane and then remove the engine mounts.
With the engine out I moved on to striping it of everything and putting it on to the van engine. I forgot to mention to those that don't know but the Consul and Thames used the exact same engine block. I thought it was the exact same engine but there a few differences that I never knew about until doing this swap. The van engine has a single down-draught carb where as the Consul has a twin, so that had to be swapped, I swapped it along with the intake manifold as well as the exhaust as they also differ in length slightly. The oil filter is also shorter in length. Luckily I had bought a new filter for a 400e as apposed to the consul when I was looking on Ebay as I thought they were the same. I swapped over the distributor as I eh well, managed to break the van one when taking it out the van.... And also the plugs, coil , ht leads. The water pump pulley is also smaller, I was hoping to use that as that would turn the water pump over quicker but after checking id need to find a smaller belt to go with it. The van also has a 4 blade fan so I used that instead of the consuls 2 blade. By this point it was 9pm and I was starting to feel really tired. I phoned my brother for sympathy and it must have worked as he said he would come and pick me up then drop me back off again in the morning, legend!.
On Sunday I arrived about 11am again. With the engine ready to go in I tied a rope around it and hoisted it up with the crane. I pulled it over then somehow, I managed to line it up with the gearbox shaft, twist it to line up and lower it. It did take quite a few attempts and about half an hour of swearing but I managed, I even done that thing where you take your anger out on an inanimate object, for some reason I threw the crane jack handle at the ground and swore at it (poor thing). Eventually I got it to line up, I bolted the engine mounts on, set the timing and put the alternator and belt back on. I got the engine to a state where I could test it (I forgot to mention that I had no idea if this engine block was OK. I never heard it run before so I was quite apprehensive as to if I was wasting my time).
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by the time it's all finished. Do you plan to modify the Ford's basic, trap-sprung suspension or are you far too tough to be worrying about all that handling stuff? 
