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29 June 2013

Bandit2 lives! At 11:30 Saturday night Matt and I finally managed to get her to start and run under her own steam. There were a couple of teething issues, but she was running and revving and loud and smoky. I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t complained, cause it has no exhaust on it and we had to rev it up a bit. But it was fantastic and we were laughing like fools. The blow-by-blow story is as follows. I forgot the video camera, it was sitting on the computer charging. Kicking myself about that.

Saturday morning I dropped the oil and left the pan there for it to run out. Drained the old fuel out of the tank too. In town I grabbed more fuel and all the auto shops were shut, so ended up with 4L of Coles oil. That’s gotta be good stuff! Matt came over and we redid the fuel lines to the carby and filter. We filled it with oil, and noticed an awful lot pissing out of the rocker cover gasket. Bugger, oil everywhere. Pulled the cover off and of course the straight edge showed it was bent. To the engine stash, pulled a grubby old one off a spare 1600, spray of degreaser, checked, new gasket, on. More oil. Good as gold. Then hooked up the battery and cranked it with no plugs in to get the fuel through. Sweet, that worked. New plugs in. Hook up No1 lead. Crank again, sweet, got spark. All plug leads on, this is it, go for a start.

Took a bit to get the fuel through the carby, but tipping a bit in got it to pop a bit. There was some big backfiring and something wasn’t right. Checked the book again on getting the dizzy in. I put it in pointing at No2 spark plug (I read that somewhere on the internet). Double checking things on Betty we knew where number 1 was. The book said to point it to No2 position on the dizzy itself. Did that and slid it in, looking much better. Tried again for a start, much better this time. The thing was firing as we turned the dizzy to get the timing somewhere near right. But every time it caught and sounded like it wanted to go, as soon as I let go of the key it died. Cause I have the electronic ignition on it the coil needs 12V all the time. Me and dad hooked up a wire to the switch a while ago… can you see where this is going… but we’d done it to the wrong wire. So when I turned the key off the 12V was turned off too. Bugger. So we rigged up another wire straight to the coil and cranked some more.

But now the battery decided it was tired and was struggling. So we pulled the battery out of Betty, but guess what? Yep, it was struggling too cause its been sitting there so long. So Matt brings his Prado down with its dual battery setup and big old jumper leads. Hooked all that up. Cranked again, much better, the starter was roaring along. Then a bit more cranking and dizzy fiddling and BOOM!!, she’s away under her own steam! We ran it for about 5 minutes before I got scared of all the noise it was making. Sat back and smelled the fumes and smoke. The paint burnt off the extractors and made lots of smoke. But the old girl ran and roared, we were both wrapped and kicked back at midnight for a celebration beer!

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2 July 2013

And here's the couple of videos. I went back down this morning and set the camera up so I could get some footage of the startup. Not the first one, but the 2nd. After a bit more cranking it got started again, but to get it to idle I had to hold my finger over the PCV pipe that was open. So I blocked that up and it idles fine. I gotta get the brakes on and sorted so I can take it for a drive!

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15 July 2013

Matt came back out Sunday night to help out with a few more jobs. Its awesome having someone else to work with and keep you motivated and moving forwards. We had big plans of getting the exhaust on and brake lines sorted. But it all went to pot when we tried to fit up the Bandit1 exhaust. All was well untill the extractors went on. Or in this case didn't go on. They were off a 1300 engine so hit on the firewall. I had another set of extractors on the wall, so we tried them on. They fitted, but hit on the compression strut bracket. Bugger. So plan C was made and we decided to use the first set, get a small section bent and join that to the B1 exhaust. The bloke at A1 exhausts in town grabbed a piece of scrap and bent it to shape for me. Awesome mob they are. After the exhaust issues we moved on to the brake lines. Of course they wouldn't play ball either. I couldn't find the hard lines off the calipers, and the braided ones didn't fit the mk1 hard lines in the engine bay. So we gave up and just stuck the pads in. And to finish off Matt had a play with the door latch and managed to move it back in so the door shuts properly now. Awesome, now to get some orange paint onto it.

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16 July 2013

Our plan with the hard lines was to take the old Mk1 nuts off and get some Mk2 M10x1 tube nuts on there so we can mate everything up. All we needed was 2 nuts. But buggered if we could find any anywhere. The local brake shop was hopeless and wasn't keen to help out, so I won't be going back there. I tried a couple of other places, but no dice. Smcka had a car at his and is going to get them off on the weekend and post them down next week. Top man. And I found another set online so bought those as well. My new air filter and gasket turned up in the mail though, so I put them on. Then I put the car up onto stands and got to fitting the B1 exhaust to see where we needed to cut our new bit of pipe. I got it all put into place, but it got a bit late to start cutting things up so left it.

