Coachmen Leprechaun

I'm not a huge fan of the 2cv (sorry Jack) or the Cortina to be honest. I wouldn't mind a late 70's capri though...

Not much to report on the current project. I've been super busy at work over the last couple of months so very little progress being made on the ol girl. I did manage to get the bottom half of the engine back together though...

I spent more time measuring and double checking than I should have, but I'd like to only do this rebuild once!

I watched several youtube videos on rebuilding the Chevy v8 and I also read through my service manual in detail before getting stuck in. With crankshaft journals checked, clearanced (with plastigauge) and everything cleaned, re-cleaned and then cleaned again, I cracked on.

The most important thing here is being super clean. Blow out all oil passageways and galleries with compressed air, remove all dirt & dust from every surface and keep the work area spotless. I've managed to mess up shell bearings in the past by not being meticulously clean during this stage of assembly. An expensive lesson learned!

Crankshaft installed. Measuring the big end (again) prior to installing new big end bearings & conrods.



A li'l oil bath for the pistons & rings before I slide them into the cylinders:




Camshaft installed:


Pistons, camshaft, timing sprockets & chain installed and starter motor fitted to give it a whirl. Must remember to give this battery a charge. tis a bit dead!



EDITED THREAD: Marking the point in time that Photobucket screwed up my thread and restricted all of the photos.

I had a bit of a problem when I was fitting the heads. Despite my following the head bolt tightening procedure to the letter, three of the head bolts failed to torque at the correct spec and the threads stripped in the block! A common enough problem on the older SBC blocks apparently...

After a brief mental meltdown, I ordered up a helicoil kit and went about fixing the problem.


Vitally important to remove the swarf from drilling & tapping before moving on:


7/16" - 14 Helicoil:


Gotta have this stuff as the tapped holes are through into the water jacket.


Heads fitted & torqued, timing chain set and just fitting the pushrods and rockers here. Next job to set the valve lash.


I cleaned & painted the oil cooler adapter and then fitted a new oil filter. I just need to replace a couple of age-hardened O rings and it'll be ready to fit to the engine.


Trim:
Some more samples arrived in the post this week.

I want to replace all of the screw cover trim on the back half of the camper. I got a few different samples from various suppliers but none of the samples were the correct colour. Too dark or too bright. But I eventually found the correct colour. The seller was on Amazon. Both he and some of the previous customers were very helpful answering my questions and even providing photos.

The old screw cover trim on the camper is rock solid and brittle. It will not be reusable:


Item listing on Amazon.com


The new trim is a little darker, but it's the closest to original so far.

A little update...

The roof re-sealing continues... (and yesterday's hurricane confirmed that my work is good so far).

But while the weather was bad, I did some indoor work:

The dashboard...

The old radio console was a bit mangled to say the least. It had been modified a few times over the years which turned it into a crock-pot of different materials & ideas. This isn't a feature I wanted to keep!

So to tidy it up, I cut away the previous creations and made up a cardboard template to represent what I'd like to put in place. I'm still on the fence about fitting a single DIN, double DIN radio, video monitor or even an ipod or tablet dock, but for now I'll put a blank space until I make up my mind.

Heres a photo of the original (an old photo I took when stripping the camper):


Cardboard template in place:






I've ordered some sheets of 1mm & 3mm textured plastic which I'll use for the facia of the new radio console. Hopefully that'll arrive this week and I can do some more work this weekend. I'll use the template as a pattern to cut the plastic sheets. It'll be fibreglassed into place.

Still not too sure what I should do with the old brass bull's head...

Another late night eBay purchase over the weekend...

Something old, something new.... 3D printed cup holders for a vintage van... Not sure what the Chevy design engineers had in mind putting these square recesses on the centre console. Maybe they didn't drink coffee while driving back in the 80's! Coin trays maybe?

Some dude in Holland saw an opportunity to make these with his 3D printer and offer them on eBay... Nice product too... Fits snugly.

