Hi all. I?m still alive.
It looks like I am finally getting some enthusiasm back for restoring my truck.
So, a quick recap and then I?ll give you the updates.
The big hold-up came when I wanted to use the Abbey crane to pick up the cleaned, re-sealed and painted transfer case which is sitting on the chassis rails, right over the rear axle sets. First, one of the hydraulic hoses was leaking, so I had all new ones made. I replaced all of them except the one that operates the second jib, as it connects to the hydraulic cylinder inside the frame of the jib. To get to it, I had to drive the rear pin out then operate the cylinder to push the body of it out far enough to get to the connection. When I tried to run the truck to power the crane, it wouldn?t idle. It was chugging and coughing and finally stopped and wouldn?t restart.
After a lot of diagnosing, I found it all led back to the plastic boat tank that I was running it off. The tank itself was fine and about half full. The problem was the metal wire that attached the float to the gauge in the lid. It had almost tripled its size with rust, with a load of it in the bottom of the tank. This boat tank just has an open hose for the pick-up and had sucked a load of small rust flakes up.
I pulled the mechanical fuel pump off and disassembled it. I found that valves had hardened and were allowing fuel to drain back and the screen was clogged with rust and sludge. I got a kit locally and cleaned it up and rebuilt it and then went on to the carbs.
The F1 has duel Stromberg BXUV-3 carburettors, linked together with a solid rod. I pulled the top off one and found the inside had what appeared to be a layer of fine rust particles that had built up in the bottom of the float chamber and must have been restricting the passages. I pulled the carbs out and realised they had been leaking for years and were coated in a layer of what looked like varnish.
I picked up a cheap Chinese-made ultrasonic cleaner and messed around with different cleaning products before finding that a basic water-based degreaser seemed to work really well on the varnish.
It did a pretty good job on the alloy parts, but hardly touched the tarnish on the steel sections.
I managed to find a rebuild kit, but the accelerator pump plunger was different. Then I found that I couldn?t get the jets out. The slotted heads were chewed out where someone had been at them with a poorly fitting screwdriver. If I couldn?t get them out, it was pointless continuing.
Now for the update.
I did a few online searches and found a company in Victoria that specialise in rebuilding and repairing classic carbs. The company is called Allcarb Carburetors and the owner is Jeff Vanprooyen. The website is carbparts.com.au, but it is still under construction. I gave him a call and told him I was restoring an Inter F1 and needed some parts. It turns out he actually makes the rebuild kits sold in most parts stores in Australia. That?s when he told me he rebuilds and repairs all types of carbs. After chatting a bit, I got his mailing address and boxed them up and shipped them off.
A couple of weeks later I got a call to say they were all done and that he was surprised that they cleaned up so well, as they were in pretty rough condition and were missing a few screws and had badly worn throttle shafts. He shipped them back and I got them in 3 days.
Except for the light pitting on the top cover of the one on the right, you would think they were new. They have been totally stripped, cleaned, anodised and rebuilt with new screws, jets and gaskets. He also replaced the worn shafts and flow tested them. The only thing he couldn?t do was set the float height, as I couldn?t send him the banjo fittings that house the seat for the needles, as they are soldered to a rigid pipe that runs from the fuel pump on the other side of the engine. He had mentioned this on the phone and told me how to set the levels, so it wasn?t a big deal.
The overall price, including shipping them back to me, was $460incGST.
If you are chasing parts or a full rebuild for your carbs, I definitely recommend giving Jeff a call.
Jeff Vanprooyen - Allcarb Carburetors ? 0487 149 046.
The next step is to clean up the inlet manifold, refit the carbs and set the float levels. Then I can run it long enough to push the cylinder out on the crane, change the last hose, and finally move the transfer case so I can clean and paint the rear diffs.
