Well I have finally managed to get enough time to start on my van so I thought I would start my very own build thread. So here goes!
Up until late 2013 my van was off the road - all pulled apart for no good reason really but for the vague hope that big things were going to happen with my van. When my girlfriend commanded that we needed to camp in it over Christmas in order to visit her family there was a mad rush to get it back together. At the time of demand it had the standard diff, limiting speed to about 80ks,but I knew that wasn't going to be suitable long-term so I started the ball rolling by getting my hands on a Ford 9" and popping that in. I also installed an F100 fuel tank to give it a little extra fuel capacity.
Other than that everything was standard and we did use the van to camp in over Christmas - it worked OK with just a mattress thrown in the back. We pulled over a couple of times on the trip to prevent over-heating and we were in no danger of speeding at any point (!) but we reached our destination and got home again without any trouble.
Just recently I was browsing the online salvage auctions and found an AUII XR8 ute with low ks. The description said the car was storm-damaged so after a quick viewing on the day of the auction to confirm the engine didn't appear to have been damaged, I decided to go for it. The intention was/is to get the engine into the Bedford (obviously). I was pretty nervous, having never bid on a salvage auction but I started bidding when the lot number came up and within 30 seconds it was mine. The very next day it was delivered and actually in my hands.
Of course it then rained every weekend and various other demands were placed upon me, but a few weeks later and a good mate and I got started:
Loaded on the hoist ready to lift the body off the front end:
The old 173 being retired from service:
The new 5.0 Windsor waiting for its new home:
A 2 post hoist makes this job easy:
New Windsor on engine stand filling the void:
The "larger" power plant will require a little better cooling than the old donk so to cover this I have an XF radiator and AU fans:
To get the wider radiator to fit a slight increase to the clearance is required:
New radiator sitting in place. I'll be lifting the radiator support to allow better air flow:
Well that's it for this weekend we're all out of time and out of parts.
Next weekend if time allows we'll be working on the radiator mounts and possibly start removing the wiring loom from the donor XR8. I'll need to get my hands on a rear sump to suit the Windsor before we can start working on the engine mounts.
Until the next installment!
Shane
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