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17 July 2013

Matt brought his welder back around again, and we got to measuring and cutting up the exhaust. Trimmed the new bit to length, cut the middle bit off the old B1 extractors. Slitted them up the sides and fitted them together. WE put it back on the car and bolted it up to make sure all was good. Then got the welder and tacked it into place. I got to do the welding on it, so its not real pretty. Then off the car again and I welded it all up around the seams and down the bits that we slit. Back on again and all is looking good. We were going to start the car up, but it was 11pm so canned that plan. While I was bodging up the welds on the exhaust Matt was swapping the electric motor off his broken compressor onto my old slugger. It just needs some wiring finishing off and hopefully it'll work again.

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23 July 2013

My new brake nuts arrived in the post, and while out helping Matt with his big old Landcruiser ute we cut the old ones off and put the new metric ones on and re-flared the lines. So the next day during my lunch break I headed down there to start putting it all back together. The new lines in the engine bay went on ok, there was a bit of fiddling needed cause the lines were a bit shorter and we'd had to straighten them out to get them flared with the nuts on. Then the hard lines went back on the calipers. Then the braided lines too. Then we hit another issue. Because I measured up and had my sway bar made while there were no brake lines about, of course once the lines are on they're right where the ends of the sway bar are. Another issue to solve. It looks like I should be able to sort it with shorter drop links and bending the ends of the bar out 45mm.

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25 July 2013

I had another night in the shed and put more brake lines back in. The one to the rear was a bit of fun, it got tangled up in pretty much everything. And then trying to remember which way around the fuel line and brake lines went in their clips. I think I got it right. Then I chucked the master cylinder on too, and got the lines all bolted in. So its all back together, apart from hooking the pedal up to the master push rod. I pulled the swaybar off. Then today I took it, my drop links, a wheel and a Formula Ford tyre to town. Got the tyre chucked on, its a bit of a stretch on the 7" wide wheel. I got some new drop link bits, so that's sorted. But the sway bar needs to go down to south Nowra, so that will happen another day.

Edit: Took the bar down to Todd Selby at Signature Swaybars. He sorted the bar on the spot for me. I was asking about how to attach the drop links too and he said he could flatten the ends easy, so he did that for me too. Very happy!

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31 July 2013

Matt came out again on Monday night and the plan was to bleed the brakes and get the car back on the floor. Best laid plans and all that. Turns out there was another round of issues that need sorting. First issue was that I forgot to tighten the rear line, easy fix. Second, I cocked up and got the nuts around the wrong way on the engine bay hard lines where they go through the guard. So we had to pull them off, and then once swapped around I managed to cross thread one of the new Mk2 nuts I'd bought. But then I remembered the brake lines off the old Mk2 axle that I'd pulled apart ages ago, luckily it had a nut on it. So a new line was made (cause we had to cut the ends off the old to get our nuts off) and put that on. All good. The fronts bled up all ok, but the pedal was still long. Had to be something up with the rears. Drivers side was a little dodgy, but after some fiddling Matt got it working properly. Then the passenger side rear, it was stuffed. One shoe had fallen over and it was wrecked, and put a massive groove into the drum. Bugger. I thought all was good cause I had a spare Mk1 axle. So today I pulled it down, but it turns out its off an early car and has the manual adjusting gear on it. Which doesn't fit the self-adjusting ones on the car. Shoes are different sizes too. So I gave up on that and drilled some holes in the modified swaybar, and fitted the drop links. Man I hope the updated swaybar fits ok.

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6 August 2013

There has been a bit of a delay in progress lately due to waiting on bits to be ordered and not getting to town to order them. Smcka sorted me out with the right shaped rear wheels cylinders, and Moto parts had the right shaped brake shoes. Hopefully all will arrive in the post and at the shop today. I've got my spare mk2 axle out and all the bits I could find to go with the conversion to the mk2 rear end. The only missing bit is a set of springs. So while waiting for bits I thought stuff it, why have the adjustable arms sitting in a box, lets throw them on the car. So Matt and I had a night of drilling holes, taking old arms off, sticking new ones on, bolting up swaybar, and then going around and checking that all nuts and bolts have been tightened. I was going to call the front end done, but today I noticed I need to adjust the steering rack ends, because I've now pushed the camber out with the adjustable arms there is way too much toe in. And I have approval from management to go get an exhaust when the tax man gives us our returns. Very happy about that one.

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8 August 2013

Brake shoes didn't turn up, so we just chucked the old ones back in for now, just so we could bleed the brakes up and make sure they all worked. With all that in we got the brakes done and the pedal came up ok. Before dropping it off the stands we adjusted the steering rack ends to fix the toe. Might have gone a bit far though, ah well, can sort that out later. So wheels on, home-brew keg rubbers on the exhaust, back on the deck, we started it up again. The auto choke kicked in and the thing was revving its guts off, so that needed some adjustment. Matt got in and gave it the first drive, moving it forwards and back a couple of feet. Its much quieter with the exhaust on. We had to go with the 13x7 steel wheels as the studs in the back are too short for the alloys. Next step was the drive out of the shed, but that was going to have to wait, cause we had no headlights. So after Matt left I got to moving more stuff around so we could get old B2 out. And of course its raining today so the front of the shed is a bog hole again. Bugger.

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