I was going to live with the "aged character" of the dashboard, but once I started cleaning it up, I changed my mind and decided to fill in any holes, fix the cracks and repaint it.

It wasn't easy to get the correct colour-matched paint. My usual paint suppliers didn't have the right shades of brown in their colour cards. Something about a 37 year old brown paint colour not being popular any more, Pfft!

I was eventually directed to Dermot Crowley Coatings in Frankfield, Cork. They had an optical colour scanner which they used to determine the right shades of brown topcoat. Very helpful guys there and the prices were very good too...

I've made some progress with the dashboard. I finished mounting the facia panel and I repaired most of the holes & cracks on the dashboard & centre console. It will all be painted in two shades of 1970's chocolate brown next weekend.
Plastic facia now in place and triangular sides built up with fibreglass.


I saw a potential for failure on the lower edge of the facia, so I epoxied an angle strip of stainless wire mesh to give it some extra strength. (a little bit of thread temporarily holding it in place while the epoxy cured.)
I will be epoxying some 8mm plywood to the back of the facia to give me something solid to screw some mounting brackets onto.


1mm textured plastic veneer pieces now epoxied to the sides, and chrome trim in place for a test fit. All good.


Next job is to cut another single din slot above the radio and fit cubby box similar to the one below.


The blingy orange engine was bugging me a bit so I stripped it down (again) and painted it black (again). I'd better fit the engine before I change my mind (again). I made an engine lift plate which bolts on where the carburettor usually sits on the intake manifold. Hopefully this will give me all the clearance I need to fit the engine comfortably.



I also had a little project rattling around in my head that needed to be turned into reality. Instead of borrowing my father-in-laws gigantic engine hoist, I decided to make my own with some parts I already had. It fits on the 3 point hitch on the back of my little Kubota.
This was the first "test lift":



These "G vans" are notorious for being a pain in the butt when it comes to lifting out or fitting engines. The bulkhead & tunnel is directly over the engine, so every inch of clearance in important.

Back in September, I had a go at getting the original reflect-o-lite clearance lights to work, (5 amber on the front, 7 red on the rear) but I noticed the bulb mounts were corroded on a lot of them. I also noticed the yellow lenses on the front were sun bleached and cracked. So I did some googling and found a Chinese ebayer selling new 4"x2" LED lights the same shape & size as mine. When they arrived 5 weeks later, they were the right size, were good quality and looked great, but I didn't like the look of the LED lights when they were lit up. They were too modern and too bright!
So I went back to the ol interweb and found some standard clearance lights on the Summit racing website for $4 a piece. They arrived last week and I'm much happier with them. they suit my oul van better.

So if any of you Rv'ers are looking to upgrade your clearance lights to LED, I have 14 of them here for sale! (7 amber 7 red)



The standard ones I got from summit a couple of weeks later:


Same size (4"x2") with standard 5w T10 wedge bulbs.


Now all I need to do is find some time to fit them!

When Photobucket changed their policy and tried to hold folks to ransome for photo hosting, it destroyed blogs all over the world, mine included. I was bitter about it to say the least and I was waiting to see would they reverse their decision, but it's been a few months now and it seems they wont go back. This oul resto blog only makes sense with the photos, so the only thing to do at this point is go back to the start and upload my pics directly to the forum, post by post. The job isn't complete yet as it takes ages to do, but I'm getting there... So when you have some free time, feel free to jump back to the start with me! There are some new photos that weren't shared previously so it might be interesting when you find those ones. Enjoy

A friend shared this youtube video with me over the weekend.

Kinda scary. Makes me want to upgrade my seatbelts from 2 point lap belts, to more modern 3 point safety belts (at least!!)

Not much in the way of crumple zones in the chevy van! >>yikes<<





He actually shared several motorhome crash test videos with me. All very scary... Motorhomes dont like crash impacts, even the modern motorhomes.

