HJ47 welcome here?

[Henry James the 47th]

3 more

 

[Henry James the 47th]

another three. To make it easier to fit the pedal box in and out,
I made a modification to it so it would clear the reinforcement ring in a downward slide into place, around the instrument cluster 'nose'

 

[Henry James the 47th]

another set of three

 

[Henry James the 47th]

yet more.

In the third, I decide to cut a section off the old RHD dash to see about a way of fitting the factory tach to the dash. It has to go to the right of the steering wheel, due to the way it is designed. I realized that I don't need an old-fashioned stereo opening (too small anyhow for a modern DIN chassis) as an Ipod/amplifier set up seems like the ticket. Once the stereo hole was out, the possibilities opened up for arranging the dash.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

working on the new dash configuration is a good way to give me something to take my attention away from welding, which helps me to avoid overheating the sheet (at least most of the time )

 

[Henry James the 47th]

next set

 

[Henry James the 47th]

last set for today. The dash is hopefully going to work out, and fingers are crossed 'cause I'm not totally sure if I've made a good decision about chopping further into the sacred dash metal

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Today the Bandierante steering box and pedestal arrived. I obtained them on Ebay from TLC in California. the box looked pretty good, but the pedestal was not so cleanly removed from the truck as I might have hoped (nor did TLC's Ebay ad show the details of the pedestal, hmm...), but I started work right away with the glass blasting, adding in a couple of parts from the 60 column I'm trying to fit.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

then I welded the damaged mounting holes up

 

[Henry James the 47th]

then a little work with the flap wheel and they looked pretty much okay

 

[Henry James the 47th]

on to priming for the pedestal and column parts, followed by a couple of pictures of the steering box.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

The steering box is made in Brazil, and I wonder what mounting pattern the box shares with other power steering boxes - - maybe it's based on some US domestic mounting? So, I snapped some pictures with the ruler superimposed, 'cause maybe someone out there will recognize the pattern and can fill me in.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Next, I bolted the column back into place and welded the lower part of the column together, ground the welds off, and put it into some primer-surfacer

 

[Henry James the 47th]

I managed to get the pedestal into finish paint, and then was itchin' to see how the new box and pedestal would look, so I temporarily bolted them into place. I'm curious to see how much room I have from the firewall to the flange on the box for the rag joint (coupler), AND see how the fender fits around it - hopefully it won't need any mods to do the job (the fender that is).

 

[Henry James the 47th]

another picture of the steering box.

tomorrow I hope to finish mods to the aprons ( a mount for the relays) and do a bunch more welding, grinding, welding, grinding...

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Some more time on the truck today, a bit of this a bit of that. Steps forward, steps sideways, steps back, I don't know.

First i worked on the driver's door, fixing a hole in exactly the same place as on the passenger door. Hmm, what's with that?

 

[Henry James the 47th]

After cleaning that one up, I moved over to the cab and repaired a little area on the back.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

another set. Perfection still eludes me, by far, in the welding and grinding department, but if I can keep the subsequent use of body filler to no more than 1/16"/1mm thick, then I will be satisfied.

 

[Henry James the 47th]

Then I turned my attention to the corner of the cab, where things are a little messy. There are supposed to be metal tubes welded in to receive the locating pins on the upper cab section, but this pipe section is missing on all three of my mounting points. Fortunately, I have a section of another cab corner, that, by chopping it apart, let me in on the secret of the way the receiving pipe is fixed in place. Note the little flange-doohickey on the end that is buried deep inside the door frame. I managed to wrestle it out of the piece i chopped apart to get a look at it, but as far as actually putting that into my cab corner, there is no way it can be pushed by the sliding bolt backing plate located a couple of inches down (the area where the door catch is installed). So...what to do? I can see that it would be good to have support for it lower down, but I'm scratching my head at the moment for finding a good way to do that.

An other fronts, I took more of a look at the Brazilian p/s pump today. It's a nice unit! The mounting bolts are a slightly odd 12 x 1.5mm thread, and the rag joint has a finer spline and a larger mounting bolt for the coupler, compared to my 40 series rag joint. I therefore bred the two together to come up with a rag joint that should work alright.

Then there are the fittings for the p/s hoses to the pump, and I realize I will have to go scrounging the wrecking yard to see if I can cobble something together. The fittings that attach to the gearbox are two different sizes.

I saw a BJ42 today and realized, while looking under the hood at the 3B, that it had the ideal sort of air cleaner for my installation, and then I managed to locate one at, where else, E4 Auto Repair. I'm trading in my very clean HJ60 unit for it. This one will need a little TLC before putting it in - at the moment I am marking out the mounting holes on the driver's inner fender apron. Once I've got that done, it can go for a glass blast, prime and paint.

 

[Pork-n-Bean]

You have an awesome build going - Keep the pics and details coming! Why is it so easy to get addicted to landcruisers?