ardea pickup.........THING!

[chugga boom]

Great to see it progressing. 

I loved all those levers as well.

What specific etch and seam sealer do you use?

David

i use a variety of etch primas, usually upol in a can for small areas or mipa through the gun, seam sealer i just buy from a man in a van lol, great guy called kieth from mopul products (1 man company local to me), great quality stuff though, engine bay is underway so hopefully more photo's to come soon, aiming to get under the arches in the engine bay in the cab and spare wheel carrier painted very soon

[chugga boom]

abit more done today, finished degreasing and bare metaling engine bay, welded up the rot at the bottom of the glove box and a few more stress cracks!!!, found a few numbers stamped into the shell, 1 is obviously the chassis number but i'm unsure at the moment what the others are unless like an augusta they had a "build number" ??

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more...........

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here's the number if you can see them , middle photo is chassis number

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a little more work done today, whilst matty and owen were stripping the appia camioncino down , myself and father set to making an extension for the rear floor of the ardea, basically because it origionally had rear doors the floor finished short of the rear end with the doors closing to it, because i'm fitting a tailgate and seperate spare wheel compartment the floor needed extending to divide the 2, we started by making the strip in 2 pieces and welding them together, then we clamped it at 1 end to the rear bumper (vw beetle front bumper), heated it up and slowely bent it to shape, then the fun began, it took me and father approx an hr and a half this morning to get it somewhere near fitting then me the rest of the day to finish it and weld it in, all in all there was approx 10hrs work just on this piece!!! , have to say its 1 of the trickiest parts to make so far

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more.........

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more........

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been pottering again today, to me anyway this is where its starting to get interesting, the ardea is well under powered and followers of this thread will have seen my previous FAILED attempt to put an aprilia engine so i've bought a floor change conversion off don cross for an appia gearbox and decided to try an appia engine and box for size, i'm also going to use an appia back axle as its a far higher ratio and (with enough power) should cruise at 70mph instead of screaming at 50!!, anyway after a couple of hours work today this is where i ended up 

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more.........

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so there we have it, there's still plenty more to do though, i need to chop out more of the tunnel to allow the gearbox to move up approx anothe 1.5 inches, chop off the origional engine mounts so i can raise the front of the engine more (rhs fowels oil filter housing) and finally make some new mounting points to weld into the engine bay, on the plus side when rebuilt with zagato pistons and a twin choke weber it will be double the power or more than the 28bhp ardea engine , its a shame to loose the 5speed box off the ardea  but atleast the engine box and back axle will all be matched ,

[DavidLaver]

Bingo!!   

David

[chugga boom]

not quite! still plenty more to do, started by cutting off the o/s engine mounting off the body to clear the oil filter housing, i chopped more out of the tunnel/bulkhead to clear the top of the box propperly, i put a straight bar through the stating handle holes to line up withe the center of the hole in the timing case , this gets the front of the engine at the correct height, then i bolted the propshaft onto the gearbox without the coupling so its solid, this meens i can get the rear height correct, the prop was a couple of inches above the axle but the flanges were parralell to each other,
its important to get the line through the crank>gearbox>prop>& rear axle pinion all in a straight line, if any are out of line the this will cause terrible vibration and possibly knacker up either the gearbox / axle or couplings
i'm happy with the way it all fits now just need to make up the mountings ( good job i had the appia there to take measurements off )

[chugga boom]

.......... after this we decided to remove the rear axle and try an appia item to up the gearing, all well and good having extra power but pointless if it will still only do 55mph flat out!! anyway to be blunt IT DOESN'T FIT    its approx 4inches narrower, so where do i go from here?? an overdrive is a no no, simply not enough room under the floor at the back of the gearbox to fit 1, a 5 speed appia box would be ideal as would the euro millions and in fairness i think i have a better chance of winning the latter than finding a 5 speed box
we checked out the idea of putting either an ardea or appia diff into my axle but again this is a no go as the trucks diff is far deeper and if either of the other diffs were put into the origional axle case the half shafts would be behind the holes their supposed to fit in,
looking in the parts book most of the parts in the axle have aprilia part numbers, we think its a none irs floorpan type axle, the only parts without aprilia part numbers seem to be the crown wheel and pinion, the diff is standard aprilia, so next plan is to strip an aprilia diff and the trucks axle, hopefully the crown wheel and pinion will swap over and then problem solved

[chugga boom]

.......... whilst all this was going on we started to fill up the rest of the rear end , starting to take shape slowely

[DavidLaver]

A bit extreme - but what would it take to widen the axle?

Also I'm going to use that tip for prop to rear axle alignment!!

David