More Dashboarding:

I started painting this weekend. On Saturday I lost most of the day making the 8mm plywood backer and associated brackets. Trying to avoid f*king things up takes time & patience! So now the plywood is in place and a perforated aluminium bracket/U shelf is installed in the top din slot. You can just about see it in the next photo. The shelf is only for support, it won't be seen once the plastic cubby is in place.


Test fiting radio cages: All good.


Then some more sanding, masking & priming:


(Apologies if some of the photos appear to be a bit pink/red. Thats the IR heatlamp I use to dry the paint).


The first couple of coats of light brown turned out fine. A very good match to the original colour:


Everything above the feature line on this centre console will be a darker shade of brown.

While I finally made a decision on cutting single din slots into the facia, I still havent decided on what kind of radio to fit. The one I used earlier was an old one that I had knocking around the shed, I dont know if it even works. For the camper I'm still mulling about fitting a vintage looking radio or a modern unit. My son suggested fitting something like one of these single din radio's with pop up DVD/video... a good idea too.

Wheels & tyres:

A few weeks ago, I ordered a pair of 16.5" tyres from North Hants tyres in th UK.
While waiting for them to arrive, I removed the cracked and rotten tyres from the front wheels and got my son to de-rust them.


A few days later, rims painted.
Tyres arrived and ready to fit:

Cubby arrived, perfect fit (phew).



Painting the steel subframe before I fit the dashboard next week. This paint was supposed to be matt black! Grrrr!!

I put the darker shade of brown paint on the dashboard yesterday. I'll give it a few days to dry thoroughly before I fit it to the cab.

The colour match with the original is just about perfect. I'm very pleased with it. It typifies the colours used in the 1970's/80's.







The ashtray was very rusty so I gave it a shot of matt black paint. We're not smokers so I'm not worried about ashes or burning the paint.

New colour laser printer in work + self adhesive waterproof A4 paper = a reproduction "factory options" sticker.

I've been following a few other restorations on the interweb, and I noticed a few of the builders went to the lengths of having custom stickers made, to add authenticity... It planted a seed in my mind.
After a little research and with some info provided by a couple of guys with RV's exactly like mine, I decided to make up a "Service parts identification" sticker with the correct options that were fitted to our vehicle. This factory sticker would have been fitted to the bonnet of each Chevy van on the assembly line.
Every time I see a photo of a chevy van with it's bonnet lifted, I see this sticker on most of the photos. Some with the sticker on the left, some with the sticker on the right.

Yeah, I do need to get out more...



I think it looks cool and I'm really pleased with it!

I'm easily amused.



An example from the interweb:

I plan to fit the dashboard tomorrow. Before that, I need to fit some new speakers and run a few wires behind the dash.
This evening I fitted the speakers. the original 40 watt oval speakers didn't work so I picked up a new set of speakers today. I had to do a bit of cutting to make the round speakers fit.
I went for 230 watt Pioneer speakers as I'm partial to a bit of loud music.



Then adding a bit of dynamat to reduce any vibration.
Driver side:


Passenger side:

Dashboard fittin time!

The main section of the dashboard dropped straight into place lastnight, no problem!

The centre console was not so easy...

I knew I would have to do some adjusting & trimming on the engine cover as it was bigger and a slightly different shape to the original cover that was in the camper.
The left side of this engine cover (from the ‘93 donor van) had a large goofy protrusion on the left hand side. My centre console (from the original 1980 cab) didn’t fit it properly. I’m assuming the big protrusion was there to give clearance for a different shape engine or some large accessory bolted to the back left side of a more modern engine. My engine doesn’t need all that space.

My plan was to cut out the protrusion and fashion a new shape that works better for me.
I had already cut up the engine cover before I remembered to use my camera so I forgot to take a “before” photo, sorry!
Y'all will have to take my word for it and imagine the “big bump” on the left side of the cover!

First off I cut a large 'leaf shaped' hole in the left side of the cover. I then cut a piece of perforated aluminium into a rough shape a little bigger than the hole. Then using this leather sandbag and nylon shaping hammer, I roughly formed the piece into the curvy shape that I needed.


Then laying the piece over the outside of the cover, I screwed it down temporarily and continued working it closer to the required shape with a metal dolly and ball-peen hammer. I use this perforated aluminium simply because I have a lot of it (pulled from a skip) and it’s soft enough to hammer into curvy shapes!


Bash, bash, bash...


In the next photo the piece is glued and screwed into place (from behind) and I’m doing the final shaping in-situ to make sure all mounting tabs and clamps line up, and the dashboard and console fit together properly.


The console now fits a lot better. As a bonus, the new shape also gives me a lot more legroom to get into the driver seat from the coach side of the cab, and i think it looks a lot better. Closer to the original look anyway.


I just need to cut another flat piece of aluminium for the hole in the centre (where there was also a small bit of interference with the console) and then we'll be ready to start fibreglassing over the aluminium this evening. When thats done, and it's painted and then covered in shaggy carpet, you’d never know I’ve chopped holes in it!

It sticks out a little bit over on the passenger side too, but not enough to bug me. Heres a side-by-side of the old engine cover and new engine cover (same console):

A little bit more on the engine cover (as I have the photos on my camera)

Time to fill that hole in the centre of the engine cover:

Same as before, cut a piece of Aluminium a little bigger than the hole and bend it into the right shape. There’s a narrow strip at the top which needs some clearance so I need to do some more bashing. I made a small wooden form to get the shape I needed:

Then bash, bash, bash.....


Glued and screwed and ready for fibre-glass.



Heres an older pic you can see the bump I had to cut off in the middle of the engine cover...


No fibreglassing today. I didn't have enough so I need to get some on Monday...

Today was a day for sittin' in front of the fire & minding a glass of jack daniels..

I didn't get much done to the camper over the holidays. I had a few jobs to do around the house, and some maintenance jobs to do on the cars etc. So with all those finally done, I stole a few easy days between christmas and New Years, and I did f*ck all but eat, drink and watch tv. Taking the dog for a walk every odd day..,

I needed the break!

I got back to wrenching on the camper yesterday. I needed to fit the timing chain cover which meant the sump had to come off. I didn't realise that the timing chain cover had to be fitted first before fitting the sump, which I had already done a few months ago.

Anyway, two steps forward, one step back, but Job done.


I need a special tool to press-fit the harmonic balancer onto the crankshaft, so that job will have to wait for a bit.

The manifolds had to be cleaned up and painted with some Hi-temp paint. The best I could get my hands on was Simoniz 800c manifold paint. We'll see how long it lasts. I also had to remove the rusted Smog ports and rusted flange studs. I plan to replace all exhaust bolts with Stainless steel bolts. The smog ports I'm just going to blank off with 1/2" UNF grub-screws as I'm "deleting" all of the smog pump paraphanlia.

The rusted-in studs fought me every inch of the way but i eventually got the job done. 4 of 6 had to be drilled & tapped.

Next thing to do was to fit the manifolds. But to my amazement the bolt holes were miles off? WTF?? The two centre bolts fitted no problem, but the front and rear bolt holes would not line up with the holes on the heads!
Before I got out the die-grinder, I decided check in with folks that have experience with chevy engines, and I discovered that the chevy V8 manifolds ARE renowned for warping and being a bit of a pig to refit... Theres a special tool available - A "manifold stretcher", but I'd have had to order it from the USA and wait a few weeks. No bueno...

I had to come up with a plan B...

Some 20mm electrical conduit and a length of M16 threaded bar. (patent pending)



My DIY stretchers worked remarkably well. Albeit a bit scary to be stretching a cast iron manifold and waiting for the loud crack every moment, but there was none thanks God.

Before fitting the manifolds I checked the mating faces for flatness (on a thick sheet of glass) and I found some misalignment, so I had to mill them to make sure all faces were flat.

Final fitting - passenger side. Stretchers working fine


Driver side fitted & torqued: